Electra after Freud : myth and culture / Jill Scott.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 173-190) and index.

Beyond tragic catharsis, Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Elektra -- Shakespeare's Electra, Heiner Müller's Hamletmaschine -- From pathology to performance, Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Elektra and Sigmund Freud's "Fräulein Anna O" -- Choreographing a cure, Richard Strauss's Elektra and the ironic waltz -- Oedipus endangered, Robert Musil's The man without qualities -- Resurrecting Electra's voice, H.D.'s A dead priestess speaks -- A poetics of survival, Sylvia Plath's Electra enactment -- Conclusion, Electra and the new millennium.

"Almost everyone knows about Oedipus and his mother, and many readers would put the Oedipus myth at the forefront of Western collective mythology. In Electra after Freud, Jill Scott leaves that couple behind and argues convincingly for the primacy of the countermyth of Agamemnon and his daughter. Through a lens of Freudian and feminist psychoanalysis, this book views renderings of the Electra myth in twentieth-century literature and culture."

"Scott reads several pivotal texts featuring Electra to demonstrate what she calls "a narrative revolt" against the dominance of Oedipus as archetype. Situating the Electra myth within a framework of psychoanalysis, medicine, opera, and dance. Scott investigates the heroine's role at the intersections of history and the feminine, eros and thanatos, hysteria and melancholia. Scott analyzes Electra adaptations by H.D., Hofmannsthal and Strauss, Musil, and Plath and highlights key moments in the telling and reception of the Electra myth in the modern imagination"--Jacket

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