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Some Victorian Perceptions of Greek Tragedy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2010

Richard Dowgun
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Extract

The Victorians would have been remarkable if they had resisted the temptation to find lessons for, and parallels with, their own situation in the history they wrote. The story of Athens in the fifth century B.C. was particularly enticing in this regard. The small state that defeated the Persians at Salamis, that rapidly became the leader of Western civilization, that brought to birth advances in art, in philosophy, in practical science, that struggled toward democracy, that attained imperial power but then began to decline, seemed obviously to prefigure the destiny of the small state that defeated France at Waterloo, that brought to birth the Industrial Revolution, and so on. In this paper I will examine the implications for their own times that various Victorians found in the lives and works of the Greek tragedians. I will show how two different groups interpreted Aeschylus so as to appropriate his prestige for their own view of life; how the figure of Sophocles was used in the debate over aestheticism; and how Euripides' philosophical sophistication and ambiguity were felt to have a special relevance for troubled thinkers at the end of the century. Trying to summarize so much critical diversity is rather like trying to reduce an opera to a melody or two; but, to change metaphors, the field is new, and first maps are always crude.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 10 , Spring 1982 , pp. 71 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

Notes

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37. Lewis Campbell, Tragic Drama in Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Shakespeare, p. 165.

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