The Cambridge Introduction to Tragedy (Cambridge Introductions to Literature)
Cambridge University Press, 5/10/2007
EAN 9780521671491, ISBN10: 0521671493
Paperback, 252 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm
Language: English
Tragedy is the art-form created to confront the most difficult experiences we face: death, loss, injustice, thwarted passion, despair. From ancient Greek theatre up to the most recent plays, playwrights have found, in tragic drama, a means to seek explanation for disaster. But tragedy is also a word we continually encounter in the media, to denote an event which is simply devastating in its emotional power. This introduction explores the relationship between tragic experience and tragic representation. After giving an overview of the tragic theatre canon - including chapters on the Greeks, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov, post-colonial drama, and Beckett - it also looks at the contribution which philosophers have brought to this subject, before ranging across other art-forms and areas of debate. The book is unique in its chronological range, and brings a wide spectrum of examples, from both literature and life, into the discussion of this emotional and frequently controversial subject.
1. Approaching the subject
2. Tragic drama
2.1. The Greeks
2.2. Seneca and Racine
2.3. Shakespeare
2.4. Romantic tragedy
Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov
2.5. American tragedy
2.6. Postcolonial tragedy
2.7. Beckett
Case studies 1
Physical violence and dismemberment
Case studies 2
Language
3. Tragic theory
3.1. Aristotle
3.2. Hegel
3.3. Nietzsche
3.4. Kierkegaard
3.5. Camus
3.6. Girard
Case studies 1
Fate
Case studies 2
Politics
Case studies 3
Gender
4. Non-dramatic tragedy
4.1. Visual culture
4.2. Novel
4.3. Film
4.4. Psychoanalysis
4.5. Theology
5. Coda
Tragic sites
Bibliography.
'A lucid, intelligent, wide-ranging introduction to a subject of growing centrality in both criticism and political life' Professor Terry Eagleton, University of Manchester