Book
The Tragic Effect: The Oedipus Complex in Tragedy
Un Œil en trop: Le complexe d'Œdipe dans la tragédie
André Green's first book, three psychoanalytic essays on the negative face of the Oedipus complex in ancient, Elizabethan and French classical tragedy, framed by a prologue on the psychoanalytic reading of tragedy and an epilogue on the Oedipus myth. Green takes tragedy as the stage on which the Oedipus complex is played out, especially as hostility between the sexes and between the generations. He reads matricide in Aeschylus' Oresteia against the Electra plays of Sophocles and Euripides, a husband's murder of his wife in Shakespeare's Othello as a tragedy of jealous madness that exposes the course of paranoia, and a father's sacrifice of his daughter in Racine's Iphigénie, compared with Euripides. Published by Éditions de Minuit in its Critique series, it appeared in Alan Sheridan's English translation as The Tragic Effect (Cambridge University Press, 1979).
Main ideas
- Tragedy is read as the stage of the Oedipus complex, above all of its negative side: hostility between the sexes and the generations, violence within the family.
- Matricide and its punishment are compared across the three Greek tragedians, from Aeschylus' Oresteia to the Electra plays of Sophocles and Euripides, under the heading 'from the oracle to the law'.
- Othello is read as a tragedy of conversion in which jealous madness lays bare the workings of paranoia.
- Racine's Iphigénie, set beside Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis and The Bacchae, is read through the economy of the father's sacrifice of his daughter.
- The prologue presents psychoanalytic reading as a contribution to literary criticism; the epilogue asks how the Oedipus myth relates to the truth that emerges through its distortions.
What it shows
- 1969
André Green developed Oedipus complex
In Un Œil en trop (1969) Green read the negative side of the Oedipus complex, matricide, jealousy and sacrifice, in the tragedies of Aeschylus, Shakespeare and Racine.