In Lysell’s chapter, the stage presence of Medea comes to the fore, in twentieth-century productions of the versions by Euripides and Grillparzer. With specific focus on the last years of the eighteenth century, and the beginning of the nineteenth century, Lysell emphasizes the return of the mythical and metaphysical forces in the play. He discusses the move from the humanized eighteenth-century Medea to Klinger’s tragedies where the gods are ‘evil horror forces’, and he extends his analysis to Franz Grillparzer’s seminal Medea of 1821. Here in this early nineteenth-century tragedy, it is both exile as existential determinant and the ineluctability of ‘the ancient demonic forces’ that are foregrounded. With Grillparzer, Lysell argues, the stage is set for the twentieth-century Medea, and her relevance as a psychologically complex figure.

På den protestantiska kyrkogården i Rom vid Cestiuspyramiden vilar de jordiska kvarlevorna av två av den andra generationens mest betydande engelska romantiska poeter, nämligen John Keats (31/10 1795—23/2 1821) och Percy Bysshe Shelley (4/8 1792—8/7 1822). Gravarna har utförligt beskrivits, exempelvis i Johan Beck-Friis Il Cimetero accattolico di Roma. I båda fallen har staden Rom haft en avgärande betydelse för deras fama, ehuru på skilda sätt.

Most literary and theater historians emphasize the historical importance of Ibsen, Strindberg, and Andre Antoine's Theatre Libre and as a consequence Shelley's Prometheus Unbound is reduced to a parenthesis in the history of drama. Can contemporary views on tragedy expressed in theoretical works by Hans-Thies Lehmann and put on stage by, for example, Jan Fabre, Romeo Castellucci, and Olivier Dubois, cast a new light on Shelley's play and make it more familiar with the stage? Prometheus Unbound does not replace the lost play of the trilogy of Aeschylus. Rather, it questions the premises of the Greek play and it is to a certain extent a metadrama. The concept of excess, central to Lehmann and Fabre, is one of the characteristics of Shelley's drama. The Aristotelian concept of opsis, neglected in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century tragedy theory, is fundamental in Prometheus Unbound just as are music and voices. Prometheus Unbound is a typically Romantic drama as its action takes place on several levels at the same time: on stage and on a cosmic level, on stage and in a phantom world, on stage and in the mind. The use of metaphors and similes (as, like) are consitutive of the play and they constantly draw our attention to new modalities (memories, dreams, visions) and back again and thus make the modality of the action insecure. In these respects, Shelley's drama can be looked upon as a forerunner of the avantgarde theater of today.

Den artonde internationella Strindbergskonferensen Arvet efter Strindberg/The Strindberg Legacy ägde rum i Aula Magna vid Stockholms universitet 31.5-3.6 2012. Medarrangör till Stockholms universitet var Strindbergssällskapet. På Frescati samlades närmare åttio forskare från hela världen för att dela med sig av insikter och upptäckter under tre dagar. Fokus låg på Strindberg från vår tids utsiktspunkt. Hans inflytande har format teaterns, litteraturens och måleriets utveckling. Verken fungerar fortfarande som utgångspunkt och kommentar till den samtida debatten – inte bara i Sverige eller Norden utan över stora delar av världen. Detta gör forskningen kring Strindberg och hans verk angelägen ännu hundra år efter hans död.