Oedipus (Seneca) Oedipus (Seneca) Oedipus is a "fabula crepidata" (Roman tragic play with Greek subject) of c. 1061 lines of verse that was written by Lucius Annaeus Seneca at some time during the 1st century AD. It is a retelling of the story of Oedipus, which is better known through the play "Oedipus Rex" by the Athenian playwright, Sophocles. It is written in Latin. The play is generally considered one of Seneca's weaker works. The play opens with a fearful Oedipus lamenting a vicious plague which is affecting Thebes, the city over which he rules. People are dying in such huge numbers
Tragedy imagination which was ‘so encompassing, so receptive to the plurality of diverse orders of experience.’ When compared to the drama of Greek antiquity and French classicism Shakespeare’s forms are ‘richer but hybrid'. Aristotle wrote in his work "Poetics" that tragedy is characterised by seriousness and involves a great person who experiences a reversal of fortune ("Peripeteia"). Aristotle's definition can include a change of fortune from bad to good as in the "Eumenides", but he says that the change from good to bad as in "Oedipus Rex" is preferable because this induces pity and fear within the spectators. Tragedy results in