Conrad Ferdinand Meyer Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Dennis McCort

Critical Essay by Dennis McCort

SOURCE: "Gustav Adolfs Page as a Tragedy of the Unconscious" in States of Unconsciousness in Three Tales by C. F. Meyer, Bucknell University Press, 1988, pp. 33-76.

In the following excerpt, McCort considers Meyer's Gustav Adolfs Page a psychological "tragic drama " of the repression of femininity that leads to a fundamental distortion of the central character's interpretation of reality.

In the late 1870s, Meyer became drawn to the idea of writing a dramatic tragedy about the great Protestant standard-bearer of the Thirty Years War, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. The king's loyal page, August Leubelfing, son of a Nürnberg patrician, was also to figure prominently in the action. However, as time passed a curious reversal of priorities began to occur in Meyer's imagination such that, by the fall of 1881, he was paying almost as much attention to the supporting character as to the protagonist. Thinking now about the...
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