SOURCE: “Symbolism in Grillparzer's Das goldene Vliess, in PMLA, Vol. 75, March, 1960, pp. 75-82.

In the following essay, Dunham offers a symbolic study of Das goldene Vließ, maintaining that the many symbols give the trilogy “its rich texture and poetic power.”

In an age when symbols are being discovered in literary works where critics of an earlier period would never have dreamed of looking for them there is probably little need to defend a study of symbolism in Grillparzer's work.¹ Indeed Grillparzer himself recognized that there is a symbolic element in all art and reproached his own time for its refusal to acknowledge the symbolic aspect of poetic truth.² Das goldene Vließ, moreover, is not the only drama in which Grillparzer uses symbols. In Sappho, for instance, the lyre, the laurel wreath, the rose, the statue of Aphrodite, and the dagger all have symbolic significance. Even the title of...