Shakespeare: Sexuality and Psychoanalysis

F R E UD 's formal thoughts on literature took flight with his intuitive coupling of Oedipus and Hamlet in The Interpretation of Dreams. Straddling hermeneutic, historiographical, and intertextual dimensions of literary signification, Freud’s reading of Hamlet remains a foundational instance of thinking with Shakespeare in modernity.

What continues to call for thought within the field opened up by the Hamlet-Oedipus couple is the social constitution of the subject of tragedy. From Freud’s earliest writings, psychoanalysis has been centrally involved with political and social issues. The subject first described by Freud and later formalized by Lacan is embedded not only in a family but also in a group, of which the subject is both a member and a remainder. Shakespearean drama offers a singular set of scenarios for staging the linkage of sexuality, language, and social life.

“Lacan and the Ten Commandments.”
Kenneth Reinhard and Julia Reinhard
Lupton. Journal of Religious and Cultural Theory,
2.1 (December 2000).
http://www.jcrt.org/archives/02.1/

"Desdemona, Whore of Venice"
Anna Kornbluh, seminar paper 2004
copyright Anna Kornbluh
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Artemisia Gentileschi Judith Beheading Holofernes Oil on canvas, 1612-21 Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Artemisia Gentileschi
Judith Beheading Holofernes
Oil on canvas, 1612-21
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence