Oedipus (Voltaire play) Oedipus (Voltaire play) Oedipus () is a tragedy by the French dramatist and philosopher Voltaire that was first performed in 1718. It was his first play and the first literary work for which he used the pen-name Voltaire (his real name was François-Marie Arouet). Voltaire completed the play in 1717 during his 11-month imprisonment. In a letter of 1731 Voltaire wrote that when he wrote the play he was "full of my readings of the ancient authors [...] I knew very little of the theater in Paris." In adapting Sophocles' Athenian tragedy "Oedipus Rex", Voltaire attempted to rationalise the plot
Oedipus Rex childhood. … he can no longer ignore a feeling of uncertainty about his parentage. However, after consulting the Oracle this uncertainty disappears, strangely enough, and is replaced by a totally unjustified certainty that he is the son of Merope and Polybus. We have said that this irrational behaviour - his hamartia in Aristotle's sense - is due to the repression of a whole series of thoughts in his consciousness, in fact everything that referred to his earlier doubts about his parentage. The exploration of this theme in "Oedipus Rex" is paralleled by the examination of the conflict between the individual