Once he points it out, you see it everywhere. In Lot’s Daughters , Robert Polhemus analyzes the Lot Complex, a mirror-image of the Oedipal Complex and nearly as universal in Western cultural imagination. He traces the interpretation of the story of Lot and his daughters from Genesis to the Reformation, and then uncovers the same structure in Shakespeare, Austen, the Brontes, Mary Shelley, Dickens, Joyce, Nabokov (duh!), and brings us up to date with a chapter on Mia Farrow and Woody Allen and another on Bill and Monica. Polhemus is a witty and snappy writer, and there are stimulating ideas on every page. And he provides the most powerful analysis I’ve encountered of the importance of slavery in Mansfield Park . Man’s-Field, get it?
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