Oedipus and the Fabrication of the Father: Oedipus Tyrannus in Modern Criticism and Philosophy

Pucci, Pietro

ISBN 10: 0801843413 / ISBN 13: 9780801843419

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1992

About this Item

First edition, 1992. Cloth hardcover in dust jacket, 230 pp., clean unmarked text, Near Fine copy in Very Good+ dust jacket, some age-toning or discoloration to the dust jacket, dust jacket with some wear including light creasing or tearing. Dust jacket housed in archival dust jacket protector. Uncommon book. Bookseller Inventory # s00021190

Bibliographic Details

Title: Oedipus and the Fabrication of the Father: ...

Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore

Publication Date: 1992

Binding: Hardcover

Book Condition:Near Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: very good +

Edition: First printing.

About this title

Synopsis:

In Oedipus Tyrannus, the son's "retroactive discovery" of his father reveals a stunning truth and transforms guiltless murder into unbearable patricide. But which father is discovered? As Oedipus looks to several father figures--to Polybus, Teiresias, and Apollo, as well as Laius--he finds different laws and lessons and conflicting clues to his own identity. According to Pietro Pucci, the "truth" Oedipus discovers is in fact shifting fabrication, a son's struggle to answer the question "What is a father?"
In Oedipus and the Fabrication of the Father Pucci focuses on the plurality of father figures in Oedipus Tyrannus and offers a significantly new understanding of the nature of Oedipus's transgression. He examines the shifting relationship between father and son, along with notions of patricide and incest, destiny and chance, law and truth, and ironic revenge. Throughout, Pucci discusses important readings by other modern interpreters, including Freud, Lacan, and Heidegger as well as Reinhardt, Rudnytsky, Knox, Segal, and Vernant. Oedipus and the Fabrication of the Father places the work of Sophocles in a contemporary theoretical context, offering a sophisticated and subtle relocation of the play at the center of current debates on textuality.

Review:

"A new and challenging piece of scholarship which... will surely merit discussion by classicists, psychologists, philologists, and literary scholars for many years." -- Classical World