Electra after Freud: Myth and Culture

by Jill Scott

Overview

"Electra's story is essentially a tale of murder, revenge, and violence. In the ancient myth of Atreus, Agamemnon returns home from battle and receives no hero's welcome. Instead, he is greeted with an ax, murdered in his bath by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover-accomplice, Aegisthus. Electra chooses anger over sorrow and stops at nothing to ensure that her mother pays. In revenge, Electra, with the help of her brother, orchestrates a brutal and bloody matricide, and her reward is the restitution of her father's good name. Amid all this chaos, Electra, Agamemnon's princess daughter, must bear the humiliation of being treated as a slave girl and labeled a madwoman."—from the Introduction

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801442612
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	02/15/2005
Series:	Cornell Studies in the History of Psychiatry
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.88(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jill Scott is Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Coordinator in the Department of German Language and Literature at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario.

What People are Saying About This

Dagmar C. G. Lorenz

This erudite and engaging book on the wanderings of the Electra myth provides a counterbalance to the debates on Oedipus. Associating Electra with literary expression and Oedipus with the discourse of psychoanalysis, Jill Scott astutely explores gender in conjunction with genre while taking into consideration social, intellectual, and political factors.

Alice Kuzniar

This book is a joy to read for its impressive ease and elegance of style. The writing is truly beautiful in its incisive prose, striking insights, and intricate weave of literary, psychoanalytic, and theoretical references. Jill Scott effortlessly moves from one discourse to the next, linking disparate materials in illuminating ways. The cultural background is richly and informatively filled in.

Editorial Reviews

Jill Scott boldly argues that Electra (her character, her myth) rivals and perhaps even surpasses the usefulness of Oedipus in twentieth-century literature. Moreover, she is quick to attribute the revival of these characters in modern times to Sigmund Freud and his sexual theories.... The skill that permits Scott to draw from a background inclusive of psychoanalytic theory and the literatures and histories of twentieth-century America, Germany, and Austria is the same one that allows her to make startling yet solid connections among writers separated by time and space. The span of her work and her conclusions will not fail to absorb and provoke the reader.

College Literature - Wendy Whelan-Stewart

Electra after Freud is a fine scholarly work.... It offers a fascinating insight into how literature, psychoanalysis, and cultural politics contribute to the poetic re/invention of Electra. Scott's readings of the above texts are persuasive, and her scholarship is distinguished by its careful textual analysis, astute ideological critique, and graceful prose style that is free of jargon.... Her readings of Electra's polyvalent femininity, through the critiques of Luce Irigaray, Melanie Klein, and Kristeva, provide a kind of maternal antidote to Freud's wilder speculations on sexual difference.... As a reflection on the suitability of theoretical paradigms for cultural analysis, the significance of Scott's monograph also resides in its investigation of psychoanalysis's impact on modernist drama, literature, and music. Published on the eve of Freud's 150th birthday, Electra after Freud re/affirms the actuality of psychoanalysis as a provocative literary-metaphorical method of interpretation (among its other possible uses).... Psychoanalytic criticism—when coupled with the analytical approach of cultural studies—remains a powerful explanatory tool for understanding the desires, hopes, and wishes surrounding the social construction of gender, sexuality, and subjectivity.

H-German - Mirko M. Hall

This book opens with a compelling question: To whom does the twentieth century belong—Oedipus or Electra? Jill Scott sets out to demonstrate that the myth of Electra appeals to modern writers in ways the myth of Oedipus does not. The result is an interesting study of the creative uses of the myth by a varied group of writers, some relatively unfamiliar, as well as a look at their perceptions of psychoanalysis.... Electra after Freud demonstrates for me how compelling a figure Electra has been for many writers and artists of the past century.

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association - Nancy Kulish

"This erudite and engaging book on the wanderings of the Electra myth provides a counterbalance to the debates on Oedipus. Associating Electra with literary expression and Oedipus with the discourse of psychoanalysis, Jill Scott astutely explores gender in conjunction with genre while taking into consideration social, intellectual, and political factors."

Dagmar C. G. Lorenz

"This book is a joy to read for its impressive ease and elegance of style. The writing is truly beautiful in its incisive prose, striking insights, and intricate weave of literary, psychoanalytic, and theoretical references. Jill Scott effortlessly moves from one discourse to the next, linking disparate materials in illuminating ways."

Alice Kuzniar

"Electra after Freud is a fine scholarly work . . . It offers a fascinating insight into how literature, psychoanalysis, and cultural politics contribute to the poetic re/invention of Electra. Scott's readings of the above texts are persuasive, and her scholarship is distinguished by its careful textual analysis, astute ideological critique, and graceful prose style that is free of jargon. . . . Her readings of Electra's polyvalent femininity, through the critiques of Luce Irigaray, Melanie Klein, and Kristeva, provide a kind of maternal antidote to Freud's wilder speculations on sexual difference. . . . As a reflection on the suitability of theoretical paradigms for cultural analysis, the significance of Scott's monograph also resides in its investigation of psychoanalysis's impact on modernist drama, literature, and music. Published on the eve of Freud's 150th birthday, Electra after Freud re/affirms the actuality of psychoanalysis as a provocative literary-metaphorical method of interpretation (among its other possible uses). . . . Psychoanalytic criticism—when coupled with the analytical approach of cultural studies—remains a powerful explanatory tool for understanding the desires, hopes, and wishes surrounding the social construction of gender, sexuality, and subjectivity."—Mirko M. Hall, H-German, H-Net Reviews, July 2007

"This book opens with a compelling question: To whom does the twentieth century belong—Oedipus or Electra? Jill Scott sets out to demonstrate that the myth of Electra appeals to modern writers in ways the myth of Oedipus does not. The result is an interesting study of the creative uses of the myth by a varied group of writers, some relatively unfamiliar, as well as a look at their perceptions of psychoanalysis. . . . Electra after Freud demonstrates for me how compelling a figure Electra has been for many writers and artists of the past century."—Nancy Kulish, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 2006

"Jill Scott boldly argues that Electra (her character, her myth) rivals and perhaps even surpasses the usefulness of Oedipus in twentieth-century literature. Moreover, she is quick to attribute the revival of these characters in modern times to Sigmund Freud and his sexual theories. . . . The skill that permits Scott to draw from a background inclusive of psychoanalytic theory and the literatures and histories of twentieth-century America, Germany, and Austria is the same one that allows her to make startling yet solid connections among writers separated by time and space. The span of her work and her conclusions will not fail to absorb and provoke the reader."—Wendy Whelan-Stewart, College Literature, Fall 2007

"This erudite and engaging book on the wanderings of the Electra myth provides a counterbalance to the debates on Oedipus. Associating Electra with literary expression and Oedipus with the discourse of psychoanalysis, Jill Scott astutely explores gender in conjunction with genre while taking into consideration social, intellectual, and political factors."—Dagmar C. G. Lorenz, University of Illinois at Chicago

"This book is a joy to read for its impressive ease and elegance of style. The writing is truly beautiful in its incisive prose, striking insights, and intricate weave of literary, psychoanalytic, and theoretical references. Jill Scott effortlessly moves from one discourse to the next, linking disparate materials in illuminating ways."—Alice Kuzniar, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

From the Publisher