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Oedipus gives us a wonderful opportunity
to dip into our toolbox.

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Oedipus is incredibly rich and over years
has given scholars in many different

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fields a good opportunity to think with
the materials the Sophocles presents us.

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I'll just present a few ideas that just
scratching the surface of what can be

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learned from this incredibly rich story
that Sophocles passes down to us.

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First of fall, turning a functionalist
lens on what we're looking at.

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Remember, functionalist says that myths
are told in order to legitimize and

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authorize social norms in the culture that
is telling the myths to themselves.

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Now, in this there are multiple so, social
norms that are getting authorized and

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legitimized.
Number one, we, an obvious prohibition

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against incest is being shown to be the
right kind of thing to do.

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Where it's being exhibited to us, the
possibilities of awfulness that come from,

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committing of incest and the I,
prohibition against it is definitely here,

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underlined, authorized, and legitimized.
Then also another piece of this that's

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been coming out of my own presentation,
but I just wanted to label this as,

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specifically functionless kind of reading,
this is the importance of the role of

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Delphi in ancient Greek.
Society.

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We have a very strong message built into
this play that divine wisdom that comes

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from oracles should be heeded.
The traditional set of structures around

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the oracles, the temple sights, the people
that run the oracles.

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These people are being authorized by the
story. we're, we see in Oedipus's case,

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someone that, in the end turns against the
oracle, thumbs his nose at it and tries to

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talk about his own grandeur, as opposed to
the oracle being wrong.

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This is the wrong way to go.
I, I mentioned in one of the earlier

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lectures that.
The, the right thing to do if an oracle

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tells you some disturbing piece of
information is to go back to the oracle.

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You might say, I didn't like what you told
me,

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Or you might say to the oracle, well, so
what am I supposed to do since you've

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given me this awful kind of information.
But Oedipus takes it into his own hands to

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try to run away from the things that the
oracle has told him.

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And then as, as his story gets more and
more complex and he goes farther and

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farther away from the original message
that he get's from the oracle, he

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eventually turns against the oracle,
saying that, yes, for me to be okay, the

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oracle has to be wrong.
Well, that's strategically a blunder.

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You should never put yourself in a
position like that.

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Oedipus's play through a functionalist's
lens is authorizing this important social

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role of the oracle as a as a keeper and
protector of truths in a society.

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Looking through a Freudian lens, there's
obviously, we could talk for the rest of,

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the, the rest of our, time together, about
Freudian, possi-, possible Freudian

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readings, on the Oedipus story.
But yes, indeed, just to give a schematic

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outline of it, Freud would tell us, sure,
of course we're repulsed by Oedipus, but

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it's true that all of us are, in, in our,
in the end, repellent to ourselves because

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we have these, core, primal desires.
We live in ignorance of these primal

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desires.
So like Oedipus, we're in ignorance of our

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own crimes, since we're constantly, in our
case, we're constantly repressing them.

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We have conflicting feelings, at a, Freud
says, Freudian slip.

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Freud says we have conflicting feelings
about our parents.

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We have feelings that are maybe too
strong, they're upsetting to us and so we

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suppress them.
Freud will tell us yes, the Oedipus story

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grows out of precisely those strong
repressed emotions, of a, a sense of the,

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the son having competitiveness with
father, and a sense of intimacy with the

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mother.
These desires come out, we repress them,

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but they have to make their way out or
otherwise the steamkettle is in danger of

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blowing.
So we have things like can,

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Dreams, which consistantly do show things,
as people collect examples of dreams

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across, across societies. struggles with
fathers are common, intimacy with mothers,

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mothers are common in these kinds of
dreams.

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And Freud would say Oedipus grows out of a
primeval set of these dreams, and his myth

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is like the dream of an entire culture
trying to live out these allowing, a

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repressed desire to come out in a
displaced form onto a now Separate human

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being Oedipus on to whom we can kind of
drop all thse desires, let him express

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them for us. We live out those desires
through him and in the end find him

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repulsive, so we, shoe him and send him on
his way.

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From a structionalist reading we were
developing this when we looked at this

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question of autochthony.
In the story, remember, the, there were

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hints in Oedipus' tale of a connection
that he feels like he has with Cithaeron,

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back when he's trying to imagine what his
own complex lineage is.

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He goes from the question of lineage
directly to the question of the land where

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he's from and blends those two together.
He is expressing a very old and stubborn

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idea about where humans come from, in
Greek mythology.

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Very old and very stubborn.
The idea doesn't go away.

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The idea that human beings might just
sprout up from the Earth itself is

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something that shows up in ancient Greek
mythology.

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It is hard to eradicate because I think of
its appeal.

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Number one, it gets rid of the problem of
wanderingness, it shows that human beings

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do indeed belong to a certain kind of
birth, because that birth gives birth to

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them,
And it also allows, and the case of

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Oedipus makes this explicit for us, it
allows for a certain kind of escapism from

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the complexities that we have with
genealogical descent.

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To claim that a person is from a mother
and a father, and has a crazy uncle, and a

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strange cousin, and all of the
complexities that a family entails, is,

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can be burdensome, and the idea of
autochthony gives you not only this

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connectedness and rootedness to the land,
but also a chance to think of yourself as

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having a lineage that is displaced from
all the people and the family background

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that might be very complex and might get
very burdensome.

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So a structuralist might look at the
Oedipus story,

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And even though the whole story from
Cadmus on forward as a family that's

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oscillating between on the one hand,
embracing the idea of genetic lineage and

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background in their family.
And on the other hand, talking about

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autochthonous birth from the land itself.
And both of these I think you can find

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anchored in Oedipus's story.
Again, neither one of them is exactly

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resolved.
It's not as though the tension between

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these two ideas just kind of gets worked
out through the story.

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Instead you've got a, a human realization
that we come from other people, which make

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our lives complex,
And a human fantasy, which turns out to be

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very hard to eradicate, that claims that
we come from the land itself.

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These two things are in tension, and the
tension creates a kind of voltage and a

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structuralist would claim that the Oedipus
myth is a result of the tense voltage

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between these two poles that can't really
be reconciled but who's expression we find

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both side by side in Sophocles' very rich
tale of Oedipus.