Monist Dramaturgy in Strindberg’s The Black Glove

Abstract

During his Inferno period (1894-97), August Strindberg studied Ernst Haeckel's monism, which sought to bring the divine back into Darwinist natural science and proclaimed the unity of all matter. Monism influenced a range of late-nineteenth- and early-twentiethcentury artistic, social, and political movements, including art nouveau, the historical avant-garde, spiritualism and the occult revival, the early women's and homosexual rights movements, and eugenics. Strindberg's study of Haeckel's monism coincided with his alchemical investigations into the transformability of matter. These occult studies altered Strindberg's dramaturgical approach to human and nonhuman stage matter, particularly ..