Strindberg's Miss Julie and the Legend of Salome
Since Strindberg's letter to his publisher claiming Miss Julie (1888) as "the first Naturalistic Tragedy in Swedish Drama'" and the important Foreword which he wrote alter the play was completed, it has been usual to see Miss Julie as an experiment in the kind or drama developed...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
1989
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| In: |
Modern drama
Year: 1989, Volume: 32, Issue: 4, Pages: 469-484 |
| Further subjects: | B
Girard, René (1923-2015)
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Since Strindberg's letter to his publisher claiming Miss Julie (1888) as "the first Naturalistic Tragedy in Swedish Drama'" and the important Foreword which he wrote alter the play was completed, it has been usual to see Miss Julie as an experiment in the kind or drama developed by Zola from Darwin's theories of environmental conditioning and the survival of the fittest. Thus, Martin Lamm calls the play "a strict application of Zolaesque principles" and Eric Bentley a "tragedy of the Darwinian ethos. '" Its theme of war between the sexes has been traced partly to Strindberg's ambivalence towards his parents, as revealed in the first volume of his autobiognphy , The Son of a Servant, and partly to his stormy marriage to Siri von Essen, the aristocratic actress who created the role of Miss Julie, which he had anatomized in The Confession of a Fool just before he wrote the play. It is argued that he interpreted these personal experiences mainly through his reading of Schopenhauer's misogynist philosophy of "will" and Eduard von Hartmann's Philosophie des Unbewussten complicating them further by his fervent Rousseau—ist socialism at this period of his life and by his fascination with the experiments that Charcot and Bernheim were currently conducting in the treatment of hysteria by hypnosis — experiments which also excited the young Sigmund Freud. |
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| ISSN: | 1712-5286 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Modern drama
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1353/mdr.1989.0003 DOI: 10.3138/md.32.4.469 |