An edition of Treacherous bonds and laughing fire (2005)
Treacherous bonds and laughing fire
politics and religion in Wagner's Ring
By Mark Berry
Publish Date
2005
Publisher
Ashgate
Language
eng
Pages
287
Description:
"Mark Berry explores the political and religious ideas expounded in Wagner's Ring through close attention to the text and drama, the multifarious intellectual influences upon the composer during the work's lengthy gestation and composition, and the wealth of Wagner source material. Many of his writings are explicitly political in their concerns, for Wagner was emphatically not a revolutionary solely for the sake of art. Yet it would be misleading to see even the most 'political' tracts as somehow divorced from the aesthetic realm; Wagner's radical challenge to liberal-democratic politics makes no such distinction. This book considers Wagner's treatment of various worlds: nature, politics, economics, and metaphysics, in order to explain just how radical that challenge is."--Jacket.