Analysis Of On Misunderstanding The Oedipus Rex

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In Section I of “On Misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex,” E. R. Dodds refutes the moralizing interpretation of Aristotle 's hamartia. Dodds started by dispelling the scholars, Victorian Critics misconception about Aristotle 's hamartia. In his first paragraph, Dodds from the 13th chapter of the poetics, has made clear of Aristotle 's interpretation. Aristotle believes that Oedipus falls into misfortune because of some serious αμαρτία [hamartia].According to Victorian critics, Oedipus misfortune was directly occasioned by some serious hamartia. Victorian critics still looks on to Aristotle 's misinterpreted idea.

In his second paragraph, Dodds explains why the moralizing view of the Victorian critics are incorrect. Dodds described the word hamartia
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Traditionalist critics argued that Oedipus must be condemned because of his bad conduct. Oedipus 's conduct on the stage uncovers the man he generally was: he was rebuffed for his essentially unsound character. Critics questioned if Oedipus is bad or good "was he a good man?" Dodds explained that this question is not viable because Oedipus never lived. Though Sophocles implied in his book that Oedipus was meant to be a good man based on the other characters interpretation of him. The catastrophe is blamed on Oedipus alone and the critics believed that Aristotle agrees that Oedipus brought his own ruin. In the next paragraph, Dodds refutes Aristotle 's idea that has been misinterpreted by many scholars. Though some believe that Aristotle’s was seen otherwise that Oedipus ' downfall was not his own doing. To mean an offense conferred in obliviousness of some material actuality and thusly free from inquity or evil. Aristotle believed that Oedipus committed his crimes out of ignorance. In other words, if Oedipus had done it knowingly he would have been …show more content…
The hypothesis that the terrible Saint must have a grave good defect, and it’s mixed up credit to Aristotle, has had a long and heartbreaking history. However, it backtracks much further, to the seventeenth-century French commentator Dacier, who impacted the act of the French traditional playwrights, particularly Corneille, and was himself affected by the still more established babble about beautiful equity. The idea of poetic justice as describe by Dodds is puerile and was foreign to Aristotle and other Greek dramatists. In the next paragraph, Dodds disputes the moralist critics view of hamartia. The moralists asks if Oedipus was careful has he been able to escape his ruin. We are not qualified to blame Oedipus either for remissness in neglecting to aggregate a hand list or for absence of control in neglecting to comply with its directives, also it is a fundamental basic rule that what is not said in the play does not exist. Dodds claimed that Oedipus Rex is not a detective story but dramatized

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