Den tragiska Glasvärlden : En kort inledning till det tragiska och fyra "tragiska" perspektiv på Hjalmar Söderbergs Doktor Glas

Sammanfattning: In recent years, Hjalmar Söderberg’s novel Doktor Glas (1905) has been conceived as more complex compared to its contemporary interpretations, and has been associated with many different ideas. The novel stands the test of time and forces readers to reflect on difficult issues. However, only sporadic attention has been paid to the connection between Doktor Glas and tragedy, hidden in the form of direct references or allusions to Greek antiquity and occasional reminiscences of Greek tragedy.    Tragedy is a branch of drama and for centuries Aristotle’s Poetics offered the only definition of tragedy available. Nevertheless, renowned philosophers and thinkers have offered alternative definitions of tragedy that describe aspects of tragedy not adressed by Aristotle; the list of tragic requirements seems to change and vary through the ages and by extension the term may be applied to ”a conception of the tragic”.     This thesis explores the experience of tragedy and the tragic in Doktor Glas. That will be accomplished with four idea analyses of the novel, each one from a different ”tragic” point of view. In other words, through dialogue between the novel and the tragic conception as conceived by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche and Albert Camus in order to embody in the novel the ”image” of the tragic as created by each of the above-mentioned important philosophers and thinkers, with focus directed towards the old question of the aristotelian term katharsis. One of the main results of the present study is that from a ”tragic” point of view, Doktor Glas is remarkably modern.    The author aims to perform a divergent, still creative approach to the ambiguous Doktor Glas according to her background and previous education in the anthropocentic discipline of studies in Classical Philology.