ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates a number of fundamental influences upon Wagner and the Ring, presenting several themes that will be developed during examination of the work itself. These include a general treatment of Young Hegelianism and an account of pertinent aspects of Wagner's early career, culminating in the Saxon revolution of 1849. The chapter looks at Wagner's relationship toward Greek tragedy. Wagner neglects in his autobiographical account to mention that he himself penned an enthusiastic revolutionary greeting from Saxony to the Viennese uprising: From France sounds the call to freedom: we have repeated it; the shackles, which have created our slavery, we shall now destroy. Any half-curious intellectual would have picked up more than a little, and Wagner was certainly more than half-curious. Paris was home, if no longer to Fourier and Saint-Simon, then at least to their multifarious apostles.
