Abstract

The aim of the present study is to highlight the 'replay' of the master classic narrative: The Comedy of Oedipus: You're the One Who Killed the Beast (1969) by Ali Salem. This 'appropriation' gives room for renegotiating fixed political authority of post-independence dictatorship. This juxtaposition, consequently, is an endeavor on the part of the artist who experiences 'internal colonialism'. It is the hypothesis that Ali Salem 'reworks' the classics within a post-independence context to invest it with more local flavor dissociating it from authority and authenticity. Thereby, Salem manipulates the trope of parody as a key site of resistance to imposed values and practices. In the appropriated play, the Egyptian playwright dramatizes the ascending of the Egyptian Oedipus to power portraying him as a god and as a despot as well. Thus, this present study analyzes the intertextual relations between the old play and the new version. The ultimate aim, besides the unlocking of the underlying message, is to shed light on the rationale behind such relations. In this sense, the current paper seeks to examine the semiotic clefs and sign-systems that unfold the underlying structure of The Comedy of Oedipus especially within the text-performance axis.