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Guiscard and Oedipus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2022

Extract

In Kleist's Robert Guiscard there appear to be three main centers of interest: Guiscard himself, his army, and the members of his family. Undoubtedly Guiscard was to occupy a dominating position in the dramatic action; the fortunes of his family and of his army were to be of secondary importance compared with his own. Nevertheless, the army and the family were not a mere background of the tragic action, they were an essential part of it. This is shown by the vivid and emphatic description of the army surging around Guiscard's tent like the tempestuous sea around a rock, and by the clear-cut characterization of such figures as the old warrior, Abelard and Guiscard's son Robert.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Tulane Drama Review 1962

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Footnotes

*

From “Robert Guiscard and Die Familie Schroffenstein,” in E. L. Stahl's The Dramas of Heinrich von Kleist. Reprinted by permission of Basil Blackwell, Oxford, England.

References

Notes

1 English translation in Poet Lore, Volume 25.

2 English translation in Eric Bentley's The Classic Theatre, Volume 2.

3 In a letter dated April 10, 1804.

4 On June 18, 1801, he borrowed Part I of Das tragische Theater der Griechen by Steinbruchel from the Dresden library. This volume contains four dramas of Sophocles, including Oedipus.