Abstract

REYES PALACIOS, Felipe. The Ifigenia cruel of Reyes and the Cambridge School of Anthropology. Approaches. Lit. mex [online]. 2025, vol.36, n.2, pp.13-29.  Epub Jan 06, 2026. ISSN 2448-8216.  https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.litmex/36.2.2025/001wx254107s61.

At a very young age, at 18, Alfonso Reyes had already read the famous books by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, The World as Will and as Representation, and The Origin of Tragedy, respectively; at the same time he cultivated a “fondness of Greece,” as is evident in his early essay on “The Three Electras of the Athenian Theater” (1908).Then came the death of his father, General Bernardo Reyes, in a violent episode of the Mexican Revolution in 1913, when he led an uprising against President Francisco I. Madero. Reyes recalled this fatal episode in his dramatic poem Iphigenia Cruel in 1923. In his version he introduced a new ending, different from that of the well-known story presented by Euripides in Iphigenia in Tauris. Equally important, in it he tried to adhere to the canonical structure of Greek tragedy, as postulated by the members of the so-called “Cambridge anthropological school.” As a result of his adherence to them, Reyes emphasized the importance of the chorus, a theoretical legacy of Nietzsche. In addition, he wrote two paratexts about his experience in performing his own short version of Iphigenia.

Keywords : Greek tragedy; Dionysian ritual; Cambridge School of Anthropology.

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