In his Poetics, Aristotle’s theorization on poetry, which ends up being “above all a treatise on tragedy”, brings in different examples from the most varied sources, and, specifically, from the most varied tragedians, many even whose work is no longer extant, which are used as examples to support his theses. By the end, though he never explicitly says so, the reader knows perfectly well that Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus is, for him, the most perfect tragedy, having seen its name repeatedly identified by Aristotle as possessing characteristics that should be looked for in a good tragedy – it is, by far, the title most often associated with praise. However, to say that said play is thought of by Aristotle as being the most perfect tragedy is, though true, a potentially misleading statement. “Most perfect” does not mean perfect and, to some extent, though Sophocle’s play does stand out from most tragedies, it would be as well to say Aristotle considered it “the least imperfect tragedy”. As Stephen Halliwell writes in the introduction to his translation of the Poetics, “(…) Aristotle’s goal can best be seen as the progressive demarcation of an area of possibilities which simultaneously codifies existing achievements of the tragedians, and legislates for the ideal scope of tragedy.”[1] But one might be compelled to ask why did the philosopher made literary critic pick this particular tragedy and not, for example, Agamemnon[2], or Antigone.
This essay aims at an analysis of the characteristics that make Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus the most perfect tragedy for Aristotle. As such, the constant reference point is the text of the latter author’s Poetics, from which will stem the dialogue with Sophocles’ play. Aristotle’s view on tragedy has been often described as (almost) formalistic[3], and in fact he does give a lot of importance to form and genre[4] and most of the praise that Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus earns from him has to do either with form or with the way in which the plot or action are built and disposed in order as to rend it cohesive. But could it really be that such features, which of course Aristotle admired, make it superior to other plays such as the ones mentioned above without any influence from the content of the tragedy? To try to answer such question, this essay will first examine the formal characteristics of Oedipus Tyrannus in comparison chiefly with Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, but also borrowing from other extant tragedies so as to try and establish what makes Sophocles’ play so strong for Aristotle and whether or not its formal aspects are enough to give it such an upper hand over other examples of canonical plays treating related themes and belonging to the same tradition. Then, the second part of the essay will try to show how the character of Oedipus, though Aristotle himself might not have been aware or willing to admit it, does overpower plot by its sheer intensity and does indeed make the formidable formal machine work so well.
As for the formal aspects and those elements that, for Aristotle, derive from it, this essay will focus chiefly on the relationship between plot and character, the issue of the chorus, and the particular question of reversal (peripeteia) and recognition (anagnorisis). Beginning with the first point, Aristotle says, in ch. VI[5], that plot is more important than character, to the point when he says (p.55): “(…) it is not in order to provide mimesis of character that the agents act; rather, their characters are included for the sake of their actions. Thus, the events and the plot are the goal of tragedy (…) without action there could be no tragedy but without character there could be (…)”. Leaving aside the many perplexities caused by the loose ends in the text, his statement is clear. At this point, it is interesting indeed to compare Sophocles’ play with Agamemnon as regards the way the characters, in particular the characters that give the name to both plays, behave themselves in each. In Oedipus Tyrannus, the main character is ever-present, expressing himself in act and speech, and in a way dominating the play from beginning to end that it is almost surprising how Aristotle did not accuse Sophocles of shaping the play too much around a character, instead of crafting a “mimesis of action” – for Oedipus certainly comes very close to defy the notion that a play should not revolve around a character (a point later to be discussed). Evidently, the character serves the action, so much so that one cannot imagine any other character in his place without a disruption of action and of meaning (not only of form). Iocaste, Creon, Tiresias also play important and very distinct roles, in particular Tiresias, yet none can compare in prominence to Oedipus and one could be tempted to say that Oedipus really tyrannizes the play. In Agamemnon, on the other hand, the title character is almost as ephemeral and weak in his grip of the spectator and of the action that one would feel tempted to say that, if we never had seen him, it wouldn’t have made much difference. Comparatively, Cassandra, Clytemnestra and the Chorus do enact really relevant characters (it is revealing that the Chorus actually seems to matter more than the “main” character). While they both are indeed servicing the progression of the action of their respective plays, how more different could these two characters be, as regards their presence on stage and as meaningful agents? It seems to be the difference between someone who thrusts himself foward into action and someone who just comes to suffer the actions of others.
Another formal aspect that is interesting to note is how the Chorus behaves in Oedipus. Like the Chorus of Agamemnon, they have their moments of indecision (e.g. vv. 863-910), of coming to inquire about something, but their function is more limited. They do contribute to the action, by answering Oedipus’ questions, as in vv. 276-279 or 690-696, by giving hits, for example when they insist with Iocaste to take Oedipus inside after his argument with Creon (vv. 678-679) or by recognising the Shepherd before the Messenger is addressed to again (v. 1117-1118), but they remain, above all, commentators of the action, in need of direct stimulation so as to “give their two cents” about what is going on on stage. The Chorus in Agamemnon is a much more active entity. They reflect autonomously about what is happening and what has gone before. Though, like other choruses, highly susceptible to suggestion, they respond to it more actively (of which is an example their frustrated dialogue with Cassandra, vv. 1069-1330). Also, the Chorus in Aeschylus’ play (and it is very interesting to notice that Aeschylus is referred to as being a heavily choral writer) engages in an attempt of – also frustrated – autonomous action, when they engage in a violent dialogue with Clytemnestra and pronounce her fit to be stoned to death, as they will pronounce against Aegisthus and indeed attempt to act. Such is something that the Chorus in Oedipus is far from doing. When Creon takes command, the Chorus keeps itself at bay, more in the style of theatre audience than really an part of the cast, and fails to come forward to ease Oedipus’ suffering or press Creon to be gentler. This is interesting because Aristotle himself considered that a chorus, being present, should take part in the action and not stand aside merely talking about the action. In the light of this, it would seem that Agamemnon here is more close to Aristotle’s standards than Sophocles’ play.
One thing that is central to Aristotle’s conception of what a good tragedy should be like is the relationship between peripeteia (reversal) and anagnorisis (recognition). Quoting from chapter 11 in Halliwell’s translation: “Reversal is a change in the opposite direction of events (…) and one in accord (…) with probability or necessity: as when in the Oedipus [Tyrannus] the person who comes to bring Oedipus happiness, and intends to rid him of his fear about his mother, effects the opposite by revealing Oedipus’ true identity. (…) Recognition, as the name indicated, is a change from ignorance to knowledge (…) involving matters which bear on prosperity or adversity. The finest recognition is that which occurs simultaneously with reversal, as with one in the Oedipus” (p.65) This would, indeed, seem very particular to Oedipus Tyrannus: when the messenger comes, not only his action has the opposite effect to that intended, as his action changes the whole picture of the lives of the characters (others’ along with Oedipus’s) and turns the whole sequence of events and their interpretation upside down, completely reshaping them. This happens simultaneously with Oedipus’ crossing from ignorance of his origins to the dramatic, tragic recognition brought by the acquired knowledge of them. In Agamemnon, this coincidental axis-like moment does not occur and reversal pre-dates recognition and begs the question of who recognises what, to which the sole possible answer is that the Chorus, not the main character in particular, understands, at last and too late, Cassandra’s seemingly obscure prophecies.
From this very brief analysis one can easily see, then, that though Oedipus Tyrannus presents us with the most well-crafted moment of joint reversal and recognition, it would seem to present as well several architectural deficiencies that do not accord with Aristotle’s layout of what a good tragedy should look like. It is pertinent now to ask whether the power of the structure in the play does not come from another, rather unexpected source, Oedipus’ character. In attempting to expose such influence of the character’s behaviour on the structure and overall effect of the play, one needs to consider several things: 1) what is (or where is) his hamartia; 2) the substance of the hybris that leads him into the trap of the tragic error and seals his fate. In fact, though this might seem obvious, it is rather tricky to demarcate his hamartia, partly because the most obvious unwitting error he committed, the killing of Laius, is not part of the play and one might be tempted to search for it in there. On the other hand, in the play he also does commit a mistake sprung of ignorance, which his own sentencing to exile (vv. 216-275), not knowing that it was on him that the sentence would fall. But is that really a mistake, considering his ethos?
That brings us to the second issue. What drives Oedipus to commit the tragic error of killing his father is, in itself, ignorance of the fact that he did not know his father, but it is also more than that. When told by the oracle that he would murder his father and marry his mother, Oedipus tried to prevent the prophecy from taking place by fleeing from those he thought were his parents. This implies another error, caused by hybris: it implies he thought he could escape the fulfilment of what the gods had destined for him, namely the Moirai, deities presiding over the fate of both men and gods alike, a more ancient power than the power of Zeus and a more disturbing one (in that sense, though they are never mentioned in the play, resembling the Erynies in their relation to Orestes in Aeschylus’ Oresteia). His story is one of perpetual offense against the Moirai, because not only does he think he can escape his fate as he goes on living as if he had, or at any rate was in the right path to do so, never realising that there is no escape and that, sooner or later, the curse would fall on him. However, to the eyes of the reader or spectator, this only makes him more admirable and gives him further depth as a character, for he is the one who passed from happiness to misfortune due to wanting to do the right thing – and that has a profound effect on how we perceive him. Also, there is another layer to his hybris: having become King of Thebes, he wants to be a sort of Pater Patriae (vv.58-77), and indeed feels and acts like that. He tries, and never wavers from that course, to be the perfect king, to relieve his land and his subjects of their suffering. Striving to be perfect, if we accept that is what he is doing all along the play, does constitute hybris in itself, as he is no god and to them alone perfection was consigned (though we may be sceptical of how far we can apply such concept to capricious deities such as the Greek gods) – this reading also makes Oedipus Tyrannus a work potentially embedded in the roots of a notion of religious piety, predating the Roman (and specially Virgilian) pietas. However, one might try to argue against this reading, saying that surely, when Oedipus has his argument with Tiresias and then Creon because he becomes suspicious that the latter conspired with the former to have him removed from the throne, he was not thinking as a sovereign that puts his subjects first and his interest second, thus rendering both Sophocles’ and Aristotle’s conception of kingship quite ambiguous. This argument seems relatively week, as it can be opposed by the notion that usurpers are inherently bad and that a good king knows it is his duty to prevent them from succeeding and thus to keep himself on his position. Dubious, distant, Machiavellian and anachronistic as that might seem, that point can be made.
Now, his conception of himself thus defined, it would seem that his sentencing himself unwittingly is not, in fact, an error, but rather the product of one (his having killed his father). He sentences a murderer to severe punishment when found and the upshot is that he does punish himself accordingly when he finds he is the murderer of Laius. The power of the joint reversal and recognition is massively increased by the fact that it amounts to the revelation that all that he was trying to accomplish, and all the height to what he was prepared to ascend as a just king and honourable man, were lying in already corrupt foundations without him knowing about it. When the illusion collapses, its collapse is a great as that illusion purported to be. The peripeteia and anagnorisis are followed, then, by the most moving catastrophe, as he inflicts on himself not only the punishment he had decreed to be that of the criminal that was polluting the land but more, by blinding himself at the dark irony of his previous state of ignorance that thought itself bright and was now exposed for what it was. It is through his character and because of his most admirable qualities that he falls to uttermost ruin. This, no doubt, would have exerted both fear and pity, and it is curious that a philosopher who aimed at so much would not have identified that line of thought in the play. One could almost say, risking intellectual impiety, that Aristotle probably was too much like Oedipus to see it.
Therefore, when we come to consider Oedipus Tyrannus, it is actually very much worth it to go back to Aristotle’s words on the fact that tragedy can exist without character but not without plot. One could answer him saying that, generally, that rule holds but that in the case of Oedipus Tyrannus, there would be no play if there was no Oedipus. So in a sense, ironically, one could actually say that the unity of the play is enhanced by the fact that it is wrought around a character so irresistibly attractive that it cannot escape his power over it.
Author’s Note: This essay was originally written in October 2015, as part of coursework for the Tragedy paper of the English Tripos that I took as part of my study exchange program at the University of Cambridge. It is republished here with only minimal revision. Needless to say, even though I may not really have changed my mind much as to the core intuition herein, it is a frankly pedestrian piece of writing and, after nearly 9 years, reading it again is somewhat of an embarrassment and I neither see myself in it nor does it accurately represent my intellectual abilities anymore. Still, I take this opportunity to thank Dr. Hero Chalmers, my supervisor at Fitzwilliam College for two of my three Cambridge terms, for how much she taught me and encouraged me at every step of my Cantabrigian reverie. I also thank all of my other teachers at Cambridge and all the friends I made there, especially those who share my thespian interests.
Bibliography
Aeschylus, Oresteia, transl. Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Duckworth, London, 1982
Halliwell, Stephen, ed. and transl. Aristotle Poetics, LCL 199, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA and London, 1995
Hornblower, Simon, and Antony Spawforth, edd. The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996
Jones, Hugh Lloyd, ed. and transl. Sophocles I. Ajax, Electra, Oedipus Tyrannus, LCL 20, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA and London, 1994
Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg, ed. Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1992
- Stephen Halliwell, “Introduction”, in Aristotle Poetics, LCL 199, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA and London, p. 13 ↑
- Hugh Lloyd-Jones, in the introduction to Agamemnon in his translation to the Oresteia (Duckworth, London, 1979), begins by saying “The Agamemnon is perhaps the greatest of all Greek tragedies (…)” (i) ↑
- Cf. Idem, Ibidem, p.10 ↑
- Cf Id., Ibid., pp. 8-9 ↑
- See pp. 46-55 in Halliwell’s edition and translation. ↑
