In this thesis the analysis of Hegel's concept of history (as developed in his lectures, later
collected in Lectures on the Philosophy of History) is followed by a discussion of the philosophical and historical aspects in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. I have focused especially on the play's main idea, its characters and their role in the plot, on the play's internal and external structure, and its interpretation. After the tragedy had been analysed with the actantial model (as defined by Anne Ubersfeld,) Volker Klotz's theory of closed and open form in drama, and some insights from Aristotle's Poetics, I have tried to deduce wheter and/or to what extent the play's dissected parts fit Hegel's model of historical development. Terms discussed are spirit, freedom, cunning of reason, world-historical individual, passions, and repetition. My focus was on the way Julius Caesar's character is portrayed both in Hegel and Shakespeare, and on the way his two interpretations influence the ideas conveyed by one author and the other. After the comparisson between Hegel's philosophy of history with the elements of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar I discussed the reasons behind discovered simmilarities and differences. In the continuation, I have tried to think of the changes needed in the play for it to fit the Hegelian concept of history better, and whether such reconciliation is even possible between literature (more specifically, between classical form of tragedy) and (Hegel's) philosohpy. Reversely, I was debating on the extent to which Hegel's model of historical development is itself literary or dramatic, and in which ways his work is closer to literature than it is to historiography.
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