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If we were asked to name one text from which psychoanalysis arose, we would have to answer The Interpretation of Dreams. And if we were asked to identify the pair of most significant passages in that seminal book, we would name the Irma dream and Freud's prescient discussion of Oedipus Rex and Hamlet.1 I have already analysed the Irma dream for its thematic richness, especially as embedded in the German text (Mahony, 1977). On the present occasion, I shall examine Freud's famous, oft-read pages on Oedipus Rex and Hamlet (pp. 261-266). In the face of daunting scholarship on those pages and their primary referents, I shall offer some fresh thoughts that will be unevenly distributed upon three pertinent areas of focus: theme (here I shall examine only Oedipus Rex), performative textuality, and translation.
To introduce the thematic consideration of knowledge, I shall share one of my linguistic reflections about Oedipus (etymologically, “swollen foot”). In Greek, the first three letters of Oedipus are oid, the same letters as in