The Tragic in Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) and Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych (1886)
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Date
2019
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Université Mouloud Mammeri Tizi Ouzou
Abstract
This research paper is a comparative study between the German writer Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) and the Russian writer Leo
Tolstoy The Death of Ivan Ilych (1886). Our main objective is to highlight the issue of
modern tragic hero in the selected novels in relation to Strindberg and Arthur Miller’s
theories. Throughout our investigation, we have attained our objective by depicting the tragic
fate of the common man as an outcome to a harsh struggle in modern society. Our discussion
has explored the notion of modern tragedy by shedding light on the suitability of ordinary
man to be a tragic hero. To emphasize our ideas in this dissertation, we have depicted the
impact of aristocratic values on the personality of both heroes, and the struggle for personal
dignity which led to their downfall. The work is divided into two major chapters. In the first
chapter, we have applied Strindberg’s theory and in the second Miller’s one, though in each
the target has been to demonstrate the tragic and its modern aesthetic orientations in
Goethe’s and Tolstoy’s designated texts.
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Literature and Interdisciplinary Approaches