The fall of Phaethon, son of the sun god Helios, has been taken up in art and literature as a warning against hubris. The present study analyzes the myth of Phaethon in German literature and its European contexts. Intertextual relations from antiquity to the present are unfolded, including works by Euripides, Ovid, Wickram, Gryphius, Schiller, Goethe, Achim von Arnim, Stefan George, Gerhart Hauptmann and Alexander Kluge.

Autorentext
Christiane Hansen, Frankfurt.