AMND12 Apollonian and Dionysian in A Midsummer Night's Dream, by Iván Blanco. IES Pedro Floriani, Redondela, Interdepartamental Project 2015-16. Department of Philosophy, Department of English

1. The Apollonian and
Dionysian
Nietzsche
by Iván Blanco

2. Index
1. The Gods 5.Applied to AMSND
2.The Symbols 6.Conclusion
3.The Characters 7.Personal assessment
4.Nietzsche and the Apollonian and Dionysian

3. The Apollonian
Apollo: The God of sudden death,
healing, beauty and reason.
Dionysius: The God of wine,
madness and trance
The Dionysian

4. The Apollonian
It represents the law, the order,
the city of Athens
The Dionysian
It represents the anarchy, chaos,
the wood.

5. The Apollonian
Apollonian characters: Theseus and
Egeus.
The Dionysian
Dionysian characters: The fairies
and Hypolitta.

6. Nietzsche: The Apollonian and the Dionysian
Nietzsche in his work the birth of tragedy said that the magnificence of the Ancient
Greeks took place before Plato and Socrates, when they had their rational
representation but also a representation of chaos and instinct, the Apollonian and
the Dionysian; he said that the Greek started to think more of the Apollonian “mind”
and left the Dionysian aside.
He said that we need our Apollonian and Dionysian version working together,
chaos and rational mind.

7. Applied to A Midsummer Night’s Dream
In AMSND we can see that the problems start in the “Apollonian symbols” of the
book: Athens and the day, as well as in the representation of the Apollonian. These
problems can be solved in the “Dionysian symbols” of the book: the wood and the
night.
So we can say that the problems start because of our rational mind and they get
solved by our instinct.

8. Conclusion
We can say that Shakespeare starts to talk about the Apollonian and Dionysian 300
years before the theory of Nietzsche, so Shakespeare was a really philosophical
writer.

9. Personal Assessment
I think the people usually think that our apollonian side is more important than our
dionysian one, because the apollonian represents the reason and the dionysian the
chaos but we sometimes need our instinct to solve some of our problems like
dreams sometimes help use to choose one option when we don't know what we
are going to choose.
So we need our two sides to have a balanced life.