In the present article, the classical literary topos of 'love out of hatred' is introduced and its development in Eugene O'Neill's American tragedy Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) is studied. This topos comprises four stages: a declaration of hatred, quarrels between the parties, progressive emotional attachment and, finally, a confession of love.The topos is traced back to the story of Achilles and Briseis in book one of Homer's Iliad. While the storyline of O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra is expressly based on the classical Orestes-Electra narratives, the play creatively incorporates this classical topos. Moreover, the recontextualization of literary topoi is an unconscious literary process whereby a topos, as a living expression of human experience, continues to develop in modern literature. O'Neill's trilogy combines architextual and hypertextual relationships to classical texts through deliberately taking inspiration from Aeschylus's Oresteia and incorporating the syntax of 'love out of hatred' as a classical topos.
