Power Dreamers: The Jocasta Complex

by Ursule Molinaro

Everyone knows the tragedy of Oedipus, from his answer to the Sphinx to his pitiable blind exile, from his intended death as an infant to his terror of oracles. But who knows of Jocasta -- the mother from whom he was torn, the wife to whom he was joined -- as anything other than a plaything of kings and gods? In this richly imagined novel, Ursule Molinaro brings Jocasta to the fore, allowing her to reclaim rightful significance as matrilineal Queen of Thebes, a dreamer of shared power. Ruler, mother, lover -- defiant of gods' wrath -- Jocasta becomes an intelligent and compassionate actor, as well as a courageous person helplessly caught in a conflict of totem and taboo. The voices of Jocasta and the sex-changing palace seer Tiresias, along with the letters of Oedipus and Antigone, combine to tell of these thirty-seven years in the endless history of the seven-gated how, by marrying her son, Jocasta became the woman without whom Oedipus has no story.

Hardcover

First published December 1, 1994

About the author

Ursule Molinaro (1916, Paris -10 July 2000, New York City) was a prolific novelist, playwright, translator and visual artist, the author of 12 novels, two collections of short prose works, innumerable short stories for literary magazines and dozens of translations from the French and German. She lived and wrote in French in Paris until shortly after World War II, when she came to New York in 1949 to work as a multilingual proofreader for the newly formed United Nations. Just a few years later, having realized that she would stay in the United States, she made the decision to systematically retrain herself not only to write, but to dream, think, and speak, in the language of her new soil. In the latter part of her life, she developed a method for teaching creative writing that relied wholly upon the oral and taught creative writing at several universities and in her home until her death in 2000.

(from Wikipedia)