By: Rae Muhlstock
University at Albany
Abstract:
Like the labyrinth that is both his prison and his palace, the Minotaur of myth is a hybrid, a single structure forged in the tensions between unlike things. While in language he is described by his component parts—half-man, half-bull—the Minotaur is emphatically hybrid, containing no borders between the man and the bull that make him. Thus, my presentation questions the (in)ability of the reader to process such ambivalence as a deficit of language itself, for words are read in sequence and not in the simultaneity that characterizes the Minotaur’s hybridity. To counter the literary techniques of Ovid and others, I draw on Lacan and Kristeva alongside the visual arts of Pablo Picasso, Michael Ayrton, and Alison Chitty to suggest a visual orthography through which to read the hybrid narratology of the Minotaur, allowing viewers to see, as Theseus did, the full narrative potential that is his birthright.
Keywords: Classical Receptions, Ovid, Picasso, Minotaur, Visual Studies, Psychoanalysis
To cite as: Muhlstock, R., 2025, “The Minotaur: Artistic Ambiguity and Psychological Ambivalence,” PsyArt 29.1, pp. 103-115.