ABSTRACT
Which is it — ‘another Oedipus’ as in a completely different Oedipus who escapes the constraints of tradition, or ‘yet another’, the same old Oedipus whose obsessions are merely moved to a different context? To ‘translate’ a ‘myth’ involves a plurality of languages, but often also of genres and cultures, and in the process of ‘translation’ there are numerous possibilities for the shifting relationships between what changes and what remains the same. A myth from classical antiquity may pose questions about change and continuity in particularly acute ways, because classical myths are very likely to have been preserved primarily in lasting literary form, for example in epic or drama, and also because they have wielded overwhelming cultural authority throughout the history of Europe. Inasmuch as European culture has been imposed by imperialism on other societies too, numerous parts of the world have developed their own responses to classical myths. These may bear the marks of their imperial origins, as well as signs of the struggle to escape them. 1 One of the more prominent myths revisited in this way is that of Oedipus and, in the particular dramatic translation of Oedipus which I examine here, the two possibilities suggested by my title unfold simultaneously. The drama departs emphatically from the tradition generated by the Sophoclean antecedent, but becomes embroiled in a very oedipal debate about origins.
