UC Riverside

This dissertation examines the concept of fate in Greek antiquity from a literary perspective, looking into how and why a literary text uses fate in a certain way. The main texts of this study are the two Homeric epics and Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus. The chief method of this study is literary analysis, which includes close reading of texts, attention to semantic fields, the analysis of story plot, and the comparison of a series of texts over time and across genre. I also pay attention to the problem of formulaic composition and borrow from the methods of folklore studies.

This combination of methods helps to understand Sophocles' innovation in the Oedipus Tyrannus and the figure of Oedipus. The Homeric epics present heroes and their fates in the context of oral composition and transmission. As songs that laud the hero's κλέος in immortal memory, Homeric epics do not problematize free will or portray conflicts between the heroes and their fates. This Homeric system of literary representation of hero and his fate, together with its social role, lost context in the fifth century Athens. When traditional beliefs were challenged and new concepts and ways of thinking arose, the old values and solutions for the hero and fate, which the Homeric epics presented, were no longer valid. In the Oedipus Tyrannus, Sophocles' portrayal of Oedipus shows his thinking on a different kind of hero and a new relation between the hero and his predicted fate. In the Oedipus Tyrannus Oedipus is a hero who outlived his good reputation and saw its dissipation. In a sense, the play demonstrates to what an extent a person is able to face the truth of one's fate, however terrible it is and whatever responsibility it incurs. Oedipus may not be a laudable hero, but his sufferings and his confrontation with fate deserves respect. It is through such a hero that Sophocles gives meaning to the life of his day.