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

Explores how, after Nietzsche, Dionysus and the ancient Greeks would never be the same again.

Adam Lecznar (Author)

9781108482561, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 April 2020

256 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.8 cm, 0.48 kg

'The scholarly rigour of Dionysus after Nietzsche, and the painstaking research evidenced throughout, mark it out as a vital addition to existing work on the interactions between ancient and modern literature. This book will be of keen interest to all students and researchers of classical reception, especially tragedy, as well as those of modern literature, philosophy, and social theory, in addition to the interested general reader.' Samuel Agbamu, Rhea Classical Reviews

Dionysus after Nietzsche examines the way that The Birth of Tragedy (1872) by Friedrich Nietzsche irrevocably influenced twentieth-century literature and thought. Adam Lecznar argues that Nietzsche's Dionysus became a symbol of the irrational forces of culture that cannot be contained, and explores the presence of Nietzsche's Greeks in the diverse writings of Jane Harrison, D. H. Lawrence, Martin Heidegger, Richard Schechner and Wole Soyinka (amongst 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 used the Nietzschean vision of Greece to develop subversive discourses of temporality, identity, history and classicism. In this way, they all took up Nietzsche's call to disrupt pre-existing discourses of classical meaning and create new modes of thinking about the Classics that speak to the immediate concerns of the present.

Introduction. Dionysus after Nietzsche
1. Corybants, satyrs and bulls: Jane Harrison
2. A great kick at misery: D. H. Lawrence
3. In search of an absent god: Martin Heidegger
4. What Oedipus knew: Richard Schechner
5. Dionysus in Yorubaland: Wole Soyinka
Conclusion. Dionysus today.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Western philosophy, from c 1900 - [HPCF], Western philosophy: Enlightenment [HPCD1], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF]