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Why is incest such a recurrent literary Theme?
I'm currently reading One Hundred Years of Solitude and just reached the passage in which Aureliano Jose developes an abiding sexual obsession with his Aunt Amaranta. Earlier in the novel Arcadio lusts after Pilar Ternera, though he was unaware that she was his natural parent.
My last two reads have also featured similar plot lines. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace suggests strongly in one of the final chapters that Orin Incandenza engaged in a relationship with his mother. Cormac McCarthy's Stella Maris is in large part centered on an attraction between siblings. I know Faulkner and others have had similar elements to their work.
Frued's theory of the Oedipus and Electra complexes were obviously influential, both drawing on the Greek Dramatists and themes found in Shakespeare. Even accounting for those influences though it seems odd that something so aberrant in everyday life is found with such disproportionate frequency in literary writing.
What am I missing? Is there something in the writerly temperament that draws out these issues? Do non-Western literary canons contain similar phenomena?
#entertainment
source
I'm currently reading One Hundred Years of Solitude and just reached the passage in which Aureliano Jose developes an abiding sexual obsession with his Aunt Amaranta. Earlier in the novel Arcadio lusts after Pilar Ternera, though he was unaware that she was his natural parent.
My last two reads have also featured similar plot lines. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace suggests strongly in one of the final chapters that Orin Incandenza engaged in a relationship with his mother. Cormac McCarthy's Stella Maris is in large part centered on an attraction between siblings. I know Faulkner and others have had similar elements to their work.
Frued's theory of the Oedipus and Electra complexes were obviously influential, both drawing on the Greek Dramatists and themes found in Shakespeare. Even accounting for those influences though it seems odd that something so aberrant in everyday life is found with such disproportionate frequency in literary writing.
What am I missing? Is there something in the writerly temperament that draws out these issues? Do non-Western literary canons contain similar phenomena?
#entertainment
source
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