Download or read book Tragedy and Theory written by Michelle Zerba and published by . This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michelle Zerba engages current debates about the relationship between literature and theory by analyzing responses of theorists in the Western tradition to tragic conflict. Isolating the centrality of conflict in twentieth-century definitions of tragedy, Professor Zerba discusses the efforts of modern critics to locate in Aristotle's Poetics the origins of this focus on agon. Through a study of ethical and political ideas formative of the Poetics, she demonstrates why Aristotle and his Renaissance and Neoclassical beneficiaries exclude conflict from their accounts of tragedy. The agonistic element, the book argues, first emerges in dramatic criticism in nineteenth-century Romantic theories of the sublime and, more influentially, in Hegel's lectures on drama and history. This turning point in the history of speculation about tragedy is examined with attention to a dynamic between the systematic aims of theory and the subversive conflicts of tragic plays. In readings of various Classical and Renaissance dramatists, Professor Zerba reveals that strife in tragedy undermines expectations of coherence, closure, and moral stability, on which theory bases its principles of dramatic order. From Aristotle to Hegel, the philosophical interest in securing these principles determines attitudes toward conflict. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book Tragedy and Tragic Theory written by Richard H. Palmer and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 1992-06-30 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehending tragedy has been a major philosophical and critical preoccupation in Western thought. Whether concerned with the generic problem of definition or with tragedy in the context of specific writers or periods, books with multiple and often conflicting perspectives abound. In an effort to bring order to the explanations over two millennia, Tragedy and Tragic Theory 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, who also appear with biographical blurbs in an appendix to the volume along with an extensive bibliography. By examining both tragedy and the theoretical responses to tragedy, this study demonstrates that the definition of tragedy depends on the meaning perceived by an audience rather than on a structured stimulus independent of response; yet, it does not abandon the possibility of isolating fixed defining characteristics. The audience response approach provides a framework for analyzing earlier theories. Systematically developed, the study is equally valuable as a text in drama and criticism or as a convenient reference tool to drama theory and theorists.

Download or read book Archive Feelings written by Mario Telò and published by . This book was released on 2023-11-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using classic Greek texts and modern theory, Telò forges a new model of tragic aesthetics.

Download or read book Tragedy and Theory written by Michelle Zerba and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michelle Zerba engages current debates about the relationship between literature and theory by analyzing responses of theorists in the Western tradition to tragic conflict. Isolating the centrality of conflict in twentieth-century definitions of tragedy, Professor Zerba discusses the efforts of modern critics to locate in Aristotle's Poetics the origins of this focus on agon. Through a study of ethical and political ideas formative of the Poetics, she demonstrates why Aristotle and his Renaissance and Neoclassical beneficiaries exclude conflict from their accounts of tragedy. The agonistic element, the book argues, first emerges in dramatic criticism in nineteenth-century Romantic theories of the sublime and, more influentially, in Hegel's lectures on drama and history. This turning point in the history of speculation about tragedy is examined with attention to a dynamic between the systematic aims of theory and the subversive conflicts of tragic plays. In readings of various Classical and Renaissance dramatists, Professor Zerba reveals that strife in tragedy undermines expectations of coherence, closure, and moral stability, on which theory bases its principles of dramatic order. From Aristotle to Hegel, the philosophical interest in securing these principles determines attitudes toward conflict. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book Psychoanalytic Theory of Greek Tragedy written by C. Fred Alford and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1992-10-11 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Psychoanalytic readings of literature are often reductionist, seeking to find in great works of the past support for current psychoanalytic tenets. In this book C. Fred Alford begins with the possibility that the insights into human needs and aspirations contained in Greek tragedy might be more profound than psychoanalytic theory. He offers his own psychoanalytic interpretation of the tragedies, one that reconstructs the dramatists' views of the world and, when necessary, enlarges psychoanalysis to take these views into account. Alford draws on an eclectic mixture of psychoanalytic theories--in particular the work of Melanie Klein, Robert Jay Lifton, and Jacques Lacan--to help him illuminate the concerns of the Greek poets. He discusses not only well-known tragedies, such as Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy, Sophocles' Theban plays, and Euripides' Medea and Bacchae, but also lesser-known works, such as Sophocles' Philoctetes and Euripides' so-called romantic comedies. Alford examines the fundamental concerns of the tragedies: how to live in a world in which justice and power often seem to have nothing to do with each other; how to confront death; how to deal with the fear that our aggression will overflow and violate all that we care about; how to make this inhumane world a more human place. Two assumptions of the tragic poets could, he argues, enrich psychoanalysis--that people are responsible without being free, and that pity is the most civilizing connection. The poets understood these things, Alford believes, because they never flinched in the face of the suffering and constraint that are at the center of human existence.

Download or read book The Tragedy of Political Theory written by J. Peter Euben and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book J. Peter Euben argues that Greek tragedy was the context for classical political theory and that such theory read in terms of tragedy provides a ground for contemporary theorizing alert to the concerns of post-modernism, such as normalization, the dominance of humanism, and the status of theory. Euben shows how ancient Greek theater offered a place and occasion for reflection on the democratic culture it helped constitute, in part by confronting the audience with the otherwise unacknowledged principles of social exclusion that sustained its community. Euben makes his argument through a series of comparisons between three dramas (Aeschylus' Oresteia, Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannos, and Euripides' Bacchae) and three works of classical political theory (Thucydides' History and Plato's Apology of Socrates and Republic) on the issues of justice, identity, and corruption. He brings his discussion to a contemporary American setting in a concluding chapter on Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 in which the road from Argos to Athens, built to differentiate a human domain from the undefined outside, has become a Los Angeles freeway desecrating the land and its people in a predatory urban sprawl.

Download or read book Tragedy and Philosophy written by Walter Kaufmann and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical re-examination of the views of Plato, Aristotle, Hegel and Nietzsche on tragedy. Ancient Greek tragedy is revealed as surprisingly modern and experimental, while such concepts as mimesis, catharsis, hubris and the tragic collision are discussed from different perspectives.

Download or read book The Poetics of Aristotle written by Aristotle and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In it, Aristotle offers an account of what he calls "poetry" (a term which in Greek literally means "making" and in this context includes drama - comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play - as well as lyric poetry and epic poetry). They are similar in the fact that they are all imitations but different in the three ways that Aristotle describes: 1. Differences in music rhythm, harmony, meter and melody. 2. Difference of goodness in the characters. 3. Difference in how the narrative is presented: telling a story or acting it out. In examining its "first principles," Aristotle finds two: 1) imitation and 2) genres and other concepts by which that of truth is applied/revealed in the poesis. His analysis of tragedy constitutes the core of the discussion. Although Aristotle's Poetics is universally acknowledged in the Western critical tradition, "almost every detail about his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions."

Download or read book Affect Theory Genre and the Example of Tragedy written by Duncan A. Lucas and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-09-08 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Affect Theory, Genre, and the Example of Tragedy employs Silvan Tomkins’ Affect-Script theory of human psychology to explore the largely unacknowledged emotions of disgust and shame in tragedy. The book begins with an overview of Tomkins’ relationship to both traditional psychoanalysis and theories of human motivation and emotion, before considering tragedy via case studies of Oedipus, Hamlet, and Death of a Salesman. Aligning Affect-Script theory with literary genre studies, this text explores what motivates fictional characters within the closed conditions of their imagined worlds and how we as an audience relate to and understand fictional characters as motivated humans.

Download or read book The Paradox of Tragedy written by D.D. Raphael and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-24 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1960, The Paradox of Tragedy raises the fundamental question, why do we enjoy tragic drama with its themes of death and disaster? Aristotle’s theory of catharsis is still widely accepted as a satisfactory explanation of this paradox. In the first of its two connected essays, D.D. Raphael argues that Aristotle’s account of tragic emotions is distorted by a faulty psychology and fails to solve the problem. Raphael offers instead a new theory of Tragedy, as a conflict between two forms of the sublime, in which the sublimity of human heroism is exalted above the sublimity of overwhelming power. The spirit of the Tragedy is liable to conflict with doctrines of Biblical theology, and the difficulties of fusing the two are explored with illustrations from Greek, Biblical, English, and French literature. The second essay discusses the wider topic of philosophical drama, considering in what sense tragic and other forms of serious drama may be called philosophical, and also pointing out the dramatic shape of much of Plato’s philosophy. In this discussion, the question of religious Tragedy reappears in a different perspective. This book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of philosophy in general and political philosophy in particular.

Download or read book Sophocles and the Politics of Tragedy written by Jonathan N. Badger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focuses on Sophocles' dramatization of fundamental political impasses and applies these to the competing political theories of Thomas, Bacon and Locke.

Download or read book Christian Theology and Tragedy written by Kevin Taylor and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-23 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing together leading scholars from both theological and literary backgrounds, Christian Theology and Tragedy explores the rich variety of conversations between theology and tragedy. Three main areas are examined: theological readings of a range of tragic literature, from plays to novels and the Bible itself; how theologians have explored tragedy theologically; and how theology can interact with various tragic theories. Encompassing a range of perspectives and topics, this book demonstrates how theologians can make productive use of the work of tragedians, tragic theorists and tragic philosophers. Common misconceptions - that tragedy is monolithic, easily definable, or gives straightforward answers to theodicy - are also addressed. Interdisciplinary in nature, this book will appeal to both the theological and literary fields.

Download or read book The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy written by Edwin Wong and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2019-01-28 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT, BIRNAM WOOD COMES TO DUNSINANE HILL The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy presents a profoundly original theory of drama that speaks to modern audiences living in an increasingly volatile world driven by artificial intelligence, gene editing, globalization, and mutual assured destruction ideologies. Tragedy, according to risk theatre, puts us face to face with the unexpected implications of our actions by simulating the profound impact of highly improbable events. In this book, classicist Edwin Wong shows how tragedy imitates reality: heroes, by taking inordinate risks, trigger devastating low-probability, high-consequence outcomes. Such a theatre forces audiences to ask themselves a most timely question---what happens when the perfect bet goes wrong? Not only does Wong reinterpret classic tragedies from Aeschylus to O’Neill through the risk theatre lens, he also invites dramatists to create tomorrow’s theatre. As the world becomes increasingly unpredictable, the most compelling dramas will be high-stakes tragedies that dramatize the unintended consequences of today's risk takers who are taking us past the point of no return.

Download or read book The Tragedy of Philosophy written by Andrew Cooper and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2016-08-30 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reframes philosophical understanding of, and engagement with, tragedy. In The Tragedy of Philosophy Andrew Cooper challenges the prevailing idea of the death of tragedy, arguing that this assumption reflects a problematic view of both tragedy and philosophy—one that stifles the profound contribution that tragedy could provide to philosophy today. To build this case, Cooper presents a novel reading of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Although this text is normally understood as the final attempt to seal philosophy from the threat of tragedy, Cooper argues that Kant’s project is rather a creative engagement with a tragedy that is specific to philosophy, namely, the inevitable failure of attempts to master nature through knowledge. Kant’s encounter with the tragedy of philosophy turns philosophy’s gaze from an exclusive focus on knowledge to matters of living well in a world that does not bend itself to our desires. Tracing the impact of Kant’s Critique of Judgment on some of the most famous theories of tragedy, including those of G. W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Cornelius Castoriadis, Cooper demonstrates how these philosophers extend the project found in both Kant and the Greek tragedies: the attempt to grasp nature as a domain hospitable to human life. Andrew Cooper is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Bonn, Germany.

Download or read book What Was Tragedy written by Blair Hoxby and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twentieth century critics have definite ideas about tragedy. They maintain that in a true tragedy, fate must feel the resistance of the tragic hero's moral freedom before finally crushing him, thus generating our ambivalent sense of terrible waste coupled with spiritual consolation. Yet far from being a timeless truth, this account of tragedy only emerged in the wake of the French Revolution. What Was Tragedy? demonstrates that this account of the tragic, which has been hegemonic from the early nineteenth century to the present despite all the twists and turns of critical fashion in the twentieth century, obscured an earlier poetics of tragedy that evolved from 1515 to 1795. By reconstructing that poetics, Blair Hoxby makes sense of plays that are "merely pathetic, not truly tragic," of operas with happy endings, of Christian tragedies, and of other plays that advertised themselves as tragedies to early modern audiences and yet have subsequently been denied the palm of tragedy by critics. In doing so, Hoxby not only illuminates masterpieces by Shakespeare, Calderón, Corneille, Racine, Milton, and Mozart, he also revivifies a vast repertoire of tragic drama and opera that has been relegated to obscurity by critical developments since 1800. He suggests how many of these plays might be reclaimed as living works of theater. And by reconstructing a lost conception of tragedy both ancient and modern, he illuminates the hidden assumptions and peculiar blind-spots of the idealist critical tradition that runs from Schelling, Schlegel, and Hegel, through Wagner, Nietzsche, and Freud, up to modern post-structuralism.

Download or read book History Tragedy Theory written by Barbara E. Goff and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, some of the foremost scholars of Greek drama explore the work of all three great tragedians and approach them from a variety of perspectives on history and theory, including poststructuralism and Marxism. They investigate the possibilities for coordinating theoretically informed readings of tragedy with a renewed attention To The pressure of material history within those texts. The collection thus represents a response within classics to "New Historicism" And The debates it has generated within related literary disciplines.

Download or read book Genealogy of the Tragic written by Joshua Billings and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did Greek tragedy and "the tragic" come to be seen as essential to conceptions of modernity? And how has this belief affected modern understandings of Greek drama? In Genealogy of the Tragic, Joshua Billings answers these and related questions by tracing the emergence of the modern theory of the tragic, which was first developed around 1800 by thinkers associated with German Idealism. The book argues that the idea of the tragic arose in response to a new consciousness of history in the late eighteenth century, which spurred theorists to see Greek tragedy as both a unique, historically remote form and a timeless literary genre full of meaning for the present. The book offers a new interpretation of the theories of Schiller, Schelling, Hegel, Hölderlin, and others, as mediations between these historicizing and universalizing impulses, and shows the roots of their approaches in earlier discussions of Greek tragedy in Germany, France, and England. By examining eighteenth-century readings of tragedy and the interactions between idealist thinkers in detail, Genealogy of the Tragic offers the most comprehensive historical account of the tragic to date, as well as the fullest explanation of why and how the idea was used to make sense of modernity. The book argues that idealist theories remain fundamental to contemporary interpretations of Greek tragedy, and calls for a renewed engagement with philosophical questions in criticism of tragedy.