Tragic Play Irony and Theater from Sophocles to Beckett |
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Author:
| Menke, Christoph |
Translator:
| Phillips, James |
Series title: | Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts Ser. |
ISBN: | 978-0-231-14556-5 |
Publication Date: | Jul 2009 |
Publisher: | Columbia University Press
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Book Format: | Hardback |
List Price: | USD $75.00 |
Book Description:
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Tragic Play explores the deep philosophical significance of classic and modern tragedies in order to cast light on the tragic dimensions of contemporary experience. Romanticism, it has often been claimed, brought tragedy to an end, making modernity the age
after tragedy. Christoph Menke opposes this modernist prejudice by arguing that tragedy remains alive in the present in the distinctively new form of the playful, ironic, and self-consciously performative. Through close...
More Description Tragic Play explores the deep philosophical significance of classic and modern tragedies in order to cast light on the tragic dimensions of contemporary experience. Romanticism, it has often been claimed, brought tragedy to an end, making modernity the age after tragedy. Christoph Menke opposes this modernist prejudice by arguing that tragedy remains alive in the present in the distinctively new form of the playful, ironic, and self-consciously performative. Through close readings of plays by William Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett, Heiner Müller, and Botho Strauss, Menke shows how tragedy re-emerges in modernity as "tragedy of play." In Hamlet, Endgame, Philoktet, and Ithaka, Menke integrates philosophical theory with critical readings to investigate shifting terms of judgment, curse, reversal, misfortune, and violence.