A Dialectic Study of " Mastery and Slave" of Hegel in Bahram Beyzaie's Death of Yazdgerd and Lord Byron's Sardanapalus

The section on “Mastery and Slavery”, one of the influential sections of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, deals with the Master/Slave dialectic as a form of consciousness that is indispensable to Hegel’s account of formation of the self. In this section two self-conscious senses meet and engage in a “life and death struggle” that concludes in the enslavement of one and the victory of the other. The victor is the master and the enslaved is the slave. Hegel emphasizes that in the relation of master and slave, “mutual recognition” is crucial and both sides need to acknowledge the value of the other. The aim of this research was to examine the possibility of tracing Master/Slave dialectic in Bahram Beyzaie’s Death of Yazdgerd and Lord Byron’s Sardanapalus. This aim was achieved through a review of relevant literature and analysis of the plays. The research was important in order to provide a philosophical reading of the selected plays as well as a comparative study of them. The findings underlined that Master/Slave dialectic was traced in both plays; however, neither the kings nor their people possessed the qualities required for the continuation of the dialectic. Moreover, in both works, the lack of “mutual recognition” between the king and his people encouraged the “life and death struggle”. Nevertheless, in these plays the struggle did not amend the dialectic but destroyed it because one side of the struggle was killed in the end.