Barry Millington

Theology of Wagner’s Ring Cycle I

Theology

“I am not aware of any more meticulous trawl of the voluminous sources for, and influences on, the Ring, through the ancient Greek dramas, Old Norse and Germanic myths, Dante and Shakespeare to Goethe and Schiller. The work of the major German Idealists—Fichte, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Feuerbach, and Schopenhauer—is subjected to forensic analysis for Wagner’s debt to each. Above all, Professor Bell is concerned to demonstrate possible influences on theological and ethical issues in the Ring.”