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Readers and mythic signs : the Oedipus myth in twentieth-century fiction / Debra A. Moddelmog

Author
Moddelmog, Debra
Published
Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, [1993]
Copyright Date
©1993
Physical Description
1 online resource (xv, 169 pages) : illustrations
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Language Note
English.
Contents
Introduction: Reading Myth from Joyce to Pynchon -- 1. Myths and Their Signs -- 2. A Poetics for Myth in Fiction -- 3. The Power of the Solitary Mytheme: The Anti-Sphinx of Alternative Wastelands -- 4. Mythemes and Questions of Genre: The Blindness of the Private Eye in Antidetective Fiction -- 5. Reading Myths and Mythemes after Freud: From Oedipal Incest to Oedipal Insight -- 6. The Epistemology of the Oedipus Myth.
Summary
Some literary scholars view myth criticism as passe; an approach to literature that enjoyed a heyday in the l950s and 1960s before being replaced by approaches that are considered to be more theoretically sophisticated and satisfying, such as feminism, new historicism, and deconstruction. Moddelmog argues that there are many good reasons not to cast out myth criticism from the community of critical approaches. Most obvious among them is that myth has attracted many writers of this century -- from James Joyce to Thomas Pynchon, Virginia Woolf to Flannery OʹConnor, Thomas Mann to Alain Robbe-Grillet, William Faulkner to Alberto Moravia -- and that to ignore myth is to dismiss an essential part of their work. Moddelmog suggests that by reconstruing the relationship between myth and literature, we will find that mythic approaches are frequently not only necessary but also highly stimulating, engaging readers in many varieties of questions, quests, and conclusions. -- Publisher description.
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Genre(s)
ISBN
0585135452 (electronic bk.)
9780585135458 (electronic bk.)
0809318466 (alk. paper)
9780809318469 (alk. paper)
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references (pages 151-161) and index.
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