Mohsen Solhdoost

Father-son Conflict: Rostam & Sohrab vs. Oedipus Rex Mohsen Solhdoost

This book examines the cross-cultural conception of father-son relationship / conflict through analysis of heroic features, unconscious motives, and conscious actions of two fathers and two sons as the heroes of the stories with different mindsets in the main chapter of Shahnameh, ?Rostam and Sohrab,? and Oedipus Rex. This study is to further analyze the distinguishing characters of archetypes as primordial images which, despite being prototypal, may have different representations in different myths of different nations. Further on, this study aims to compare and contrast both similarities and differences in demonstration of same archetypes transcending time and place in two distant cultural settings. The methodological framework used to undertake this research consists of Freud?s theory of psychoanalysis, Jung?s theory of archetypes, as well as the anthropological standpoints of Frazer and Frye. An interdisciplinary approach has been actually applied as the conceptual theory to conduct this study.