Where Sophocles has succeeded in making his Oedipus Rex topical and relevant, Pasolini has aimed at making his Edipo Re strange and indefinite, outside any specific set of cultural references. In Pasolini, the mythic is equated with the unfamiliar; the universal, with the particularly grotesque. (p. 32)

Pasolini's view of myth as an a-historical, symbolic reality … influences his conception of Oedipus. He seems to ascribe the intellectuality of Sophocles' Oedipus less to Oedipus the mythic archetype than to the critical spirit and scientific outlook of fifth century Athens, to the outstanding achievements of a generation of sophists, scientists, and philosophers, that is, to a precise moment in history. Consequently he has deliberately and, one might say, perversely chosen to create a non-intellectual Oedipus. (p. 34)

[Pasolini, a Marxist], sees the emergence of the petit bourgeoisie with its attendant moral code as being a decidedly historical and temporal phenomenon. He maintains...