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SUMMARY:Fragmentation and Unity: Psychoanalytical adaptations of the Hippo
 lytus - Tori McKee\, OU/Oxford
DTSTART:20131128T171500Z
DTEND:20131128T183000Z
UID:TALK48991@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Benjamin Folit-Weinberg
DESCRIPTION:My research investigates thematic clusters in the reception of
  the Hippolytus and Phaedra myth\, via the three major source texts: Eurip
 ides’ Hippolytus\, Seneca’s Phaedra and Racine’s Phèdre.  Integral 
 to my study is the rejection of any idea of a single ‘source text’ exe
 rting its influence on a single modern version.  I instead argue that the 
 three source texts together form a collective Hippolytus and Phaedra tradi
 tion and that this collective\, rather than any original text in isolation
 \, is what is received by the adaptations under discussion in my thesis.  
 Each modern work under discussion in my thesis represents a newly re-imagi
 ned re-constructed version of the tradition as a whole\, although this ver
 sion may be influenced by prioritisation of one character over another\, o
 r by a particular thematic focus based on social factors (such as the cons
 anguinity of the relationship between the protagonists) or developments in
  intellectual history (such as psychoanalytical theory).\n\nThis paper wil
 l discuss early 20th-century adaptations of the Hippolytus and Phaedra tra
 dition\, including Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms and H.D.'s Hippo
 lytus Temporizes\, which take a psychoanalytic approach and draw out the t
 heme of the incestuous desires between stepmother and stepson.  Although o
 n the surface\, Desire Under the Elms and Hippolytus Temporizes appear to 
 have very little in common aside from the dates of their compositions\, th
 e similarities between the two texts\, which both arose in a context heavi
 ly dominated by Freud’s discoveries\, are striking.  In both plays the c
 onnection between land/place/space and the feminine/maternal figure\, as w
 ell as the father-son nexus or second half of the Oedipal complex\, are do
 minant concerns in their re-workings of the source material.  Both O’Nei
 ll and H.D. have configured the Hippolytus myth in a distinctly Oedipal fr
 amework: their Hippolytus figures see their lovers as quasi-maternal figur
 es and also have a strongly antagonistic and competitive relationship with
  their fathers.
LOCATION:Classics Faculty\, Room G.21
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