Free Essays on Essay On Oedipus The King

(and sometimes the personalities representing them) gives to the stories and the vision of life they hold up something we might call a fatalistic quality. What exactly does this mean? What does a text mean when it invokes the concept of fate? Now, almost everyone will offer a definition of this quality, but it's surprising how those definitions can often differ. So let me attempt to clarify what, for the purposes of this lecture and beyond, I understand by these important terms. To invoke the concept of fate or to have a fatalistic vision of experience is, simply put, to claim that the most important forces which create, shape, guide, reward, and afflict human life are out of human control. There is someth... Free Essays on Essay On Oedipus The King Free Essays on Essay On Oedipus The King Introduction I have discussed one of the world's most famous plays, Sophocles's Oedipus the King, and my purpose here is to offer a general introduction to this famous and often puzzling work, which, from the time of the Classical Greeks, has set the standard for a form of literature we call dramatic tragedy. I shall be addressing that claim in some detail later on, but before getting to that or to the text of the play itself, I would like to clarify a couple of terms which are going to be crucial parts of the interpretative remarks I have to offer. In this preliminary part of the lecture, I shall attempt to link what goes on in this play to other works we have studied (or will be studying). The lecture thus falls into three parts: first, an initial discussion of some terms I wish to use (particularly the terms fate and hero), then an application of those terms to what we see going on in Oedipus the King, and finally, building on these two concerns, I would like to address the terms tragedy and tragic vision of experience. Fate, Fatalism, A Fatalistic World View In Sophocles's play, as in other works we have read, we encounter an obviously important notion, the role played by fate or the fates. The emphasis placed on these words (and sometimes the personalities representing them) gives to the stories and the vision of life they hold up something we might call a fatalistic quality. What exactly does this mean? What does a text mean when it invokes the concept of fate? Now, almost everyone will offer a definition of this quality, but it's surprising how those definitions can often differ. So let me attempt to clarify what, for the purposes of this lecture and beyond, I understand by these important terms. To invoke the concept of fate or to have a fatalistic vision of experience is, simply put, to claim that the most important forces which create, shape, guide, reward, and afflict human life are out of human control. There is someth...

Aught vs. Naught

Aught vs. Naught Aught vs. Naught Aught vs. Naught By Mark Nichol Aught and naught both mean â€Å"nothing.† Ought they to be antonyms rather than synonyms? Actually, aught means â€Å"something† or â€Å"anything†; it’s from the Old English word awiht, meaning â€Å"ever a thing.† (The second syllable is cognate with whit, meaning â€Å"very small thing,† and wight, meaning â€Å"living being,† though the latter is also used sometimes in an older sense of â€Å"ghost† or â€Å"spirit.†) However, the negative sense of the term is a result of false division, the same grammatical affliction that produced adder, the name for a type of snake, when the phrase â€Å"a nadder† was, over time, redivided as â€Å"an adder.† Aught in the sense of â€Å"nothing† derives from naught (from the Old English nawiht, meaning â€Å"not a thing†). Now, people sometimes therefore use aught when they mean naught. (Naught, by the way, is the root of the adjective naughty; to be naughty is to lack something- namely, compunction or moral character.) And though aught is often used in British English to mean â€Å"all,† it can also mean â€Å"zero,† as when someone refers to something having occurred in â€Å"aught five† (2005); it’s also used in American English to refer to the gauge of a wire or (alone and in combination with double and triple) of buckshot that fills a shotgun shell. Ought and nought are variants of aught and naught. Though ought is obsolete in this sense, nought persists in being used in place of naught, as in â€Å"noughts and crosses,† the British English name for tic-tac-toe. The sense of ought used in the first sentence of this post, meanwhile, is unrelated. Originally, in Old English and Middle English, earlier versions of ought served as the past tense of owe. The word lost this sense hundreds of years ago, but we still use it with to to mean should in the sense of advisability, consequence, expectation, or obligation in such sentences as â€Å"She ought to know better.† Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Misused Words category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:The Meaning of "To a T"English Grammar 101: Verb Mood25 Favorite Portmanteau Words