In this stimulating and wide-ranging 1979 study, Andre Green, the eminent French psychoanalyst, demonstrates the relevance of psychoanalysis to literary criticism. He interprets the Freudian theory of the Oedipus complex - in its 'negative' aspect of male hostility towards the female - in several of the great European tragedies, including Aeschlyus' Oresteia (where the son kills the mother), Shakespeare's Othello (where the husband kills the wife) and Racine's Iphigegenie a Aulis (where the father kills the daughter), as well as Sophocles' Oedipodeia. Green sheds light on such important...