The Incest Theme in Literature and Legend

The Incest Theme in Literature and Legend

Author: Otto Rank

Publisher:

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 676

ISBN-13:

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"Among the strictly scientific applications of analysis to literature, Rank's exhaustive work on the theme of incest easily takes the first place."--Sigmund Freud.


Inbreeding, Incest, and the Incest Taboo

Inbreeding, Incest, and the Incest Taboo

Author: Arthur P. Wolf

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0804751412

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Why is incest widely prohibited? Why does the scope of the prohibition vary from society to society? Why does incest occur despite the prohibition? What are the consequences? To reexamine these questions, this book brings together contributions from the fields of genetics, behavioral biology, primatology, biological and social anthropology, philosophy, and psychiatry.


Imagining Incest

Imagining Incest

Author: Gale Swiontkowski

Publisher: Susquehanna University Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 9781575910611

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Imagining Incest examines daughter-father relations as depicted in the poetry of Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Sharon Olds. Swiontkowski demonstrates a progression in these relations from daughter as victim of the father in Sexton and Plath to daughter as rebel against the father in Rich to daughter as successor to the father in Olds. Each poet utilizes the poetic motif of incest in varying degrees to convey this developing relationship, and Swiontkowski shows that the struggles and triumphs inherent in this imagined relationship parallel many of the issues raised in the recent social crisis of recovered memories. Imagining Incest thus casts light on a painful social issue and extends the hope that comparing these four women poets demonstrates that women who have suffered under the tyranny of a patriarchal system can rebel and overcome by confronting and redefining the incestuous nature of their relations with the fathers of society.


Incest and the Medieval Imagination

Incest and the Medieval Imagination

Author: Elizabeth Archibald

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2001-05-24

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0191540854

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Incest is a remarkably frequent theme in medieval literature; it occurs in a wide range of genres, including romances, saints's lives, and exempla. Historically, the Church in the later Middle Ages was very concerned about breaches of the complex laws against incest, which was defined very broadly at the time to cover family relationships outside the nuclear family and also spiritual relationships through baptism. Medieval writers accepted that incestuous desire was a widespread phenomenon among women as well as men. They are surprisingly open about incest, though of course they disapprove of it; in many exemplary stories incest is identified with original sin, but the moral emphasizes the importance of contrition and the availability of grace even to such heinous sinners. This study begins with a brief account of the development of medieval incest laws, and the extent to which they were obeyed. Next comes a survey of classical incest stories and their legacy; many were retold in the Middle Ages, but they were frequently adapted to the purposes of Christian moralizers. In the three chapters that follow, homegrown medieval incest stories are grouped by relationship: mother-son (focusing on the Gregorius legend), father-daughter (focusing on La Manekine and its analogues), and sibling (focusing on the Arthurian legend). The final chapter considers the very common medieval trope of the Virgin Mary as mother, daughter, sister and bride of Christ, the one exception to the incest taboo. In western society today, incest has recently been recognized as a serious social problem, and has also become a frequent theme in both fiction and non-fiction, just as it was in the Middle Ages. This interdisciplinary study is the first broad survey of medieval incest stories in Latin and the vernaculars (mainly French, English and German). It situates the incest theme in both literary and cultural contexts, and offers many thought-provoking comparisons and contrasts to our own society in terms of gender relations, the power of patriarchy, the role of religious institutions in regulating morality, and the relationship between life and literature.


Patriarchy and Incest from Shakespeare to Joyce

Patriarchy and Incest from Shakespeare to Joyce

Author: Jane M. Ford

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 9780813015958

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"A highly satisfying book that will be of great interest both to psychoanalytic critics and to students of the English novel. . . . By taking the theme of father-daughter incest as a guiding thread, Jane Ford traces a pattern of indisputable importance in the works of Shakespeare and major English novelists."--Peter L. Rudnytsky, University of Florida Using Shakespeare's plots as a backdrop, Jane Ford traces the incest theme in novels by Charles Dickens, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and James Joyce, exploring in particular the father-daughter-suitor triangle. As Ford demonstrates, three patterns predominate: the father eliminates the suitor and retains the daughter; the father submits to outside authority and relinquishes the daughter; or the father resolves the incest threat by choosing the daughter's suitor. Ford provides evidence that the fictive characters' incest conflicts often mirror the writer's own incest dilemmas, whether subliminal or not, and in readings that break with traditional criticism, she points to textual evidence for the occurrence of actual incest in The Golden Bowl and Ulysses. Ford maintains that each of the five writers wrote final works that seemed to return to a plot of retention of the daughter by the father. Ford's book offers a valuable amplification of Otto Rank's seminal work, The Incest Theme in Literature and Legend: Fundamentals of a Psychology of Literary Creation, and extends an important issue in 20th-century psychology into the study of major works of literature written in English. Jane M. Ford is a visiting scholar in the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego.


Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature: A Handbook

Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature: A Handbook

Author: Jane Garry

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 552

ISBN-13: 135157616X

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This is an authoritative presentation and discussion of the most basic thematic elements universally found in folklore and literature. The reference provides a detailed analysis of the most common archetypes or motifs found in the folklore of selected communities around the world. Each entry is written by a noted authority in the field, and includes accompanying reference citations. Entries are keyed to the Motif-Index of Folk Literature by Stith Thompson and grouped according to that Index's scheme. The reference also includes an introductory essay on the concepts of archetypes and motifs and the scholarship associated with them. This is the only book in English on motifs and themes that is completely folklore oriented, deals with motif numbers, and is tied to the Thompson Motif-Index. It includes in-depth examination of such motifs as: Bewitching; Chance and Fate; Choice of Roads; Death or Departure of the Gods; the Double; Ghosts and Other Revenants; the Hero Cycle; Journey to the Otherworld; Magic Invulnerability; Soothsayer; Transformation; Tricksters.


Psychoanalytic Approaches to Myth

Psychoanalytic Approaches to Myth

Author: Daniel Merkur

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 9780824059361

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First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.


Approaches to Greek Myth

Approaches to Greek Myth

Author: Lowell Edmunds

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM

Published: 2014-09-11

Total Pages: 659

ISBN-13: 1421414201

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“A handy introduction to some of the more useful methodological approaches to and the previous scholarship on the subject of Greek myths.” —Phoenix Since the first edition of Approaches to Greek Myth was published in 1990, interest in Greek mythology has surged. There was no simple agreement on the subject of “myth” in classical antiquity, and there remains none today. Is myth a narrative or a performance? Can myth be separated from its context? What did myths mean to ancient Greeks and what do they mean today? Here, Lowell Edmunds brings together practitioners of eight of the most important contemporary approaches to the subject. Whether exploring myth from a historical, comparative, or theoretical perspective, each contributor lucidly describes a particular approach, applies it to one or more myths, and reflects on what the approach yields that others do not. Edmunds’s new general and chapter-level introductions recontextualize these essays and also touch on recent developments in scholarship in the interpretation of Greek myth. Contributors are Jordi Pàmias, on the reception of Greek myth through history; H. S. Versnel, on the intersections of myth and ritual; Carolina López-Ruiz, on the near Eastern contexts; Joseph Falaky Nagy, on Indo-European structure in Greek myth; William Hansen, on myth and folklore; Claude Calame, on the application of semiotic theory of narrative; Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, on reading visual sources such as vase paintings; and Robert A. Segal, on psychoanalytic interpretations. “A valuable collection of eight essays . . . Edmunds’s book provides a convenient opportunity to grapple with the current methodologies used in the analysis of literature and myth.” —New England Classical Newsletter and Journal


Incest, Drama and Nature's Law, 1550-1700

Incest, Drama and Nature's Law, 1550-1700

Author: Richard A. McCabe

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2008-10-30

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780521088749

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This is a full-length study of incest in English Renaissance and Restoration drama. Richard McCabe's comprehensive survey offers a literary history of this theme, informed by an investigation of the intellectual background, with particular emphasis on changing concepts of natural law, and consequent reassessments of classical tradition. It examines a wide range of theological, philosophical, legal and literary sources, in the context of modern psychological and sociological theories of family development. Extensive comparisons with classical models and contemporary European dramatists, from Tasso to Corneille and Racine, explore the volatile association between dramatic form and emotional content, structural experiment and sexual ambivalence. The centrality of the family to all human relationships, and the mutual reflection of familial politics and the patriarchal state make incest a powerful metaphor for the ambivalence of all concepts of 'natural' authority, and for various forms of social and political revolt.


The Myth of the Birth of the Hero

The Myth of the Birth of the Hero

Author: Otto Rank

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2015-11-01

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 1421419149

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First published in German in 1909, Otto Rank's original The Myth of the Birth of the Hero offered psychoanalytical interpretations of mythological stories as a means of understanding the human psyche. Like his mentor Sigmund Freud, Rank compared the myths of such figures as Oedipus, Moses, and Sargon with common dreams, seeing in both a symbolic fulfillment of repressed desire. In a new edition published thirteen years after the original, Rank doubled the size of his seminal work, incorporating new discoveries in psychoanalysis, mythology, and ethnology. This expanded and updated edition has been eloquently translated by Gregory C. Richter and E. James Lieberman and includes an introductory essay by Robert A. Segal as well as Otto Rank's 1914 essay "The Play in Hamlet."