Wagner, Freud and the End of Myth 7: Tom Artin - The Ring in a Nutshell: A Glimpse at The Wagner Complex

Tom Artin - The Ring in a Nutshell: A Glimpse at The Wagner Complex

Wagner, Freud and the End of Myth: Day conference, Saturday 28 September 2013

In this paper I will present an overview of my recently published The Wagner Complex: Genesis and Meaning of The Ring, which sets forth a psychoanalytic interpretation of Wagner's operatic tetralogy. Though a commonplace that Wagner's works offer fertile ground for Freudian analysis, remarkably little investigation along these lines has actually seen publication. This book's thesis rests on an exploration of the 19th c. Zeitgeist in whose atmosphere Wagner's operatic creations and Freud's psychological speculations alike came to fruition, most notably the emerging conjecture--scientific as well as philosophical--of the fundamental role played by the unconscious in everyday life and the creative process. The overarching conclusion of The Wagner Complex is that The Ring comprises not merely fanciful adventures (and misadventures) of gods, giants, and dwarves, of super-human heroes and anti-heroes such as traverse its intricate surface, but shadows forth symbolically the drama of unconscious intra-psychic conflict.

Tom Artin was educated at Princeton, from which he holds a Ph. D. in Comparative Literature. He has held academic positions at a number of American colleges and universities, Swarthmore College and SUNY Rockland among them. His interest in Wagner evolved both from his training as a medievalist and his life-long involvement with music, and opera in particular. He is the author of several books, including The Allegory of Adventure, an exegetical study of the Arthurian romances of the 12th c. French poet Chrétien de Troyes, and most recently The Wagner Complex: Genesis and Meaning of The Ring.