Oedipus Abuser: Insult and Embodied Aesthetics in Sophocles
Tragedy contributes something unique to intersections of the body and language, and this contribution has to do with the aesthetics of abuse. These aesthetic effects are dependent on the layered quality of dramatic semiosis, which builds up from the language of the text to the possibilities of its p...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Anthropologie et Histoire des Mondes Antiques
2014-02-01
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| Series: | Cahiers Mondes Anciens |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/mondesanciens/1237 |
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| Summary: | Tragedy contributes something unique to intersections of the body and language, and this contribution has to do with the aesthetics of abuse. These aesthetic effects are dependent on the layered quality of dramatic semiosis, which builds up from the language of the text to the possibilities of its performance. Within this dramatic frame, the most dilapidated and targeted of forms may replace the most heroic as objects of reverence precisely because of the paradoxical qualities of tragedy's aesthetics. Conversely, the glorified figure may appear debased, by virtue of his mistaken place in the order of things. My primary example is Oedipus, who in Oedipus Tyrannos issues curses at an as yet unidentified criminal, a kakourgos of the basest sort, and threats to the blind and decrepit seer Teiresias. His insults revolve ultimately upon his own status and stature, since he emerges at the end of the drama as the target of his own abuse, both criminal and blind. Only then might he, in this new debilitated state, become an object of tragic pleasure. The king's transformation from kallistos to athlios also appears to render him more approachable both at this play's end and in Oedipus at Colonus. This startling difference is marked particularly by what theorists of theater semiotics call proxemics (i.e., nearness indicators). While Oedipus remains the bold king with his senses physically intact, his only gestures toward others are commanding or abusive and tinged with violence. When, in contrast, he is blind and debilitated, he seeks fond physical contact with his daughters and connections with or concessions from others. A fuller understanding of tragic representation and its peculiar pleasures emerges from this emphasis on the ways in which violent, targeting language and stage directions shape perceptions of heroic stature. |
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| ISSN: | 2107-0199 |