Limbă, Literatură, Folclor

DOI: https://doi.org/10.52505/llf.2025.2.08

Abstract: This study examines how the theme of blindness, first articulated in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus, is reimagined in five twentieth-century novels: José Saramago’s Blindness, Ernesto Sábato’s On Heroes and Tombs and The Tunnel, Elias Canetti’s Auto-Da-Fé, and Henry Bauchau’s Oedipus on the Road. The analysis begins by outlining the dual structure of the tragic concept of blindness – its psychological and transcendental dimensions – which together form a lasting archetypal pattern. The comparative sections trace the diverse metamorphoses of this model: as an epidemic in Saramago, an occult conspiracy in Sábato, the banality of madness in Canetti, and an identity transformation through art in Bauchau. Despite their divergent representations, these modern reinterpretations ultimately converge on the Sophoclean nucleus, which endures as a foundational motif in world literature and a profound reflection on the human condition.

Keywords: tragic blindness, psychological blindness, transcendental blindness, Sophocle, tragic archetype, myth of Oedipus, everyday madness