Lot's Daughters: Sex, Redemption and Women's Quest for Authority

Abstract

As a genre, the reception history of the single biblical story has come a long way from the days of Samson-through-the-Ages, with authors offering increasingly focused and often paradigm-driven studies of their subject. Robert Polhemus uses the term ‘the Lot complex’ to describe the outworking of the reception history of the story of Lot, his wife, and his daughters, in the shape of the relationship of fathers and daughters, older men and younger women, in Western culture. It remains to be seen whether feminists will be grateful for an alternative to the Freudian Oedipus complex. This ambitious survey proceeds from an analysis of the story in Genesis 19, through early Christian exegesis, the commentaries of Luther and Calvin, Renaissance art, and on to the treatment of the theme in Shakespeare, Jane Austen, the Bröntes, Lewis Carroll and James Joyce. In addition, the theme is documented as a feature not...