The image one had of ancient Greece at the end of the eighteenth century in Germany was largely idyllic, but the absolute harmony of the Greek world was put into crisis by Hegel’s analysis of Sophocles’ Antigone (1807) and, even more so, by Bachofen’s Mother Right (1861) (Bachofen was one of the University of Göttingen’s most renowned students). With Hegel and Bachofen, new mythical and social roles of masculine and feminine are identified, as well as the one that Strindberg and Nietzsche will name a “struggle of the sexes”. Through Paul Lafargue (Karl Marx's son-in-law), and indirectly through Engels too, Bachofen will influence Strindberg’s approach to modern drama, pushing him, with The Father (1887), to outline a modern and bourgeois version of the Oresteia.
Strindberg and Bachofen. Tragic Greece.
Franco Perrelli
2020-01-01
Abstract
The image one had of ancient Greece at the end of the eighteenth century in Germany was largely idyllic, but the absolute harmony of the Greek world was put into crisis by Hegel’s analysis of Sophocles’ Antigone (1807) and, even more so, by Bachofen’s Mother Right (1861) (Bachofen was one of the University of Göttingen’s most renowned students). With Hegel and Bachofen, new mythical and social roles of masculine and feminine are identified, as well as the one that Strindberg and Nietzsche will name a “struggle of the sexes”. Through Paul Lafargue (Karl Marx's son-in-law), and indirectly through Engels too, Bachofen will influence Strindberg’s approach to modern drama, pushing him, with The Father (1887), to outline a modern and bourgeois version of the Oresteia.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
