SUMMARY
The article is a psychoanalytically oriented analysis of the use of the myth of Hippolytus and Phaedra in A. Libera’s novel Madame. The function of the myth in the novel is presented in terms of the categories of reinterpretation and prefiguration as well as in the context of its ancient sources. Libera brings together the myth of Hippolytus and the myth of Oedipus by emphasizing the role of the symbolic mother and the narrative constitutes a defense against both Oedipal and pre-Oedipal conflicts. The end of the novel is an attempt at a positive resolution of the Oedipal tensions in the narrative by means of sublimation and symbolization, in the context of the Freudian conception of drives and culture.