The Tragic Effect: The Oedipus Complex in Tragedy

by André Green , Translated by Alan Sheridan

• ISBN13: 9780521144605
• ISBN10: 0521144604
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-03-03
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In this stimulating and wide-ranging 1979 study, Andrè Green, the eminent French psychoanalyst, demonstrates the relevance of psychoanalysis to literary criticism. He interprets the Freudian theory of the Oedipus complex - in its 'negative' aspect of male hostility towards the female - in several of the great European tragedies, including Aeschlyus' Oresteia (where the son kills the mother), Shakespeare's Othello (where the husband kills the wife) and Racine's Iphigègenie á Aulis (where the father kills the daughter), as well as Sophocles' Oedipodeia. Green sheds light on such important literary and psychoanalytic questions as the stage's kinship with phantasy, glorified in Artaud's theatre; those devices through which the spectator's unconscious may be affected; the family's privileged position at the centre of the 'tragic space'; the points at which modern structuralist thought fails; and the different perspectives exploring the Oedipus myth and Freud's interpretation of it. This will interest psychologists, anthropologists, and readers of literary debate.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Author's acknowledgements

Translator's note

Prologue: the psycho-analytic reading of tragedy

Orestes and Oedipus: from the oracle to the law

Othello: a tragedy of conversion: black magic and white magic

Racine's Iphigénie: the economy of sacrifice

Epilogue: Oedipus, myth or truth?

Notes

Select bibliography

Index

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