Copyright ©1993 by the Board of Trustees,

Southern Illinois University

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

Edited by St. Patricia John-Doolin

Designed by David Ford

Production supervised by Natalia Nadraga

96 95 94 93 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Moddelmog, Debra.

Readers and mythic signs: the Oedipus myth in twentieth-century
fiction / Debra A. Moddelmog.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Fiction-- 20th century--History and criticism. 2. Oedipus (Greek mythology) in literature. 3. Reader-response criticism. 4. Mythology-Psychological aspects. 5. Psychoanalysis and literature. I. Title.

PN3503. M52 1993 92-34304

809.3'915-dc2O CIP

ISBN 0-8093-1846-6

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences--Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Portions of chapter 4, "Mythemes and Questions of Genre: The
Blindness of the Private Eye in Antidetective Fiction," have been
previously published in revised form as "the Oedipus Myth and Reader
Response in Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49" in Papers on Language
and Literature 23.2 ( 1987). Copyright © 1987 by the Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University. Reprinted by permission.

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