本論文旨在研究悲劇中英雄違抗神諭—即拒絕神諭、徵兆、預言、神靈、及先知。在梭佛克里斯之《伊底帕斯王》和《伊底帕斯在科羅那斯》及莎士比亞之《哈姆雷特》和《馬克白》中，英雄為其尊榮權貴而向神靈及先知挑戰。
    在《伊底帕斯王》劇裡，預言必定應驗也意味著命運終會實現。在《伊底帕斯在科羅那斯》劇裡，伊底帕斯不再與神明對立，終於成為神話英雄。
    哈姆雷特曾一度反抗鬼魂所託付之任務，但終為其父報仇。其特殊的身份及鬼魂的託付使他成為命運的俘虜。在《馬克白》劇裡，馬克白的政治野心使他不斷地信任巫婆，最後他照字面解釋幽靈的話語而導致滅亡，他真是巫婆及神靈之玩物。

This dissertation examines the hero’s disdain of augury including the refusal of signs, oracles, prophecies, spirits or seers to speak of the future.  In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus and Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Macbeth, the heroes challenge the gods and the prophets in order to claim their own values.
     In Oedipus the King, the oracle which is bound to prove true appears to suggest a destiny which is bound to be fulfilled.  In Oedipus at Colonus, Oedipus becomes a collaborator with Apollo instead of being an opponent of the divine.  In this play, it presents us with the heroization of Oedipus, who blesses friends and curses enemies.
     Like young Oedipus, Hamlet resists a fate imposed by an authority that he questions.  Hamlet has his revenge not in murder but in effective use of language.  Being subject to his birth, fastened by Claudius, and commanded by the ghost, Hamlet is the captive of his fate.  In Macbeth, Macbeth’s political ambition causes him to cooperate and continue trusting the witches until the final scene.  He takes the apparitions’ equivocal words literally and is misled into disaster.  He is the plaything of supernatural powers.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS                                            	   i     

ABSTRACT (Chinese)                                                	   ii     TABLE OF CONTENTS                                                 iii
Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………1 

Chapter One: Supernatural Signs: Representation of Augury…………………………23
I.	Signs, Oracles, and Prophecies
II.	Ghosts and Witches

Chapter Two: Oedipus the King: the Breach between the Divine and the Human …48
I.	The Oracle in Athenian Culture and in Tragedy
II.	Oedipus and Oracles

Chapter Three: Oedipus at Colonus: Oedipus’s Heroization………………………101
I.	Oedipus’s Curses and Blessings
II.	A Hero of Cults

Chapter Four: Hamlet: “A Pipe for Fortune’s Finger”……………………………131
I.	Hamlet and Oedipus
II.	Hamlet: the Defier of Augury

Chapter Five: Macbeth: The Plaything of the Supernatural Powers…………………161
I.	The Annoying Prophecy
II.	The Equivocation of the Witches

Chapter Six: Conclusion…………………………………………………………………192

Works Cited………………………………………………………………………………203

Works Cited
I. Primary Texts
Sophocles.  The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles.  Trans. Paul Roches.  New York: New American Library, 1986.  All quotations from Sophocles’ plays are taken from this version.
Shakespeare, William.  “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.”  The Riverside Shakespeare.  Ed. G. Blakemore Evans.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974.  All quotations from Hamlet are taken from this version.
---.  “ The Tragedy of Macbeth.”  The Riverside Shakespeare.  Ed. G. Blakemore Evans.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974.  All quotations from Macbeth are taken from this version.
1I. Greek Tragedies  
Aeschylus.  Choephoroi.  Trans. A. F. Garvie.  New York: Oxford UP, 1986.
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Auden, W. H.  “The Dyer’s Hand.”  The Listener 53 (1995): 1063-66.
Benardete, Seth.  “Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos.”   Sophcles: A Collection of
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Benjamin, Walter.  The Origin of German Tragic Drama.  Trans. John Osborne.  London: NLB, 1977. 
Blundell, Mary Whitlock.   A Study in Sophocles and Greek Ethics.   Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989.   
Bowman, Laurel M.   Knowledge and Prophecy in Sophocles.  Los Angeles: U of California, 1994.   
Bowra, C. M.   Sophoclean Tragedy.  Oxford: Clarendon P, 1944. 
Burian, Peter.  “Soppliant and Savior: Oedipus at Colonus.”  Phoenix 28 (1974 ): 408-29.
Burnet, John.  Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, and Crito.  Ed. John Burnet.  Oxford: Clarendon P, 1977.  
Bushnell, Rebecca W.  Prophesying Tragedy: Sign and Voice in Sophocles’ Theban Plays.  New York: Cornell UP, 1988. 
---.   “Oracular Silence in Oedipus the King and Macbeth.”  Classical and Modern Literatue 2 (1982): 195-204.
Cartledge, Paul.  “‘Deep Plays’: Theater as Process in Greek Civic Life.”  The
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Crakay Roland.  La literature oraculaire chez Herodote.  Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1956.  
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Ehrenberg, Victor.  Sophocles and Pericles.  Oxford: Blackwell, 1954.  
Farenga, Vincent.  “The Patadigmatic Tyrant: Greek Tyranny and the Ideology of the Proper.”  Helios  8 (1981): 1-31.
Farnell, L. R.  Greeks Hero-Cults and Ideas of Immortality.  Oxford: Clarendon, 1921.
Flaceliire, Robert.  Greek Oracles.  Trans. Douglas Garman.  New York: W. H. Norton, 1965.  
Fontenrose, Joseph.  The Delphic Oracle: Its Responses and Operations with a Catalogue of Responses.  Berkeley: U of California P, 1978. 
Freud, Sigmund.   “Oedipus Rex.”  Sophocles: a Collection of Critical Essays.  Ed. Thomas Woodard.  Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1966.  101-4.
Frye, Northrop.  Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays.  Princeton: Princeton UP, 1971. 
Girard, Rene.  Violence and the Sacred.  Trans. Patrick Gregory.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1977.  
Goldhill, Simon.  “The Audience of Athenian Tragedy.”  The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy.  Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.  54-68.
Gould, Thomas.  “The Innocence of Oedipus: The Phelosophers on Oedipus the King.”   Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex.  Ed. Harold Bloom.  New York: Chelsea House, 1988.  49-64.
Green, Andre.  The Tragic Effect: The Oedipus Complex in Tragedy.  Trans. Alan Sheridan.  Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979.
Gregory, Justina.  “ The Encounter at the Crossroads in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus.”  The Journal of Hellenic Studies 115 (1995): 141-46. 
Grene, David.  Reality and the Heroic Pattern: Last Plays of Ibsen, Shakespeare, and Sophocles.  Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1967.   
Harvey, John.  “A Note on Shakespeare and Sophocles.”  Essays in Criticism 
 xxvii ( 1977 ): 259-70.  
Henrichs, Albert.  “The Tomb of Aias and the Prospect of Hero Cult in Sophocles.” Classical Antiguity 12 (1993): 165-80. 
Heraclitus.  Diels, Die Frag mente der Vorsokratiker.  7th ed.  Berlin: Weidmann, 1954.  
Herodotus.   The Persian Wars.  Trans. G.. Rawlinson.  New York: Randon, 1942.   
Homer.  Odyssey.  Trans. E. V. Rieu.  London: Penguin, 1945. 
---.   The Iliad.  Trans. E. V. Rieu.  London: Penguin, 1949.  
Kirkwood, G. M.  A Study of Sophoclean Drama.  Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1958; 
rpt. New York: Cornell University Press, 1994.
Knox, Bernard, M.W.  The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy.  Berkeley & Los Angeles: U of California P, 1966.  
---.  Oedipus at Thebes.  New York: W. H. Norton, 1971.
Lesky, Albin.  Greek Tragedy.   New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1965.
Lloyd-Jones, H., and N. G.. Wilson.  Sophocles: Studies on the Text of Sophocles. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990.
Murry, Robert D. Jr.  “Thought and Structure in Sophoclean Tragedy.”  Sophocles: A Collection of Critical Essays.  Ed. Thomas Woodard.  Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1966.  23-28.
Nagy, Gregory.  The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek
Poetry.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1979.  
Nietzche, Friedrich.  The Birth of Tragedy and the Case of Wagner.   Trans. Walter Kaufmann.  New York: Random, 1967.
---.  “Sophoclean Tragedy.”  Sophocles: A Collection of Critical Essays.  Ed. Thomas Woodard.  Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1966.  16-19.
Nilsson, Martin, P.  Cults, Myths, Oracles, and Politics in Ancient Greece.  Lund: Gleerup, 1951.
Nock, Arthur J.  “Religious Attitudes of the Ancient Greeks.”  Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 85 (1971): 472-87.  
Plato.  The Republic.   Trans. F. M. Cornford.  The Republic of Plato.  Oxford: Oxford UP, 1945. 
Plutarch.  Moralia.  London: Arnold Hatfield, 1603.  
Redfield, James M.  Nature and Culture in “The Iliad”: The Tragedy of Hector.  
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Reinhardt, Karl.  Sophocles.  Trans. H. Harvey and D. Harvey.  1947;  rpt.  New 
York: Barnes & Noble, 1979.  
Rocco, Christopher.  Tragedy and Enlightenment: Athenian Political Thought and the Dilemmas of Modernity.  Berkeley: U of California P, 1997.  
Searle, Leroy F.  “The Conscience of the King: Oedipus, Hamlet, and the Problem of Reading.”  Comparative Literature 49 (1997): 316-43.
Segal, Charles.  Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles.  Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1981. 
---.  Oedipus Tyrannus: Tragic Heroism and the Limits of Knowledge.  New York: Twayne P, 1993. 
---.  Sophocles’ Tragic World: Divinity, Nature, Society.  Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995.  
Sophocles.  Ajax in Sophocles Electra and Other Plays.  Trans. E. F. Watling.  Baltimore: Penguin, 1971.  
Thucydides.   The Peloponnesian War.  Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1959. 
Vellacott, Philip.  Sophocles and Oedipus: A Study of Oedipus Tyrannus with a new Translation.   U of Michigan P, 1971.
Vernant, Jean-Pierre and Pierre Vidal-Naquet.  Tragedy and Myth in Ancient Greece. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities P, 1981.  	   
Walter, Benjamin.  The Origion of German Tragic Drama.  Trans. John Osborne.  London: NLB, 1977. 
Webster, T. B. L.  An Introduction to Sophocles.  Oxford: Clarendon, 1936.   
Whitman, Cedric.  The Heroic Paradox.  Ed. Charles Segal.  London: Cornell UP,1982.  
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---.  “Apocalypse: Oedipus at Colonus.”  Sophocles: A Collection of Critical Essays.  Ed. Thomas Woodard.  Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1966.  146-75.
Winnington-Ingram, R. P.  Sophocles: An Interpretation.  Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985.   
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III. Shakespearean Tragedies 
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Amneus, Daniel.  The Mystery of Macbeth.  Alhambra Calif.: Primrose P, 1983.
Aristole.  The Politics.  Trans. Sinclair, 1962;  rpt. 1982 .  New York: Penguin,
 I.i. 10-11 (1253a)
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Augustine.  On Christian Doctrine.  Trans. D. W. Robertson, Jr.  Indianapolis:
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Bagshaw, Christopher.  A True Relation of the Faction Begun at Wisbich. 1601. 
Benjamin,Walter.   The Origin of German Tragic Drama.   Trans. John Osborne London: NLB, 1977.  
Bell, Thomas.  The Anatomie of Popish Trannie. 1603. 
Berryman, John.  Berryman’s Shakespeare.  Ed. John Haffenden.  New York: Farrar, Straus and Girows, 1999.
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Bradley, A. C.  Shakespearean Tragedy.  1904;   rpt.  London: Macmillan, 1965.
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Don, Share.  Ed. Seneca in English.  New York: Penguin, 1998.  
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Fletcher, Angus.  Allegory: Theory of a Symbolic Mode.  Cornell: Cornell UP, 1964.   
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