Mythe Et Litterature : La Reinterpretation Du Mythe D’oedipe Dans Oedipe Sur La Route De Henry Bauchau

Abstract

ABSTRACT Bastin, Pierre, Mythe and Literature: Reinterpretation of the Myth of Oedipus in Oedipe sur la rourte by Henry Bauchau, master’s thesis, Ankara, 2019. The aim of this study is to analyze the reinterpretation of the Oedipus myth in the work of Henri Bauchau who is a prominent Belgian author of the late 20th century. Ever since Sophocles wrote Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus, and writers including Corneille, Dryden, Cocteau, Gide, Anouilh and Dürrenmatt wrote about it and due to Freuds prominent interpretation, the thought that the story of Jocaste and Laios’s son represents a universal and dominant trait about the human essence has consciously and unconsciously occupied the European imagination. Except for the hesitative proclamations of ethnologists such as Malinowski and Marhaget Mead, a chorus of psychoanalysts and anthropologists state that they could not dream of a society in which Oedipus did not exist. The study attempts to explain the symbolic approaches to Oedipus in Bauchau’s work. We have also taken into consideration the fact that Bauchau has also practiced psychoanalysis; which made us interrogate the similarities between Freudian interpretation of the myth and Bauchau’s own literary reinterpretation. Finally, this study lead us to conceive literature as an therapeutic means that give a chance to those who seek their ways on the path of History.

Keywords: Oedipus, Henry Baucheau, myth, reinterpretation, redemption, therapy.