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. Almut-Barbara Renger assesses the story’s meanings and functions in classical antiquity—from its presence in ancient vase painting to its absence in Sophocles’s tragedy—before arriving at two of its major reworkings in European modernity: the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud and the poetics of Jean Cocteau. Through her readings, she highlights the ambiguous status of the Sphinx and reveals Oedipus himself to be a liminal creature, providing key insights into Sophocles’s portrayal and establishing a theoretical framework that organizes evaluations of the myth’s reception in the twentieth century. Revealing the narrative of Oedipus and the Sphinx to be the very paradigm of a key transition experienced by all of humankind, Renger situates myth between the competing claims of science and art in an engagement that has important implications for current debates in literary studies, psychoanalytic theory, cultural history, and aesthetics. Review Quotes: Jan N. Bremmer, University of Groningen “The encounter between Oedipus and the Sphinx has always been one of the most intriguing scenes of Greek mythology. Almut-Barbara Renger first subjects the riddle solving of Oedipus in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex to an innovative analysis and then turns to the role of the Sphinx in Freud’s work and the way Jean Cocteau used Sophocles against Freud in his Machine infernale. In her challenging work, she shows how the figure of the Sphinx continues to fascinate modernity, but also portrays the changing fates of this once so threatening female monster in the age of gender uncertainties.” Contents: Introduction Part One Oedipus before the Sphinx in Antiquity: On Sophocles Chapter 1. The Prince of Thebes and the Monster “With intelligence, not taught by birds” Face-to-Face: Oedipus before the Sphinx in the Vase Painting of Antiquity In the Hero’s Account: The monstrum from Seneca to Corneille Chapter 2. Thresholds: Zone, Transformation, Transition “Betwixt and Between”: The Threshold Theories of Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner A “Double-Formed Monster” (d?µ??f?? ??????): The Sphinx as Threshold Figure in Antiquity “Œdipe est double”: Hero and Monster in Jean-Pierre Vernant Coda I: One Monster Confronts Another: Oedipus before the Sphinx as a Warning against Hubris Part Two Oedipus before the Sphinx in Modernity: On Freud and Cocteau Chapter 3. Freud the Riddle Solver and the “Riddle of the Feminine” Infantile and Juvenile Wish Fulfillment: Freud as ???t?st?? ???? Perversion and Hubris: Thoughts on the Anecdote of Freud’s “Turning Pale” Chapter 4. “The night that concerns me is different”: Cocteau’s Distancing from Freud Between Finding and Invention: “Archaeology” as a Shared Figure of Thought in Freud and Cocteau “No-man’s-land between life and death”: Cocteau’s “Zone” between Visible and Invisible Worlds “Where dream and reality merge”: Mythic Personalities between Dream and Reality “An Oedipus and the Sphinx”: Cocteau’s Machine infernale Deprived of Characterization by Basic Principles: “Œdipe et le Sphinx” on the Threshold Coda II: With Sophocles contra Freud: Cocteau’s Work of Enlightenment Notes Bibliography Index About the Author: Almut-Barbara Renger is professor of ancient religion, culture, and their reception history at the Institute for the Scientific Study of Religion at the Freie Universität Berlin. She is the author or editor of several books and resides in Berlin. John T. Hamilton is the William R. Kenan Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. He is the author of Soliciting Darkness; Music, Madness, and the Unworking of Language; Security; and Philology of the Flesh, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
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