Text and subtext -- The trouble with Oedipus : Sophocles' Oedipus the king -- Blood for blood : the Gospel according to Matthew -- In you my death, in you my life : the Tristan legend -- Lust forever : Dante's Inferno, the Francesca episode -- Strange mutations : Shakespeare's King Lear -- In flames and in tears : Racine's Phaedra -- A wanderer on earth : Goethe's The sorrows of young Werther -- On death row : Stendhal's The red and the black -- Like an echo fading : Flaubert's "A simple heart" -- Mankind revisited : Dostoyevsky's "The grand inquisitor" -- A lamed and tamed duck : Ibsen's The wild duck -- Death beckoning : Thomas Mann's Death in Venice -- From plagued Thebes to plagued Venice.