“Œdipe roi,” a founding text of the detective genre and police criticism

Could Œdipus not be the murderer of Laïos? What if Antigone did not commit suicide but was actually murdered? These are the questions posed by the authors of the book “Cold cases in Ancient Greece,” directed by Pierre Bayard and Zoé Angelis and published by CNRS editions.

Deconstructing myths: beyond the Oedipus complex

By highlighting material or psychological inconsistencies in Sophocles’ text, we are forced to question the validity of psychoanalytic interpretations of this Greek parricide, especially those of Freud. According to Pierre Bayard, these new interpretations of this founding text also allow searching for other complexes, such as that of Jocasta: “perhaps one of the major elements of our psyche is not parricide, but infanticide.”

Finally, the texts in this collective book respond to a “playful and serious practice of anachronism,” according to the literature professor. “The issues we raise in Sophocles’ text are not contemporary to Sophocles; it is a question that emerged in France in the 17th and 18th centuries and was reinforced by detective fiction. This is what is interesting: we ask questions about the text from a time when the authors did not ask themselves.”