Art and bourgeois society in Peter Szondi’s theory of the theatrical text

Abstract

This essay analyses the arguments deployed by Peter Szondi in his Essay on the tragic (1961), Theory of bourgeois drama (1973), and Theory of modern drama (1956) so as to undertake a general characterization of his sociology of literature, highlighting the author’s attention to the conflicts between the writing of theatrical texts and the tradition of theatrical genres. That writing process is such that plants the text firmly in its historical background, so that its complex social situation is formally crystallised in its logical structure as a sort of aesthetic account of its time. As the Western civilizing effort itself thus becomes thematic for theatrical works, its contradictions express themselves in their form.