Ancient Greek Reading Group: Sophokles’ Oedipus Tyrannos
The language of Sophokles has a surface simplicity that belies its underlying complexity, elusiveness, and ambiguity. The playwright’s characteristic variation of syntax, word-order, rhetoric, and meter contribute to clauses and sentences that move in unexpected, shape-shifting ways and that make and unmake meaning. Sophokles’ cultivation of verbal complexity is especially evident in the Oedipus Tyrannos, which abounds in puns, riddles, and slips of signification, and where the eventual disambiguation of meaning—the riddle of Oedipus’ birth—is itself central to the hero’s tragedy.
In our reading course, we will give close attention to the various components of Oedipus Tyrannos’ language: its diction, meter, word-choice, repetition, and particle usage, as well as the lyric voice of its choruses and the heightened rhetoric of Oedipus himself. And through our close study of the language of the Oedipus, we will grapple with its ever-expansive questions about identity and self-knowledge, about the toils of the political life, and about the persistence of tragedy.
Course Schedule
Tuesday, 6:30-8:30pm ETApril 21 — May 26, 2026
6 weeks
$335.00
This class is completed. Check out our upcoming courses.