Oedipus and the Sphinx

When Oedipus met the Sphinx on the road to Thebes, he did more than answer a riddle—he spawned a myth that, told and retold, would become one of Western culture’s central narratives about self-understanding. Identifying the story as a threshold myth—in which the hero crosses over into an unknown and dangerous realm where rules and limits are not known— Oedipus and the Sphinx  offers a fresh account of this mythic encounter and how it deals with the concepts of liminality and otherness. &nbs