The 'Telemachus' Complex': Becoming Good Heirs on the Tragic Stage

The 'Telemachus' Complex': Becoming Good Heirs on the Tragic Stage

Cozzi, Cecilia

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2023, Arts and Sciences: Classics

“The Telemachus Complex: Becoming Good Heirs on the Tragic Stage” applies to Greek tragedies psychoanalytic theory (the “Telemachus Complex” codified by Massimo Recalcati in response to Freud's own Oedipal Complex). This framework explains inheritance as an “act of reclamation”: sons need to exercise an active role in negotiating the symbolic debt connecting them to their fathers. Their “movement forward” to reclaim their position stems primarily from an individual choice, which should neither dismiss or recreate the memory of father's deeds. In the first chapter, I explore how Aeschylus shows the dangers of a firm rejection of the father's example of political authority, as Xerxes demonstrates it in the aftermath of the battle of Salamis throughout the Persians. Next, I concentrate on Aeschylus' Oresteia and argue that Orestes conceives of inheritance primarily as the need to claim his father's wealth and position of power in Argos, following closely in Agamemnon's footsteps, while the gods (Apollo, Athena) are reinforcing the leading role fathers exercise in their sons' lives, In the second chapter, I investigate how Sophocles offers a different representation of this issue by looking at the ethical implications of a father's example. I focus first on his earlier plays, where fathers impose on their offspring unquestioning obedience (Antigone) and the faithful imitation of their beliefs (Ajax, Trachiniae). These offspring (Ajax, Haemon and Hyllus) cannot deviate from their father's norms, but they should rather conform to them. Sophocles progressively concentrates on the sons' ability to go beyond the complete rejection and the passive duplication of fatherly examples. In the Electra and Philoctetes, Orestes and Neoptolemus offer the best embodiment of a successful heir mastering the “Telemachus Complex”: both these characters act upon their legacy, without being too attached to or too dismissive of their fathers' deeds. The third chapter shows how fili (open full item for complete abstract)