CRITICISM

Asp, Carolyn. “‘The Clamor of Eros’: Freud, Aging, and King Lear.” In Memory and Desire: Aging—Literature—Psychoanalysis, edited by Kathleen Woodward and Murray M. Schwartz, pp. 192-204. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.

Observes Lear's “latently incestuous” passion for his daughter within a Freudian psychoanalytic study of King Lear.

Barber, C. L. and Richard P. Wheeler. “‘The Masked Neptune and / The Gentlest Winds of Heaven’: Pericles and the Transition from Tragedy to Romance.” In The Whole Journey: Shakespeare's Power of Development, pp. 298-342. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

Focuses on a movement from the sexual degradation of incest to a restored relationship between generations and family members in Pericles, as part of a wider study of Shakespeare's developing treatment of feminine principles in his late romances.

Bate, Jonathan. “Sexual Perversity in Venus and Adonis.” The Yearbook of English Studies 23 (1993): 80-92.

Considers Adonis's status as the child of father-daughter incest within a survey of the perversions of desire illustrated in Shakespeare's poem Venus and Adonis.

Boehrer, Bruce Thomas. “Henry VIII and the Political Uses of Incest Theory.” In Monarchy and Incest in Renaissance England: Literature, Culture, Kinship, and Kingship, pp. 62-77. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.

Concentrates on Gertrude's incestuous remarriage in Hamlet, with a particular view toward the historical context of Tudor politics. In conclusion, Boehrer sees Gertrude as the play's “central emblem of social and sexual corruption.”

Dreher, Diane Elizabeth. “The Paternal Role in Transition.” In Domination and Defiance: Fathers and Daughters in Shakespeare, pp. 40-75. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986.

Enumerates Shakespeare's representation of sexually tense and anxiety-ridden relationships between fathers and their maturing daughters, offering character profiles of reactionary, mercenary, egocentric, and jealous fathers in the dramas, and concluding with a study of King Lear, who subsumes all of these qualities.

Faber, M. D. “Hamlet and the Inner World of Objects.” In The Undiscover'd Country: New Essays on Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare, edited by B. J. Sokol, pp. 57-90. London: Free Association Books, 1993.

Psychoanalytic examination of Hamlet as a representation of the Western tragic hero, with special reference to Hamlet's unconscious sexual (i.e. repressed, incestuous, and Oedipal) feelings for his mother in this regard.

Fiedler, Leslie A. “Eros and Thanatos: Old Age in Love.” In Aging, Death, and the Completion of Being, edited by David D. Van Tassel, pp. 235-54. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979.

Closes a survey of western literary myths of old age with reference to the motif of father-daughter incest in such works as Pericles and The Tempest.

Forker, Charles R. “‘A Little More Than Kin, and Less Than Kind’: Incest, Intimacy, Narcissism, and Identity in Elizabethan and Stuart Drama.” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 4 (1989): 13-51.

Overview of representations and references to incest on the English Renaissance stage that includes a brief discussion of the incest motif in Hamlet and its topical link to the historical marriage of Henry VIII.

Frye, Roland Mushat. “Prince Hamlet and the Protestant Confessional.” Theology Today 39, no. 1 (April 1982): 27-38.

Underscores the relevance of Hamlet's accusations of incest against his mother in the theological and social contexts of the English Reformation.

Kerrigan, William. “Life's Iamb: The Scansion of Late Creativity in the Cultural of the Renaissance.” In Memory and Desire: Aging—Literature—Psychoanalysis, edited by Kathleen Woodward and Murray M. Schwartz, pp. 168-91. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.

Includes an analysis of The Tempest as Shakespeare's “most forthrightly Oedipal play.”

Pitcher, John. “The Poet and Taboo: The Riddle of Shakespeare's Pericles.” In Essays and Studies 1982: The Poet's Power, edited by Suheil Bushrui, pp. 14-29. London: John Murray, 1982.

Argues for the structural and thematic unity of Pericles based upon the continuing threads of the incest and riddle motifs in the drama.

Rudnytsky, Peter L. “‘The Darke and Vicious Place’: The Dread of the Vagina in King Lear.” Modern Philology 96, no. 3 (February 1999): 291-311.

Offers a feminist, psychoanalytic interpretation of King Lear with final emphasis on Lear's “unconscious desire to maintain his incestuous hold over Cordelia.”

Shell, Marc. The End of Kinship: ‘Measure for Measure,’ Incest, and the Ideal of Universal Siblinghood. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988, 297 p.

Probes the “vacillation between incest and chastity” depicted in Measure for Measure in view of a radical reinterpretation of marriage, social bonds of kinship, and the universal incest taboo.

Spradley, Dana Lloyd. “Pericles and the Jacobean Family Romance of Union.” Assays: Critical Approaches to Medieval and Renaissance Texts 7 (1992): 87-118.

Traces topical affinities between the incest motif in Pericles and the union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland proposed by King James in the early seventeenth century.

Taylor, Mark. Shakespeare's Darker Purpose: A Question of Incest. New York: AMS Press, 1982, 203 p.

Book-length study of the sublimated, repressed, and/or displaced incestuous feelings of desire felt by fathers in relation to their daughters in Shakespearean drama.