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- Title
The Rebirth of Tragedy: Yeats, Nietzsche, the Irish National Theatre, and the Anti-Modern Cult of Cuchulain.
- Authors
Moses, Michael Valdez
- Abstract
The article presents a discussion on the use of tragedy in literature. The author says that nearly all theorists of drama, from philosopher G.W.F. Hegel to the present dramatists, assume that the advent of modernity increasingly renders classical forms of tragedy aesthetically moribund and politically irrelevant. According to this historicist view, the dramas of Greek writers of tragedies Aeschylus and Sophocles survive, but only as historical artifacts within the culture museum of modernity. They may inspire modern thinkers and artists, but their forms, themes, and contexts cannot be revived except as an exercise in antiquarianism. German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche and Irish playwright W.B. Yeats provide striking, if rare instances of the critic and dramatist who refused to accept the historicist premises underlying the modern view of Attic tragedy. Nietzsche, no less than Hegel, regards the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles as antithetical to many of the values and institutions of European modernity but for that very reason, he looks to the modern operas of German composer Richard Wagner as both marking a genuine rebirth of the spirit of classical tragedy and heralding a revolutionary antimodern turn in the cultural history of modern Europe.
- Subjects
TRAGEDY (Drama); ENGLISH drama (Tragedy); CLASSICAL drama (Tragedy); HEGEL, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831; NIETZSCHE, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900; DRAMATISTS
- Publication
Modernism/Modernity, 2004, Vol 11, Issue 3, p561
- ISSN
1071-6068
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1353/mod.2004.0065