Incest in literature

Incest is an important thematic element and plot device in literature, with famous early examples such as Sophocles' classic Oedipus Rex, a tragedy in which the title character unwittingly kills his father and marries his mother. It occurs in medieval literature, both explicitly, as related by denizens of Hell in Dante's Inferno, and winkingly, as between Pandarus and Criseyde in Chaucer's Troilus. The Marquis de Sade was famously fascinated with "perverse" sex acts such as incest, which recurs frequently in his works, The 120 Days of Sodom (1785), Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795), and Juliette (1797).

Modern literature

Vladimir Nabokov's novel Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969) deals very heavily with the incestuous relationships in the intricate family tree of the main character, Van Veen. In his novel Hogg, written in 1969, Samuel R. Delany employed incest as a way to push the boundaries of heteronormative sex. Toni Morrison's debut novel The Bluest Eye (1970) tells the story of Pecola, a young girl raped by her father. Dorothy Allison wrote about incest and sexual abuse in Trash: Short Stories (1988) and Bastard Out of Carolina (1992).

One of the most infamous of Japanese literature is Mushoku Tensei (2012), a web or light novel has several depiction of incestuous relationships in main and forthcoming chapters, which was deemed controversial by some, particularly the deleted chapter.

• Before the reincarnation, the unnamed hikikomori caught lusted by his siblings for watching over his younger niece naked in the bath through hidden camera.
• Eris Greyrat, a second cousin-turned future wife of Rudeus Greyrat, was first met when they were younger before the Teleportation Incident. As goes on a journey, she deeply in love with him before her departure. Years later, they reunited after the second battle against Orsted. Following the misunderstood and strained relationship, she decides to marry him and gave birth to Ars and Christina.
• In a deleted chapter of Aisha Greyrat's side story, Aisha is having a relationship with Rudeus's son Ars, Aisha's half nephew, and gave birth to a son named Leroy Greyrat.

See also

• Incest in folklore and mythology
• Incest in media
• Incest in the Bible
• Incest pornography – Genre of pornography

Further reading

• Szobel, Ilana (2021). Flesh of My Flesh: Sexual Violence in Modern Hebrew Literature. State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-1-4384-8457-0.
• Leeson, Miles Richard John, ed. (2018). Incest in contemporary literature. Manchester: Manchester university press. ISBN 978-1-5261-2216-2.
• Quilligan, Maureen (2005). Incest and Agency in Elizabeth's England. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-1905-0.
• Rank, Otto (1992). The incest theme in literature and legend: fundamentals of a psychology of literary creation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-4176-7.
• Rodi-Risberg, Marinella (2022). Intersectional Trauma in American Women Writers' Incest Novels from the 1990s. Cham: Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-96619-5. ISBN 978-3-030-96618-8.
• Rouillard, Linda Marie (2020). Medieval Considerations of Incest, Marriage, and Penance. Cham: Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-35602-6. ISBN 978-3-030-35601-9.