Ricerc@Sapienza

The essay focuses on Adorno’s interpretation of Goethe’s Iphigenia and on its relation with the themes developed by Adorno and Horkheimer in the Dialectic of Enlightenment. The central issue at stake is the relationship between myth (understood by Adorno as an endless chain of faults and expiation) and the conciliation that breaks this chain, rescuing thereby human beings from their subordination to mythical destiny.

The story of Artemis from Tauris, stolen by Iphigenia and Orestes, was one of the best-loved of the ancient world, represented in both public and private contexts in Greek and Roman times. This paper focuses on the topic of the ancient xoanon of the goddess, which was widely claimed by many places, while the ritual surrounding it was totally dismissed or at least strongly modified.