Oedipus. Myth and Tragedy
It is argued that, originally, archaic desire for the mother and hate for the father, i.e., the feelings referred to by Freudian psychoanalysis in its theory of the Oedipus complex, were not implied in the Greek myth. Having defined (i) the latter as a complex and historically derived conglomerate of variants of one and the same narrative, and (ii) tragedy as such, an overview is sketched of the principal variants of the Oedipus myth. Moreover, several interpretations are confronted and it is argued that, from a philological point of view, Freud’s interpretation cannot be supported.