Incest in literature

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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.^[1] It occurs in medieval literature,^[2] both explicitly, as related by denizens of Hell in Dante's Inferno, and winkingly, as between Pandarus and Criseyde in Chaucer's Troilus.^[3] The Marquis de Sade was famously fascinated with "perverse" sex acts such as incest,^[4] which recurs frequently in his works, The 120 Days of Sodom (1785), Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795), and Juliette (1797).