A Companion to Tragedy

A Companion to Tragedy is an essential resource for anyone interested in exploring the role of tragedy in Western history and culture.

• Tells the story of the historical development of tragedy from classical Greece to modernity
  
• Features 28 essays by renowned scholars from multiple disciplines, including classics, English, drama, anthropology and philosophy
  
• Broad in its scope and ambition, it considers interpretations of tragedy through religion, philosophy and history
  
• Offers a fresh assessment of Ancient Greek tragedy and demonstrates how the practice of reading tragedy has changed radically in the past two decades

Notes on Contributors viii

Acknowledgments xii

Introduction 1
Rebecca Bushnell

Tragic Thought

Part I Tragedy and the Gods 5

1 Greek Tragedy and Ritual 7
Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood

2 Tragedy and Dionysus 25
Richard Seaford

Part II Tragedy, Philosophy, and Psychoanalysis 39

3 Aristotle’s Poetics: A Defense of Tragic Fiction 41
Kathy Eden

4 The Greatness and Limits of Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy 51
Mark W. Roche

5 Nietzsche and Tragedy 68
James I. Porter

6 Tragedy and Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lacan 88
Julia Reinhard Lupton

Part III Tragedy and History 107

7 Tragedy and City 109
Deborah Boedeker and Kurt Raaflaub

8 Tragedy and Materialist Thought 128
Hugh Grady

9 Tragedy and Feminism 145
Victoria Wohl

Tragedy in History

Part IV Tragedy in Antiquity 161

10 Tragedy and Myth 163
Alan H. Sommerstein

11 Tragedy and Epic 181
Ruth Scodel

12 Tragedy in Performance 198
Michael R. Halleran

13 The Tragic Choral Group: Dramatic Roles and Social Functions 215
Claude Calame, translated by Dan Edelstein

14 Women in Greek Tragedy 234
Sheila Murnaghan

15 Aristophanes, Old Comedy, and Greek Tragedy 251
Ralph M. Rosen

16 Roman Tragedy 269
Alessandro Schiesaro

Part V Renaissance and Baroque Tragedy 287

17 The Fall of Princes: The Classical and Medieval Roots of English Renaissance Tragedy 289
Rebecca Bushnell

18 Something is Rotten: English Renaissance Tragedies of State 307
Matthew H. Wikander

19 English Revenge Tragedy 328
Michael Neill

20 Spanish Golden Age Tragedy: From Cervantes to Caldero´n 351
Margaret R. Greer

Part VI Neoclassical and Romantic Tragedy 371

21 Neoclassical Dramatic Theory in Seventeenth-Century France 373
Richard E. Goodkin

22 French Neoclassical Tragedy: Corneille/Racine 393
Mitchell Greenberg

23 Romantic Tragic Drama and its Eighteenth-Century Precursors: Remaking British Tragedy 411
Jeffrey N. Cox

24 German Classical Tragedy: Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, and Büchner 435
Simon Richter

25 French Romantic Tragedy 452
Barbara T. Cooper

Part VII Tragedy and Modernity 469

26 Modern Theater and the Tragic in Europe 471
Gail Finney

27 Tragedy in the Modern American Theater 488
Brenda Murphy

28 Using Tragedy against its Makers: Some African and Caribbean Instances 505
Timothy J. Reiss

Index 537

"The Blackwell Companions series is intended to orientate the beginning student in new fields of study while providing the graduate and experienced undergraduate with current and new directions. The present volume serves these objectives well.... Bushnell’s edition gives the reader a sense of the scope and fertility of the most current scholarship on the genre." (Journal of Hellenic Studies, February 2009)

“These essays, as would be expected from their authors, manifest a high standard of scholarship and familiarity with current understandings.... The volume has a place on the desk of every reference librarian at the college and university level." Bryn Mawr Classical Review

“The arrangement of the contents and an index that provides coverage of all the essays, allows immediate targeting of specific topics and quick referencing, whilst in its entirety the book provides an excellent survey of tragedy as it is currently studied. Aimed primarily at undergraduates and useful to postgraduates needing to orientate themselves in the scholarship of this area, this title is a useful addition to the academic library.” Reference Reviews

Rebecca Bushnell is Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Her previous publications include Prophesying Tragedy: Sign and Voice in Sophocles’ Theban Plays (1988), Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the English Renaissance (1990), A Culture of Teaching: Early Modern Humanism in Theory and Practice (1996), and Green Desire: Imagining Early Modern English Gardens (2003). A Companion to Tragedy is an essential resource for anyone interested in exploring the role of tragedy in Western history and culture. The Companion is based on the premise that the genre of tragedy is inseparable from history, insofar as it was born in the Greek city-state, and its life has been intertwined with the fate of dynasties, revolutions, and crises of social change. At the same time, this historical approach is complemented by consideration of philosophical and religious readings of tragedy.

Featuring essays by renowned scholars from multiple disciplines, the volume is structured into two parts: the first set of essays on “tragic thought” considers interpretations of tragedy through religion, philosophy, and history; while the second set on “tragedy in history” traces the historical development of tragedy from classical Greece to modernity. Together, they demonstrate how the practice of reading tragedy has changed radically in the past two decades.