Comparing Medea And Oedipus The King

Medea and Oedipus the King were and remain masterpieces of the Western literary patrimony. These tragedies gave rise to strong emotional releases of fear and pity. Because of this catharsis, it induced important philosophical reasoning. The main concern was whether or not it damaged the individual mind. The central figures in this debate were Plato and Aristotle. Paradoxically, it is difficult to navigate in the rivers of human drama without being splashed by feeling of fear and pity. The central argument of this essay is to dissect the influence of Medea and Oedipus the King in inducing emotions in actors and audience through Plato’s and Aristotle’s point of view. Emotion is a kind of state of the mind that generates visceral feedback by
To illustrate, Sophocles introduces Oedipus the King. Oedipus became conscious that he killed his father, married his mother, and fathered her children. Then, Jocasta committed suicide. He loses the center of his gravity, or emotional stability. The servant described Oedipus reaction: “He ripped the gold-worked brooches from her robes – she wore them as jewels – and raised them above his head. The he plunged them deep into the sockets of his eyes, shouting that he would never look upon the wrongs he had committed and had suffered” (235). Oedipus was in a deep state of anguish. His sadness overpassed his common sense. This is an example in which a strong frustration can lead to
For this reason, two Ancient Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle wrote their insights about it. According to Plato, poetry, in this case tragedy has to be forbidden because of its imitative character. Plato states his insights: “In the same way, we shall say, the imitative poet sets up a bad constitution in the soul of each individual, gratifying the foolish part which cannot distinguish between greater and lesser, but thinks the same things are sometimes large and sometimes small; he is a maker of images and very far removed from truth” (52-53). This is because tragedy generates emotions in a manner that opposes reason. Because tragedy maneuvers emotions, it induces in its audience fear or pity towards the wrong intention portrayed by the actor. This is to say that the imitator writes under inspiration and not by reason. Therefore, the imitator through its imitation impacted the ethical frame of mine of its audience as Plato stated. Nevertheless, cultural relativity is important in Plato’s case, not because it is right, but because it is just. This is to say that one has to analyze and understand Plato’s ideas inside his own historical and cultural context. This is because poetry was an important element of Greek youth education, and in the citizens’ lives. That is why he proposed substitute poetry by philosophy making the former the sine