Sean, you might look up the Electra complex (the Natalie Wood character in
_Rebel Without A Cause_ appears to be so modeled)--that's the
mother-daughter
version of the Oedipus complex. Of course, you could throw out this
psychoanalytical model, but its simplicity makes it excellent for
conflict-plot
development Your characters are then merely agents of the narrative action
and
easy to develop in terms of the pre-typed plot. Too, you might combine this
psychoanalytical model with a re-reading of Aristotle's _Poetics_; after
all,
both the psychoanalytic and the Aristotelian models concern tragic
conflicts.
Sidenote: Foucault criticizes the Greek model as applied to modern sexuality
because the terms and conditions of modern society and its institutions are
different from those of Greek society and its institutions. Foucault, of
course,
thinks of sexuality in terms of the institutions that define it. I think
that
too little has been done with this insight--even in the work of Foucault.
After
all, why should we apply the terms of Greek society to our own unless we
wanted
to understand our own society as Greek? What kinds of mis-understandings
does
such modeling create?
There are other Greek models: you might look at the one Aristophanes
proposes
for sexuality in Plato's _Symposium_ or at the psychoanalytic one Lacan
produces on the
labyrinth, which comes from the story of Theseus, Ariadne, the Minotaur .
. .
.
JMC
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