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Who is Oedipus? Where does he belong? In Oedipus the King, the heimlich (homely, familiar) and the unheimlich (strange, uncanny) undo each other before his own eyes. Oedipus has made Thebes his adopted, second, home by freeing it from persecution by the Sphinx, using his reason to defeat a monster and to solve a riddle. Step by step it is revealed to Oedipus that he himself is the one indicated by the oracle, that his origin is not in Corinth but here in Thebes. Sophocles presents us with reversals for which the word ‘irony’ seems inadequate. If recognition and reversal unfold the horror of Oedipus the King, in Oedipus at Colonus they are instead a means through which Oedipus is drawn with grace towards his ending. The meaning of the heimlich is reconfigured again, and the symbolic status of Oedipus himself undergoes a reversal in the course of the play, as he is brought into a new relation with the gods. Theseus confirms that the death of Oedipus is nothing which we should regret.

The philosophical readings of Sophocles, from Hegel to Irigaray, have largely stuck to the tragedies as isolated plots, looking at Antigone or King Oedipus in their own right. Oedipus at Colonus, in turn, has rarely been made the object of a philosophical reading. And yet it presents to us a figure of high political significance: the refugee. What happens when we read Antigone with Oedipus at Colonus? As this chapter will argue, such a reading may well alter our view of Antigone from the way her character has been interpreted in the philosophical tradition, displacing the issues from being concerned with Antigone as a symbol of a feminine position in society, to placing the tragedy in relation to the question of the refugee. If we are to perform such a reading, we may resort to the work of Giorgio Agamben, and in particular, Hannah Arendt. Arendt does not perform a reading of Antigone, but as this chapter argues, Arendt's philosophy of the polis and of public space on the one hand, and her ideas on the position of the refugee, indicates a way of rereading Antigone with the latter work by Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus. Such a rereading points to an intrinsic relation between the notion of public space, and the question of ‘bare life’, a concept forwarded by Giorgio Agamben (inspired by Arendt). The characters of Antigone and Oedipus appear to unravel the exception and the foreclosure of the refugee in relation to political space. Rereading Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus through the philosophy of Arendt, we find that the tragedies are concerned with the emergence of a political community, and the laws conditioning the space of such a community. It may be the very exception of the refugee which, in the end, will serve to enforce the validity of such a space.

In Of Hospitality, Derrida used Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus to think about the suppliant exile, Oedipus, as an old man seeking to die in his own way in a foreign country. He focuses on Oedipus' placing of trust in the Athenian ruler, Theseus, and his anticipation of the impossibility of being mourned by Antigone and Ismene, the daughters to whom the secret of his deathplace, known to Theseus, is not to be divulged. Though it is otherwise the principal question of Of Hospitality, the specific issue of Oedipus' foreignness—and, in the play, his worldwide notoriety—is put to one side; so is the predicament of the sisters, despite Derrida's repeated stress elsewhere in the book on the potential difference of the woman foreigner, l'étrangère. This chapter elaborates on some of the complexities of Sophocles' planétés Oidipous—the ‘wandering’ or ‘globetrotting’ Oedipus—in relation to Derrida's own concern, in his later writings, with questions of both mourning and international influence. It also considers the place of the sisters—and daughters—whom Derrida seems to forget.

This chapter offers a critical engagement with Derrida's interpretation of Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus. Derrida's work is positioned initially in relation to Heidegger. By focusing on the topics of hospitality, law, and justice the chapter argues that Derrida has misconstrued the way in which the state of being ‘outside the law’ or ‘lawless’ (‘anomos’) works in Sophocles' play. By extension this necessitates returning to the way in which the figure of the ‘stranger’ works within the play and therefore with those philosophical positions—such as Deconstruction—in which concepts such as ‘alterity’ are fundamental. This will allow not just for a critique of Derrida but for the subsequent development of the ways in which place and commonality figure within the play and equally within the larger philosophical project delimited by a concern with justice.

Theater puts actions on view, and actions are events that proceed from human choice. If choice is not possible for humans, or if it cannot be presented to public view, then theater will not be possible. But we do present oaths in public, most commonly at weddings, and we take them to proceed from choice, by free will. The events of a tragedy, however, seem often to be determined by fate; yet great tragic plays, such as Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus, show heroes choosing their fates, so that ancient playwrights were hard compatibilists. To help an audience believe that Oedipus makes choices, Sophocles presents him as a coherent character—that is, as someone who credibly takes action, rather than passively submitting to fate. Factors that would defeat choice (such as insanity or divine intervention) also defeat character; that is why choice follows character.

In Sophocles' third play, Oedipus at Colonus, only Theseus, the King of Athens, is allowed to witness Oedipus' death so that his death may serve as a gift to protect Athens. This event in the play gives rise to several questions that this chapter attempts to answer regarding why Oedipus had to keep his death a secret. This chapter focuses not on those questions themselves, but on what is involved in addressing those questions. Is “addressing” even the same as “answering”? Through Oedipus at Colonus and other plays, this chapter shows that answering a question is not the only way of responding to it. One must learn to ask questions not just about the obvious subject, but also about the other possible elements involved in a particular situation.

Samson is an exemplar of a person who suffers greatly but whose suffering stems from his own wrongdoing. This chapter examines the problem of suffering as regards not the victims of human evil but as regards the perpetrators of it, whose own lives are wrecked in consequence of the evil they do. It concentrates on the biblical story of Samson and gives a detailed philosophical examination of many parts of the story. In the process, the chapter also explores Milton's understanding of the story in his Samson Agonistes, as well as Sophocles's portrayal of an analogous case in his Oedipus at Colonus. The chapter shows that in the story what redeems Samson's suffering for him is the role of his suffering in bringing him into relationship with God.

This chapter argues that the lasting ‘translatability’ and pervasiveness in modern culture of Sophocles’ surviving plays owes much to the complex power with which such seemingly simple images are invested. It examines Oedipus at Colonus, where the idea of the journey informs the whole action with particular intensity.

This chapter explores how Sophocles ended Oedipus' journey in his tragedy Oedipus at Colonus. It states that according to the play, Oedipus' death was to serve as a blessing, which suggests that Sophocles himself expressed his gratitude to Colonus, his hometown. Though Sophocles gave closure to Oedipus, the stories of the people around him did not end at the play, as his sons were still embroiled in a war that would bring ruin to them both.

Oedipus at Colonus apparently shows the aging Oedipus finding a fulfilling ending to his life. The play characterizes that fulfillment in terms of a religious perspective few would now accept. This chapter attempts to construct a framework in which to appreciate Sophocles’s last play as a profound human drama (as is Oedipus Tyrannus). The serenity Oedipus achieves is the product of a struggle. As the episodes of the drama, particularly the encounters with Creon and Polynices, reveal, the aging hero retains many of the traits of his younger self, and his equilibrium is consequently precarious. The predicament is central to our experience as we age. Locating the play in relation to other literary works—the New Testament and the poetry of Yeats, Dylan Thomas, and T. S. Eliot—the chapter sees the closing life in terms of a struggle for calm self-acceptance.

This chapter analyses women praying for revenge in ancient Greece in literary texts (such as Homer’s Iliad, and Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus) alongside thirteen prayers for justice written exclusively by women and found in Knidos (Caria, modern Turkey). It argues that because women did not have direct access to legal forms of retribution and often had complaints that fell outside the normal judicial system (such as a husband’s adultery), cursing-prayers prayers had an important psychological and social function for women, providing a legitimate outlet for potentially disruptive feelings through an established ritual that was recognized as meaningful by the civic community. Like lamentation, cursing allowed women to express anger and hatred within socially acceptable roles and practices, providing women with a legitimate, communal medium in which to air grievances and to rectify or revenge the injuries done to them.

As they were incorporated into mythological plots, the choruses of classical Athenian tragedy took on fictional identities that departed from their status as performers in a celebratory communal ritual. In ‘The Nostalgia of the Male Tragic Chorus’, Sheila Murnaghan discusses tragic choruses portraying groups of men. These choruses often interact with the protagonists in ways that reflect contested, politically charged relations between leaders and followers. Choruses with tyrannical, self-interested leaders are more fully displaced from their underlying identities as joyful singers and dancers and more thoroughly oppressed by the conditions of their fictional roles, especially the debilitating effects of absence from home and old age. Choruses with good leaders are brought safely back from adventures abroad and may undergo an experience of rejuvenation that Greek culture associated with dancing and the influence of Dionysus.

William Wordsworth’s The Prelude provides a glimpse of the experience of the stranger. It talks of his trip to France in 1790 where the hospitality he received made him feel very much at home. By late 1792, however, things turned sour when Wordsworth travelled back to England by way of Paris. It was the “September Massacres” that soiled and, to him, brutalized France itself. These feelings of belonging and rejection constitute the stranger. This chapter explores the stranger political and the stranger rhetorical, focusing on France’s political trifles and how it affected the reception towards the stranger—both foreign and local. It recalls the classic-pagan and the Judeo-Christian as cultures where the stranger emerged long before 1789. Works such as Euripedes’s The Bacchae and Sophocles’s Oedipus at Colonus play in part a vindication of prudent behaviour by hosts towards guests.