Important: please use Fagle’s translation of Oedipus the King No other translation will be accepted!!!!!
Required: Two to three pages of text, using MLA (Modern Language Association)
Format, that is 1” margins, double space, and size 12 Times New Roman font, and parenthetic citation. Include a work cited entry.

The play we are reading is structured in an alternating series of episodes and stasimons. An episode is when the actors are on stage speaking to each other as well as sometimes to the leader of the chorus. The stasimon is a choral ode, that is, that is a response to what has just happened in the preceding episode as interpreted by the chorus, a group that often represented the “ideal spectator.” In this play, the chorus represents the citizens of Thebes.

In this paper, you are to choose one episode and briefly summarize the action. Then examine the stasimon that follows the episode and analyze it for meaning and significance. Begin your paper with a thesis statement that relates the main idea of the episode and stasimon you have chosen.

Please be sure to address both the literal meaning and more importantly, the significance of what the chorus says. How does what the chorus says influence your understanding of what the action has been? What questions does the chorus raise? How does what the chorus say influence your understanding of the various characters, especially Oedipus? Be sure to analyze metaphor, symbols, and allusions to other gods. If you don’t know something you encounter, look it up.

Here is the list of choral odes from which you are to pick one:
Stasimon 1: lines 526-572
Stasimon 2: lines 954-997
Stasimon 3: lines 1195-1215
Stasimon 4: lines 1311-1350

When providing examples from the play, please use line numbers in your parenthetic citation. Remember, we are reading a translation, but the original is written in verse and so must be quoted as such. See Hacker Chapter 58, esp. page 489

In this paper, you are being asked to demonstrate your ability to summarize the episode (see Hacker p76/5C) and to explicate the verse, that is, the choral ode or stasimon. To explicate means to analyze the meaning by examining the images, metaphors and phrases in the work and quoting from the text to support your analyses. The explication part of the paper should be longer than the summary part.

Use only the Fagles translation of Oedipus the King as a reference/source

Important References in additional materials!!!!!