Julia Reinhard Lupton and Kenneth Reinhard's

After Oedipus: Shakespeare in Psychoanalysis

"I marvel at the often breathtaking brilliance of After Oedipus. Not only will their analysis serve as the authoritative treatment of the theme of nothingness in Lear for years to come, but, in its broadest scope, will become a reference text for Lacanian critics who are looking for a systematization of key terms." Elizabeth J . Bellamy, The University of Alabama at Birmingham

Since Freud's writings on Oedipus and Hamlet, Shakespearean tragedy has been paradigmatic for psychoanalytic theory and criticism. In this ambitious and highly imaginative book, Julia Reinhard Lupton and Kenneth Reinhard trace the dialogue between psychoanalytic and literary discourses lay examining the models of plot, character, and ways of reading that each tradition has developed through its interpretation of Shakespeare.

Using Walter Benjamin's Origin of the German Tragic Drama as an exemplar of intertextual criticism, the authors first reconstruct the passage of Hamlet into psychoanalysis and more generally of tragedy into theory. They show how the dominant Oedipal reading of Hamlet is countered in both Freud and Lacan lay the figure of the mother as bearer of loss and language. Freud's essay "The Theme of the Three Caskets" guides their reading of King Lear, Antigone, and Lacan's seminar, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Lupton and Reinhard argue that Hamlet and King Lear serve as two interrelated models of literary transmission. While Hamlet stages melancholia as the tragic scenario of literary inheritance, King Lear presents psychosis as a model of the canon and its discontents.

JULIA REINHARD LUPTON is Assistant Professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine.

KENNETH REINHARD is Assistant Professor of English at UCLA.