세네카의 안티오이디푸스: 세네카의 오이디푸스 와 소포클레스의 오이디푸스 왕 비교 연구

Abstract

This study is intended to investigate the reception and transformation of the Sophoclean version of the Oedipus myth in Seneca's Oedipus. In this Roman tragedy Seneca not only condensed, extended, corrected, and interpreted the influential version of Oedipus' myth, but also introduced elements of Roman values. This alteration leads to the crystalisation of a Roman Oedipus, i.e. Anti-Oedipus. In comparison with Sophocles' Oedipus the King, Seneca's Oedipus highlights three different points: 1. Senecan Oedipus does not show disbelief in the oracle of Apollo, but manifests himself in his piety. From a Roman point of view, the decrees of the gods(fatum/fata) no longer result from the enigmatic and whimsical actions of the gods, but a cosmological and historical principle, which one must accept and follow. 2. Seneca's Oedipus is not a drama about the search for truth, but about recognizing ordained fate and overcoming it. Accordingly, the work consists of two corresponding and contrasting parts in which Oedipus, on the one hand, fears confronting ordained fate and can not recognize it, and on the other, wills himself to recognize it, thus fulfilling and overcoming it. 3. The father-son relationship plays an important role in the fulfillment and overcoming of fate. As the dead Laius predicted how Oedipus would act, and ordained, implicitly, what mission he should achieve, Oedipus blinds himself and goes in exile to recover the order of nature and save his fatherland from plague. In this way Seneca went to dissolve the tragic conception inherent in human action in Sophocles' drama. Seneca's Oedipus does not show concretisation of condicio humana arising from the limitation of human knowledge, nor dramatize Oedipus' heroism culminating not only in the process of coming to full recognition of the truth, but also in his endurance of enormous suffering. But Senecan Oedipus is an incarnation of Roman ideology manifested in the very action of sacrificing individual existence and humanity to save his fatherland from plague and recover the order of nature.