Series | Lexis Supplements
Edited book | Il mito degli Atridi dal teatro antico all’epoca contemporanea
Chapter | Gli Atridi di Gerhart Hauptmann
Gli Atridi di Gerhart Hauptmann
Abstract
The Atriden Tetralogie (1940‑45) by Gerhart Hauptmann (1862‑1946) does not express, as was thought after the war, the poet’s resistance to Nazism: on the contrary, the work conforms to the Nazi aesthetics and ideology imposed on the interpretation of the myth since the Oresteia of 1936, staged on the occasion of the Olympic Games. Hauptmann, however, re-functionalises the myth to express the emotional atmosphere of Germany during the war, to exalt sacrifice for the homeland and blind faith in the Führer, to represent the horror of defeat and the horror of the German cities reduced to ashes by bombing. In the last tragedy of the tetralogy, Electra, Hauptmann poses the problem of German guilt for the horrors of World War II.
Submitted: Nov. 2, 2022 | Accepted: Nov. 4, 2022 | Published July 7, 2023 | Language: it
Keywords Gerhart Hauptmann • Nazism • Atriden • Tragedy • World War II
Copyright © 2023 Sotera Fornaro. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-709-8/010
