Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1996

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Pearce, Howard D.

Abstract

The Apollonian-Dionysian duality is a mythical opposition that suggests a complex and fundamental pattern of looking at the world. In this opposition Nietzsche identified two antagonistic tendencies whose tense coexistence is a prerequisite of the tragic genre; in his formulation tragic conflict must essentially involve a tension between rationality and irrationality, at the level of plot, character, genre. I adopt this symbolic mythical pattern to explore the theme of dramatic conflict in an ancient play, Euripides's The Bacchae, and in a modern text, Schrader's screenplay Kiss of the Spider Woman. At the heart of both these dramatic works there lies a profound and balanced conflict between illusion and reality, emotion and reason, pragmatism and idealism, nature and culture, a conflict structured according to the Apollonian-Dionysian matrix. This thesis explores the connections between the two texts and reveals that their common predicament consists of an unsettled dramatic opposition of Apollonian and Dionysian imaginative realms.

Extent

79 p.

Comments

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1996.|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

Identifier

FADT15296

Format

pdf

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