Oedipus | Voltaire

One of the most famous literary masterpieces of all time, and its importance is manifested in its repeated re-interpretation and rewriting over and over again and in different eras, starting with Sophocles, Seneca, and Pierre Corneille, and reaching Freud's discoveries in psychoanalysis. In his writing of a new Oedipus, young Voltaire at the time (19 years old) did not only attempt to develop previous models, but also found an opportunity to express some of his political ideas. The Oedipus presented by Voltaire was a great success in his era, firstly, because of its clear relation to ancient tragedy and classical French models in subject and style, and secondly, because of its closeness to the spirit of Voltaire's age and the rise of free thinking. At the end of the eighteenth century, new plays about Oedipus were written, but it was Voltaire's "Oedipus," and no other, that the French comedy presented three hundred and thirty-six times until 1852. In this translation, Najeeb Al-Haddad joins a group of those who contributed to presenting and introducing Oedipus through a translation characterized by its accuracy and literary fidelity.