Tragedy in Literature

This important book of thirty new essays focuses on the crucial question: what makes tragedy, especially Greek tragedy, tragic? The contributors include many of the world's foremost scholars in the field of Greek drama. The book is accessible to readers with no knowledge of Greek and will be essential reading for anyone interested in tragedy, especially students and specialists in classics, drama, and English literature.

William Storm reinterprets the concept of the tragic as both a fundamental human condition and an aesthetic process in dramatic art. He proposes an original theoretical relation between a generative and consistent tragic ground and complex characterization patterns. For Storm, it is the dismemberment of character, not the death, that is the signature mark of tragic drama. Basing his theory in the sparagmos, the dismembering rite associated with Dionysus, Storm identifies a rending tendency that transcends the ancient Greek setting and can be recognized transhistorically. A tragic character in any era suffers in the manner of the ancient god of theater: the depicted self is torn apart, figuratively if not literally, psychologically if not physically.

Storm argues that a newly objectified concept of the tragic can prove more useful critically and diagnostically than the traditional tragic "vision". He develops a theory of the tragic field, a model for the connective and cumulative activity that brings about,the distinctive Dionysian effect upon character. His theory is supported with case studies from Agamemnon and Iphigenia in Aulis, to King Lear, and The Seagull. Storm's examination of the dramatic form of tragedy and the existential questions it raises is sensitive to both their universal relevance and their historical particularity.

Comprehending tragedy has been a major philosophical and critical preoccupation in Western thought. In an effort to bring order to the multiple and often conflicting perspectives, Palmer lucidly analyzes the principal ideas about tragedy from Plato to the present. Critically surveying the similarities and differences among major theories, Palmer analyzes features associated with tragedy, such as the tragic hero, katharsis, and self-recognition; develops a working definition of tragedy; and applies these ideas to a sampling of plays that present special interpretive problems. He incorporates and explores the ideas of such eminent thinkers as Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzche, Schopenhauer, Schiller, Kierkegaard, and Freud, as well as contemporary theorists.

In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche expounds on the origins of Greek tragedy and its relevance to the German culture of its time. He declares it to be the expression of a culture which has achieved a delicate but powerful balance between Dionysian insight into the chaos and suffering which underlies all existence and the discipline and clarity of rational Apollonian form. In order to promote a return to these values, Nietzsche critiques complacent rationalism of late nineteenth-century German culture and makes an impassioned plea for the regenerative potential of the music of Wagner. A wide ranging discussion of the nature of art, science, and religion, The Birth of Tragedy's argument raises important questions about the problematic nature of cultural origins which are still valid today.

Oliver Taplin's seminal study was revolutionary in drawing out the significance of stage action in Greek tragedy at a time when plays were often read purely as texts, rather than understood as performances.Professor Taplin explores nine plays, including Aeschylus' agamemnon and Sophocles' Oedipus the King . The details of theatrical techniques and stage directions, used by playwrights to highlight key moments, are drawn out and related to the meaning of each play as a whole. With extensive translated quotations, the essential unity of action and speech in Greek tragedy is demonstrated.Now firmly established as a classic text, Greek Tragedy in Action is even more relevant today, when performances of Greek tragedies and plays inspired by them have had such an extraordinary revival around the world.

Issues of Death offers a fresh approach to the tragic drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Starting from the premise that "death" is a historical construct that is differently experienced in every culture, it treats Renaissance tragedy as an instrument for reimagining the human encounter with death. Analyses of major plays by Marlowe, Kyd, Shakespeare, Webster, Middleton, and Ford explore the relation of tragedy to the macabre tradition, to the apocalyptic displays of the anatomy theatre, and to the spectacular arts of funeral.