Graduation Semester and Year

2011

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in English

Department

English

First Advisor

Wendy Faris

Abstract

Friedrich Nietzsche's theory of the Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy can be seen at work in the texts of canonical modernist writers such as Virginia Woolf, Hermann Hesse, Albert Camus, Rainer Maria Rilke, William B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot, and it is in the balance of these two Greek deities that modernist literary characters affirm life, thus reversing the typically negative interpretations of modernist literature. My aim is to show how the primordial, divergent elements of the Apollonian and Dionysian reveal themselves across the field of modernist literature and synthesize to create moments of truth, mental equilibrium, and life-affirmation amongst its characters. I also discuss the tribulations characters face if they fail to embrace a balance of Apollo and Dionysus.Through faith in the Greek dichotomy: the individual, Apollonian-self in conjunction with the Dionysian community, and by accepting their single, earth-bound existence, modernist characters affirm life - whether blissful or bitter.

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | English Language and Literature

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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