Dionysus after Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy in Twentieth-Century Literature and Thought

Dionysus after Nietzsche explores how Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy influenced twentieth-century literature and thought. Adam Lecznar argues that Nietzsche's Dionysus became a symbol of uncontainable cultural forces, and how various writers, such as Jane Harrison, D. H. Lawrence, Martin Heidegger, Richard Schechner, and Wole Soyinka, used the Nietzschean vision of Greece to develop subversive discourses of temporality, identity, history, and classicism.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 258 pages
Publication date: 08 February 2024
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Dionysus, following Nietzsche's examination, delves into the profound impact of Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy (1872) on twentieth-century literature and thought. Adam Lecznar contends that Nietzsche's Dionysus emerged as a symbol of the uncontainable irrational forces of culture, and he explores the presence of Nietzsche's Greek influences in the diverse writings of Jane Harrison, D. H. Lawrence, Martin Heidegger, Richard Schechner, and Wole Soyinka (among others).

From Jane Harrison's controversial ideas about Greek religion in an anthropological modernity to Wole Soyinka's reimagining of a postcolonial genre of tragedy, each of the writers under discussion utilized Nietzsche's vision of Greece to develop subversive discourses of temporality, identity, history, and classicism. In this way, they all responded to Nietzsche's call to disrupt pre-existing discourses of classical meaning and create new modes of thinking about the Classics that address the pressing concerns of the present.

Weight: 396g
Dimension: 151 x 230 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781108710671