英美學界向來將尤金．歐尼爾 (Eugene O’Neill) 界定成美國劇作家，鮮少細究其愛爾蘭移民背景，如何影響劇作中所呈現以土地為中心之倫理價值，及所扭曲之人性。生活常處於「流放」狀態的歐尼爾，如同其他厭棄愛爾蘭之封閉文化而前往他國追尋創作自由的藝術家們，對人性底層之慾望均有深刻的描摹，尤其當赤裸裸的情慾與社會道德相衝突，終至逾越界線時的掙扎與矛盾，尤其令觀眾駭異不知所措。然而，當代愛爾蘭本土劇作家瑪麗納．卡爾 (Marina Carr) 對禁忌情慾卻有不同的詮釋：亂倫成為一種「必要的惡」，是一種與生俱來，隱晦但非不值得救贖的情愫；它也是來自人類內心情慾極限的真實情感，不應一味加以譴責。本文除了探索兩位劇作家如何突破傳統希臘悲劇處理亂倫情結的框架，並透過心理分析家如佛洛依德 (Sigmund Freud)、德勒茲 (Gilles Deleuze)、瓜塔里 (Félix Guattari) 等人對「私密慾望」之剖析，重新定義亂倫為「慾望機器」(The Desiring Machine) 的打火石，是人理解自己、宗族、社會時必須直視的慾望，不能視而不見。

The American playwright Eugene O’Neill, who had an Irish-born father, can be studied with profit alongside Marina Carr, a contemporary Irish woman dramatist, in that both of them present not only relevant Irish heritage in their works but also a shared interest in the incestuous relationships in Greek tragedies. Although their plays are not on the grand scale of Phaedra or Oedipus, O’Neill, having been an editor for a collection of Greek dramas, and Carr, who has written over thirty adaptations of Greek tragedies, both dramatize the incestuous lust of their countrymen in Desire under the Elms (1924) and On Raftery’s Hill (2000), respectively. Incestuous passion, however, is not simply, as Sigmund Freud suggests, an expression of inherent but repressed sexual love between family members, but is mixed with desire for the legitimate inheritance of land and self-recognition. Although O’Neill and Carr both apply social ethics to these tragic family affairs, they introduce an unconventional, and not necessarily celebrated, presentation of incest, so as to challenge this taboo and the patriarchal violence to which the father figures in both plays resort and impose on their families. O’Neill’s and Carr’s reinterpretations of incest in rural settings across the Atlantic Ocean and almost seven decades both question the stereotypical, often male-privileged depiction of resentful female victims in Greek tragedies. This paper will therefore examine how the two playwrights—with Irish connections abroad and at home—dramatize the Oedipus and Electra complexes of the characters, and the playwrights’ interrogation of the social mechanisms to which their characters are subject.