In terms of Oedipus this question of ‘knowledge’ is fraught: the entirety of OT is concerned with the issue of the protagonist’s incomplete knowledge of his identity and his actions. That is, is it possible for literature to communicate or convey knowledge to audiences?’ (17). The result is more complex and more faithful to human experience than most of what we find in the philosophical tradition’ (3).įollowing this confident opening, the first main essay by Noël Carroll begins on a more tentative note: ‘A central question in the philosophy of literature concerns where or not literature can possess cognitive value. Woodruff continues, ‘In staging Oedipus’s progress toward self-understanding in the two plays, Sophocles has dramatized insights into the process by which we all come to see our place in larger narratives. Woodruff then posits the following rationale for the volume: ‘We have chosen to write about the Oedipus plays because … these plays can enrich our concept of self- understanding if we read them closely and with attention to philosophical issues’ (2). Woodruff contextualises the study by offering a short description of Plato’s antipathy towards tragedy as a moment of genesis for the separation of tragedy and philosophy as well as the arguments against this division to be found in the works of Bernard Williams and Martha Nussbaum.

The book under review commences with an ‘Editor’s Introduction’ by Paul Woodruff that offers a lucid introduction to both Sophocles and his plays about Oedipus, Oedipus Tyrannus and Oedipus at Colonus, henceforth OT and OC respectively.

The oedipus plays of sophocles