Rutgers University - Byrne Seminar for Freshmen
Friday 10.55-1.25 Ruth Adams Building 110b, Douglass Campus
FORBIDDEN PARTNERS:
THE INCEST TABOO IN FACT AND FANTASY
Robin Fox, University Professor (Anthropology)
Why does there seem to be a universal human taboo on incestuous relationships? What are the exceptions? Do we taboo incest because we have a natural aversion to it, or because we fear the power of incestuous attraction? After a look at the various theories of incest taboo and incest avoidance, the course will survey the theme of the fascination with incest in Western legend, literature, and music. This will start with Egypt and the Near East, the Bible, Ovid and Sophocles (Oedipus Rex). It will move to the original Nordic Sagas and their use by Wagner in The Ring, and to the Arthurian Legends. It will move on to to Shakespeare and Jacobean drama, then to the 18th century Novel and the Romantics, Byron, and Shelley, then to the Victorians, Emily Brontë, Poe, Eliot, and Bram Stoker, ending with the moderns William Golding, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Vladimir Nabokov and The Phantom of the Opera. Visual material will be liberally used, and each student will choose one example to write about. As much as possible will be put on e-reserve or given as handouts.
Readings and films:
Don’t be alarmed by the number of readings! You will be reading only short excerpts from some of the literary and legendary examples, to get the flavor of them, and they will be shared out among you. We shall look at where incest is overt, where it is suggested, and where it is accidental: in particular we shall observe where the brother-sister bond is in competition with the husband-wife relationship. This is work in progress, and is essentially exploratory. The student contributions will be helpful to the research. Each student will choose one example to look at in more detail and will write a short account. “Film clip” means one is available. There will not be time to use them all and we shall select among them to show some crucial episodes.
General reading:
The title of the course is taken from the book by James Twitchell:
Forbidden Partners: The Incest Taboo in Modern Culture.
See also:
James Twitchell, Dreadful Pleasures: An Anatomy of Modern Horror.
We shall look at excerpts from both books.
Robin Fox: The Red Lamp of Incest: A Study in the Origin of Mind and Society
One: The Incest Taboo
(If possible these should be read before the first meeting.)
Robin Fox "The Evolution of Incest Inhibition” in The Challenge of Anthropology
Robin Fox "Between Brother and Sister" in The Red Lamp of Incest
Film clip: Waiting for Harry (Australian Aborigines: totem ceremonies)
Two: The Ancient World
Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough excerpts on Isis and Osiris, Tammuz/Adonis and Ishtar/Aphrodite, Attis and Cybele, etc.
Old Testament – stories of Lot and his Daughters (Genesis 18-19) and Tamar and Amnon (2 Samuel 13)
Book of Jubilees: Story of Cain and Awan; the descendants of Adam.
Ovid, Metamorphoses. Book Nine - story of Byblis and Caunus. Book Ten – story of Myrrha, Cinyras and the birth of Adonis;
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (Film clips – Stravinsky’s opera: Japanese version with Jessye Norman; Tyrone Guthrie’s production of W. B. Yeats’ version – with a masked William Shatner.)
Three: Medieval and Renaissance
Richard Wagner, Ring of the Nibelungs Part Two The Valkyrie - Siegmund and Sieglinde (film clip – Metropolitan Opera version – Jessye Norman.) Readings from The Volsunga Saga trans. William Morris
Malory, Morte Darthur selections on the fathering of Mordred. (film clip – Excalibur.) Also Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon, for another version (with film clip.)
Shakespeare, Hamlet (Film clip: either Laurence Olivier, or Mel Gibson + Glenn Close.) (Ernest Jones, Hamlet and Oedipus - readings)
John Ford, Tis Pity She's a Whore (Film clip - from rare print of Italian production with Charlotte Rampling.)
John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book Two: Satan, Sin and Death
Four: Eighteenth Century and the Romantics
Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (film clip – with Daniel Craig 007)
Henry Fielding, Tom Jones (film clip – with Albert Finney),Joseph Andrews
Chateaubriand, René
Goethe, Wilhelm Meister
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (film clip)
William Blake, The Mental Traveller
Lord Byron, readings from Manfred, Cain (Schuman, Manfred Overture)
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (film clip)
Percy Shelley, The Cenci, The Revolt of Islam
Five: Victorians and Moderns
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss(film clip)
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (film clip – Olivier + Merle Oberon)
Bram Stoker, Dracula (film clip – Francis Ford Coppola version)
Edgar Allen Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher (film clip)(Debussy)
Oscar Wilde, Salomé (film clip - Richard Strauss opera version.)
William Golding - The Scorpion God (first story of that name)
Ivy Compton-Burnett, Brothers and Sisters
Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head
Vladimir Nabokov, Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, Lolita
John Barth, Giles Goat Boy, The Sot-Weed Factor
Salman Rushdie, The Enchantress of Florence
Andrew Lloyd Webber(Gaston Leroux,) The Phantom of the Opera (film clip)
Roundup: Including a student survey of incest in soap operas. A look at some other possibilities for research: Herman Melville, Anthony Burgess, Pushkin, etc.
William Blake – Satan Sin and Death