Selected Essays

Paul Heise has been a dedicated Wagner scholar for many years now and has assembled a critical anthology of passages from Wagner's written works and recorded remarks. They appear here in English translation.

Critical Chronological Anthology of Passages From Wagner's Writings and Recorded Remarks (In English translation) Part 1: 1833-50 – Part 2: 1851-60 – Part 3: 1861-70 – Part 4: 1871-83

Heise has recently completed a work on Wagner's Parsifal:

The Influence of Ludwig Feuerbach's Philosophy Upon the Libretto of Richard Wagner's Music-Drama Parsifal

The essays that follow were mostly written by former students in my Wagner's Ring class, many of them undergraduates. It goes without saying that their opinions are not necessarily mine.

Adam Ballard
Wagner's Anti-Classical Influence

Jared Bauer
Forces of Love

Elizabeth Bittner
Wagner's Use of Paired Characters in The Ring

Brandon Bledsoe
The Lawgiver and The Divine Magician: Interpreting Wagner's Wotan in the Context of Germanic Mythology

Peter Brach
The Anti-Semitic Intention of The Ring of the Nibelung: An Evaluation of Jewish Culture and Wagner's Dwarven Characters

Brian Carter
Meaning in the Motives: an Analysis of the Leitmotifs of Wagner's Ring

James Ham
The Death of a Relationship and Its Critical Remains

Vishnu Jonnalagadda
The Rock of the Hood: The Legend of 'Schnu Dawg'
(Glossary of Terms for the Rock of the Hood)

Edgar LaSalle
Loge and Loki

John Lindner
Staging Der Ring des Nibelungen: The Revolutionary Ideas of Adolphe Appia and Their Roots in Schopenhaurian Aesthetic Principles

Max Maier
Tristan und Isolde as Hegelian Tragedy

John Merritt
"Those Ill-Mannered Girls": Brünnhilde, the Other Valkyries, and Some Familial and Dramatic Relationships Among Some of the Characters in Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Nauder Namaky
Tristan und Isolde as Hegelian Tragedy