E/LI/10. RENAISSANCE & GREEK TRAGEDY: SIMILARITY & DIFFERENCES

Lyndal Roper, in a remarkable introduction to her book Oedipus and the Devil, argues substantively about how we have come to see the historically distanced, or the primitive man: '… the concept of subjectivity with which we are presented is often a determinedly collective one. This collective subjectivity is then inscribed on the individual' (1994, 9). She sounds quite convincing when she tells us that we have come to see the early modern people (particularly Renaissance, although I will stretch it to the Greek culture as well) as a collection of wholes, governed by religion and politics, exhibiting and performing only collective and wholesome acts of obedience and subjugation. In doing this, we not only inscribe the early man with a set of collective and fixed habits, but worse, take away the essential strain of individualism from him. By basing my argument on Sophocles and Shakespeare, I will stress upon how their tragedies have evolved and re-defined Greek and Renaissance spirits, and have forced us to look for novelty and individuality among the polis of Greek state-cultures, and the 'groups' of the Medieval and Renaissance ages.