Article

Name: Notes to the Study of the Oedipus Plot (Issues of Genesis, Evolution, Typology)

Authors: Margarita N. Klimova

Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russian Federation

In the section The Plot in Literature and Folklore

Abstract: The Oedipus plot, which is based on the fate of an involuntary parricide and incestor, is one of the most famous in world literature and folklore. Various scientists from historians and ethnographers to psychoanalysts have tried to explain the story of Oedipus plot and incest as its plot-forming motif, but only interdisciplinary research can help to properly understand and adequately describe this “multi-layered” and time-varying phenomenon. Reflecting on V. Ya. Propp’s classic work “Oedipus in the Light of Folklore” (1944), the author of the article offers his own experience of the structural analysis of the famous plot, unfinished by his predecessor-folklorist due to the struggle against “formalism”. The typology of plot processing, proposed by Propp, also needs historical explicitation, due to the Propp’s timeless approach to the analyzed materials, which does not allow judging its evolution. Meanwhile, the Oedipus plot has passed through several stages in its development. Its archaic basis reflected the historical struggle of different forms of succession in a fabulous way. The story of Oedipus, which became one of the examples of the irresistible power of fate for ancient consciousness, found its ethical dimension in the tragedies of Sophocles. In the Middle Ages it was reinterpreted in the spirit of the Christian doctrine of repentance and absolution, becoming the basis of a number of legends about “sinful saints”, but later it lost relevance against the background of the Catholic trade in indulgences and the development of the idea of pre-destination among Protestants. A particular understudied stage in the evolution of the Oedipus plot is the period of its existence in Russia. It came to the Eastern Slavs through Polish media-tion only at the end of the Middle Ages in several versions at once and is represented in the Russian manuscript tradition by a group of “stories about an incestor”. These stories were actively rewritten for three centuries, went into East Slavic folklore and were reflected in the works of new Russian literature.

Keywords: international plots, Oedipus plot, incest, archaic succession forms, Christianity and literature, Old Russian literature, comparativisties

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