Ranks 6th on The Fictional
100
The following books will introduce you to Oedipus, who said
these words in Sophocles' Oedipus the King (David Grene, Trans.; see below). To order a book, or for more information, follow the book
title links to Amazon.com,
then return home to browse other
characters.
- Sophocles. Sophocles
I: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone
(David Grene, Trans.; David Grene and Richmond Lattimore,
Eds.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
- Oedipus the King is the classic drama of
incest, mistaken identity, and self-punishment,
here in Grene's lucid and moving translation. Antigone
tells about his ill-fated children, and Oedipus
at Colonus finds Oedipus in old
age--homeless, blind, and embittered.
- Freud, Sigmund. The
Interpretation of Dreams (James Strachey, Trans.).
New York: Avon, 1983.
- Includes Freud's controversial statement of the
Oedipus complex.
- Cocteau, Jean. The
Infernal Machine, and Other Plays. New York: Norton,
1964.
- Cocteau's Freudian bent is apparent in his
powerful rendering of Oedipus' tortured psyche.
The scene where the young Oedipus confronts the
Sphinx and her riddles is not to be missed.
- Kaufmann, Walter. Tragedy
and Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1992.
- Profound and provocative analyses of tragic
characters, including Oedipus, from a truly
gifted writer.
- Edmunds, Lowell and Dundes, Alan (Eds.). Oedipus:
A Folklore Casebook. Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1996.
- Essays by an array of international scholars
consider Oedipus-like folklore around the world.
- Edmunds, Lowell. Oedipus:
The Ancient Legend and Its Later Analogues.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
- Variations on the Oedipus legend as it has
travelled across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the
Americas. Edmunds considers over 70 works akin to
the original Greek drama.
- Johnson, Allen W. and Price-Williams, Douglass. Oedipus
Ubiquitous: The Family Complex in World Folk Literature.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996.
- More family resemblances to the Oedipus clan in
world folklore.
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