Structuralism and King Oedipus

Abstract

Structuralism is a way of decoding and studying aspects of human conduct, tradition, and love that relates factors of a conceptual system that reflects patterns underlying a superficial range. King Oedipus is King Laius’ biological son who he neglects at birth to prevent a prophecy by the Oracle that he would kill his father and marry his mother. He is adopted by a royal family in Corinth but later returns to Thebes and fulfills the prophecy mystically. He later finds out and pops his eyes out and his led out of the city by his daughter The French social anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss applied the structuralist outlook to cultural phenomena like mythology and kinship relations. To interpret the Oedipus myth, he placed the specific story of King Oedipus within the context of the whole cycle of tales connected with the city of Thebes. Concrete details from the narrative are seen in the framework of a wider structure and the overall system of elementary dyadic bigger structure is seen as pairs with obvious symbolic, thematic and archetypal resonance.