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 * //S4 IHE Literature Oedipus The King//**

Please check out the following websites for review and reference resources

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 * Electronic text for reference**


 * __Film Adaptations of the Play__**


 * Pasolini 1967



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Some background reading.... "For we ascribe to the gods the power of seeing everything. There must, however, be nothing inexplicable in the incidents, or, if there is, it must lie outside the tragedy. There is an example in Sophocles' Oedipus."

Aristotle cautions us not to look very deeply into why Oedipus, warned he might kill his father, wasn't deathly scared of killing any and all old men.

But Pasolini filmed this imagination of it.

Sir Richard Jebb translation of "Oedipus Rex" line 800:

Now, lady, I will tell you the truth. When on my journey I was near those three roads, there I met a herald, and a man in a carriage drawn by colts, as you have described. The leader and the old man himself tried to thrust me rudely from the path. Then, in anger, I struck the one pushing me aside, the driver, and the old man, when he saw this, watched for the moment I was passing, and from his carriage, brought his double goad straight down on my head. Yet he was paid back with interest: with one swift blow from the staff in this hand he rolled right out of the carriage onto his back. I slew every one of them.

"skeptron" is the word used for staff, a stick. Also the king's scepter, the god's arrows driving home the points, and, finally, Oedipus' stick he uses for support and the end of the play.

These myths don't have a separate objective reality when dealing with artists like Sophocles or Pasolini, they change many details all the time; the myth is "in progress and becoming".

Stuff happens. Aeschylus tries to show divine justice in all acts, Euripides disputes divine origin of evil, Sophocles just says it happens--the circumstance of the universe as it is.

Oedipus might have been wrong in killing all in the party at those three roads, he might have chosen different. It doesn't matter, the oracle would have been fulfilled--we know it will, but Oedipus isn't forced into it.

Very possible, we thought, of rash and violent Oedipus we know from "Oedipus Rex" to kill men in blind anger on the road, arguably in self-defense.

Pasolini's Oedipus kills differently, with no skeptron, in a more controlled hysteria suggesting a stranger maturation of Oedipus than we might have supposed.


 * //BBC 1984 Version//**



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=media type="youtube" key="P_OLef_j4P4" height="344" width="425"=

=media type="youtube" key="zmrHgStYL9w" height="344" width="425"=

media type="youtube" key="gVCTN1YKl1g" height="344" width="425"


 * __LEARNING OUTCOMES__

CORE CURRICULUM **
 * Students can identify and evaluate how screenplays interpret and evaluate how meaning is created in a text.
 * Students can identify symbols and motifs and evaluate how they create meaning..


 * CURRICULUM OF CONNECTIONS **
 * Students understand how intertextual meaning is generated through relationships between different genres- film and drama.


 * CURRICULUM OF PRACTICE **
 * Students select, evaluate and organise information from the text in order to synthesise a coherent argument.
 * Students use knowledge of Aristotle's poetics on tragedy and use film texts to construct written response.


 * CURRICULUM OF IDENTITY **
 * Students reflect on how the main theme explored in the text relates directly to their own experience in reality and the implications for contemporary social life.


 * //Exercise 1//**

After viewing the above film clips, **//evaluate how effectively these screenplay adaptations in film portray the themes and interaction between characters accurately in the Greek Tragedy - Oedipus Rex//

Instructions**: type a one paragraph (300 words) response to this focus question in a word document and post it on discussion forum.


 * Student Responses (please make sure your name and class is written at the top of your document)**


 * //Exercise 2//**

In the sequences above film is used to mediate our understanding of the function of Greek tragedy in society. Discuss the symbolic significance of light and dark, battle, the supernatural and reality and other relevant motifs in the text.


 * Instructions**: type an 600 word response in a word document and post it on the discussion forum.