Tragic Drama Research Articles

Study of Sublimation in Tragic Drama

Tragedy, as an important category of drama, has been a hot topic in literature and theater since ancient times. Taking the tragedy theories of Aristotle, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Sigmund Freud and other Western scholars as a guide and Les Misérables and The Phantom of the Opera as the main examples, this paper studies the aesthetic sublimation of tragedy. It is found that the elements of music, story, dramatic poetry, dance and performance integrated in a tragic musical can form the grandeur and magnificence of tragedy. The audience gain a sense of beauty and pain, and pleasure and sublimity from the tragic heroes. Tragedy prompts the awakening of human consciousness and the liberation of individuality, calling for social morality, civilization and progress.

Sequel and aftermath: tragic structure and dramatic continuity in Shakespeare’s "Julius Caesar" and "Antony and Cleopatra"

In this paper I shall discuss some possible relations between two of Shakespeare’s tragic dramas, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra (1). These plays were probably written and perhaps staged at a distance of seven years from each other (Julius Caesar almost certainly written by, and staged in, 1599, and Antony and Cleopatra perhaps written by the end of 1606); but they deal with periods of ancient Roman history effectively continuous with one another. I shall consider, first, the notion of ‘sequel’, as it might be relevant to possible interconnections between Shakespearean dramatic units, and the related but distinct notion of ‘aftermath’. Here I shall refer to a text by the contemporary English novelist and essayist Rachel Cusk, Aftermath (2012). Secondly, I shall consider applications of these notions within the fields of Shakespearean comedies, English Histories, and tragedies. In my third and final section I shall argue, both that, in relation to Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra may be considered a sequel, and that the lines along which, in the later play, the roles of Anthony and of Cleopatra are presented and developed can fruitfully be understood in terms of ‘aftermath’.

King Learand the Irony of Capacity

AbstractThis essay considers the relation between lyric utterance, dramatic irony, and intellectual disability in King Lear, particularly in Lear’s famous address to Cordelia—which begins with “Come, let’s away”—just before Edmund sends both to prison. Reading “Come, let’s away” alongside early modern prison literature, the essay argues that the speech’s work as lyric within tragic drama erodes dramatic irony, removing the audience from the superior knowledge position that such irony affords and that enables ableist perspectives to begin with. In shifting attention from tragic action to lyric power, Lear’s speech renders the ability and willingness to understand one’s situation, and to act efficaciously in that situation, irrelevant to accessing what is beautiful and true. Shakespeare thus separates the question of mental capacity from that of felicitous choice. The irony of capacity in “Come, let’s away,” then, is this: that when readers focus on the value of mental capacity and on the power over action that Lear lacks, they miss what his speech does, the lyric capacity that it has.

Tragedy and Tender Beauty: Exploring the Tradition of Kuqing in the Chinese Film School

Abstract Films such as An Orphan Rescues His Grandpa (Guer Jiuzuji, 1923), New Women (Xin Nüxing, 1935), Hibiscus Town (Furong Zhen, 1987), Nuan (Nuan, 2003), and Sister (Wode Jiejie, 2021) demonstrate that, over a century of development, Chinese cinema has crafted a distinctive and significant lineage of kuqingxi (苦情戏, tragic drama with Chinese characteristics). This lineage not only preserves but consistently maintains the kuqing (苦情, a literary and artistic style that signifies tragedy in China) narrative tradition intrinsic to Chinese storytelling, culminating in a unique national aesthetic and cultural experience. In accordance with the core essence of “school,” these family-themed works, which preserve the tradition of kuqing, have emerged as a deliberate and stable genre in Chinese Film School. The films, and their public reception, offer a reflection of China’s national character, emotional structure, and refined aesthetic preferences. It is the central theme of tenderness found within adversity, presented in these films, that conveys the values and spirit of contemporary China.

현대 비극의 ‘사라지는 하마르티아’와 ‘투쟁의 운명’

This paper analyzes the specific characteristics of classical tragedies and the essence of tragedy in modern drama, mainly focusing on John Millington Synge’s Riders to the Sea. Arthur Miller defined the possibility of modern tragedy as the tragic experience of the common man in relationship to the environment. However, in the modern era, the environment is often represented or segmented by capitalism, leading to the misconception that modern tragedy may be succinctly defined by the struggles of ordinary people facing continuous situational hardships in pursuit of their dreams. In contrast, Synge’s tragic drama Riders to the Sea (first performed in 1904), which this paper observes, is grounded in an isolated natural setting while still remaining connected with the realm of the divine or the universe. Focusing on the phase of vanishing hamartia, the escape from guilt of the subjects, and the expansion of the concept of necessity from outer to their inner sphere, this paper argues how classic tragic essence is also manifested in modern plays, provoking profound thoughts among the audience and elevating their souls through elegant suffering and intellectual clarification in its own way. In its characteristic of stillness, where the conclusion is drawn out over an entire lifetime of struggle and disguised to obscure emotional suffering beneath a veneer of pessimism or idealism, the modern tragic drama establishes its own tragic genre with catharsis and magnitude. This contributes to a deeper level of meaningful understanding in the lives of all ordinary people in the contemporary world.

Shadows of the Enlightenment: Tragic Drama during Europe’s Age of Reason. Edited by Blair Hoxby

<i>Shadows of the Enlightenment: Tragic Drama during Europe’s Age of Reason</i>. Edited by Blair Hoxby

‘The National Interest of Israel-Turkey Engagement on Syria Civil War Related to US Foreign Policy of Pulling out Forces’

Since 2011, when Protests against President Assad's rule triggered a large-scale conflict between anti-government rebel groups sponsored by the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and others countries. regional allies, and the Syrian government backed by Russia and Iran, the Syrian civil war has colored the international relations issue. This article focuses on US policies in Syria and Israel-Turkey's national interests in the region. The purpose of the paper is to conduct an assessment on Syria civil war related to US foreign policy of pulling out forces and theirs impacts. This research employs qualitative method . The results demonstrate that Trump's actions have exposed some unsettling truths and realities regarding US strategy toward Syria. Yes, Trump has acted as both an arsonist and a firefighter.. These developments therefore give rise to a new period of conflict between Israel and Turkey based on their respective national interests. Finally, President Donald Trump's administration's foreign policy toward Syria has considered the tragic drama in Syria

A Cultural Interpretation of the World's Two Most Tragic Dramas: Romeo and Juliet and The Flower Princess

A Cultural Interpretation of the World's Two Most Tragic Dramas: Romeo and Juliet and The Flower Princess

Baroque Sovereignty Reconsidered: Walter Benjamin Quotes Diego Saavedra Fajardo

ABSTRACT: In Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels ( The Origin of German Tragic Drama , 1928), Walter Benjamin illustrates his argument on baroque sovereignty, which responds to Carl Schmitt's political theology, with a fragment from Diego Saavedra Fajardo's Empresas políticas . The quotation has hitherto been overlooked in scholarly discussions, which have often sidelined the role played by the seventeenth-century texts that represent the actual subject of Ursprung , and especially those texts from the Spanish baroque. The aim of this article is to reconsider Benjamin's interpretation of baroque political theory, and thus his critique of Schmitt, by engaging with the work of Saavedra Fajardo.

Model Perwujudan Good Faith (Asas Itikad Baik) Dalam Pemberantasan Mafia Tanah Terhadap Peralihan dan Pendaftaran Hak Atas Tanah Di Indonesia

Land actually provides a peaceful place where humans are born, live their lives, until they die and are buried together with nature, but land can have a winding history with all the tragic dramas and euphoria including the drama of land seizures both among individual communities and forced seizures by the State in terms of stripping property rights, land expropriation or land dispossession, as well as forced seizures, namely unilateral recognition of land, land appropriation where all become life dramas that flow blood and tears. The purpose of this research is to analyze the model of the realization of good faith in the eradication of the land mafia against the transfer and registration of land rights in Indonesia. The model of handling crimes in the land sector, especially related to the rise of the land mafia, can be done preventively and repressively in which the handling requires cooperation with various parties including the Police (Anti Land Mafia Task Force), the Attorney General's Office, the Supreme Court, the Judicial Commission, and others. It takes a deep awareness and a noble inner attitude and must always be held firmly by all stake holders as an effort to create a high moral attitude, avoid despicable acts, uphold the values of honesty, truth, and justice in order to realize the guarantee of legal certainty that is fair to land rights throughout the territory of the Republic of Indonesia so that the essence of good faith in the transfer and registration of land rights is interpreted as providing protection for the values to be maintained by the laws and regulations in contractual relations due to the legal act of transferring rights / transferring land rights before PPAT.

King Lear, Answer to Job: The Archetypes of Godhead

William Shakespeare’s King Lear is often deemed the penultimate tragic drama. To fully grasp its archetypal reach, we must apply the insights of Carl Jung. Before Lear gives away his kingdom, he is as arbitrarily willful and irrational as the intemperate Yahweh whom Jung portrays in Answer to Job. Yahweh is a primitive, unconscious storm deity who must redeem himself from the injustices he inflicted upon Job by suffering the common lot of humanity as Jesus. Jung saw in the Bible a story of Yahweh’s struggle to gain Job’s humane consciousness. Shakespeare, the visionary artist, adopts this same basic narrative when Lear in the storm scene becomes the suffering Job, then gains insight and compassion with his Fool and later with his daughter, Cordelia. When Cordelia dies, Lear responds with Promethean defiance. Shakespeare presents his own vision of Jung’s quaternal Godhead with Lear first playing Yahweh, then suffering Job, and finally, Job’s Promethean opposite. The prototypical face of Godhead, the Wise-figure archetype embodying truth and wholeness, is Cordelia, who manifests both Christ as a symbol of the self and Sophia as Holy Spirit. In this way, Shakespeare solves Jung’s problem of the Godhead’s missing feminine. As a literary treatment of the Godhead’s archetypes and tragic nature, King Lear is a singularly important work. By illumining Lear’s archetypal patterns, Answer to Job demonstrates the depth and profundity of Jung’s religious insights on the Godhead.

Guilt and Extenuation in Tragedy: Variations on Racinian Excuses. By Edward Forman

This comparative literary study seeks to re-evaluate the relationship between tragic drama and current approaches to guilt and extenuation. Edward Forman aims to place side by side ‘ancient stories with modern attitudes’, ‘the deadly serious against the cynical, the defensive and the legalistic’ (p. 3), and thus bring further insight into how we think about responsibility, justification, and guilt. Although Forman explicitly states that this is a work of literary criticism and not moral philosophy, the book clearly draws on ethics. However, it also engages with performance and reception theory. The book ranges widely but its springboard is Racine’s tragedies. The seven chapters wrestle with modern judicial concepts such as diminished responsibility, provocation, trauma, ignorance, and scapegoating by examining specifically how the characters in tragedy respond and justify their actions. Forman, interestingly, maps these onto the tragic explorations of such issues, considering ‘Helplessness’ (with fatalism, divine authority, and genetic determinism) in Chapter 1, ‘Theories of Harmartia’ in Chapter 2, and blindness and credulity in Chapter 3. Tragic archetypes such as Phaedra, Oedipus, Clytemnestra, and Medea are studied, and case studies of ancient models, seventeenth-century texts, and more modern interpretations are presented in contrast with one another. Chapter 5, for example, considers different portrayals of Clytemnestra: in Racine’s Iphigénie, in which Clytemnestre shows her boundless resentment towards Agamemnon and seems to justify what she goes on to commit; in Jean Giraudoux’s Électre, where she is by no means a sympathetic character; and in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Les Mouches, where she is presented as a more passive accomplice. The chapter also explores Marguerite Yourcenar’s depiction in Électre ou La Chute des masques, in which Clytemnestre argues for her diminished responsibility, as well as examining the different inflections of the character in works by Jean Anouilh, the lesser-known dramatist Jean-Jacques Varoujean, and Jean-Pierre Giraudoux, all of which emphasize her status as a damaged victim. Showcasing these variations in degrees of blame and accountability reveals how playwrights and audiences do not simply judge the characters for their crimes but constantly attempt to make sense of their behaviour within the particular worlds they inhabit. The figures used as vehicles for such explorations are generally from ancient Greek myths, but Chapter 6 also productively engages with the biblical figure of King Saul who, as Forman notes, recurs in plays ‘from the Classical, Enlightenment, Romantic and modern periods, all of which probe the extent to which Saul was in control of his actions’ (p. 153). At times, it feels as though the book is trying to cover too much terrain and one suspects that longer studies of particular plays might have been more fruitful. Forman repeatedly asks to what extent modern understandings of criminal behaviour ought to point towards a reinterpretation of ancient myths and dramas, but his answer is ultimately that it is somewhat inevitable that contemporary ­experience and debate will bring a different perspective to plays ­written in different ethical and legal contexts. Rather frustratingly, he does not extend this reflection on the illuminating potential of such juxtapositioning.

Psychoanalysis, Philosophy and Literature- Intersection of Science and Art

IntroductionPhilosophy and psychoanalysis have mutually influenced each other in many ways. Ancient Greek philosophers, Socrates and Plato were frequently cited by Freud in his works and the origins of certain psychoanalytic concepts can be found in their works. The philosophical works of Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Husserl, Sartre and many others had a significant impact on the development of psychoanalytic ideas. The intersection of philosophy and literature was best depicted in Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of the metaphysical novel.ObjectivesThe goal of this presentation is to perform a comprehensive historical review of the relationship between psychoanalysis, philosophy and literature.MethodsDifferent philosophical schools from ancient philosophy to classic German philosophy and philosophy of existentialism have been explored in their relationship with psychoanalysis and world literature. Among world literary classics, we selected only those who best represent the role of psychoanalysis in the modern literary critics and on the other hand the influence of philosophy on literature.ResultsEarly origins of the relationship between philosophy, psychoanalysis and literature can be found in the text of ancient philosophers and writers. The great Sophocles’ tragic drama Oedipus the King was the foundation for Freud’s concept of Oedipus complex. The Socratic dialogue, a technique best elaborated by his student Plato was the antecedent of modern psychotherapy. Later in history philosophical works of Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and many others had a significant impact on the development of psychoanalytic ideas. There is a number of other philosophical fictions in the world literature written by Sartre, Camus, Kafka, Proust and many others and some of these literary woks may have characteristics of psychological novel as well. Literary critics is an important field for the application of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic theory has been always in forefront of Shakespearean studies. Marcel Proust is a writer who gave a significant contribution to modern literary studies. He wrote about the interactive process between the reader and text and emotional impact of reading. Proust recognized the similar psychological processes that we can see in psychoanalytic setting.ConclusionsThis comprehensive historical review of the relationship between psychoanalysis, philosophy and literature demonstrates that all these disciplines have much in common, particularly in their intention to approach truth from different angles. Psychoanalysis is a science and applies scientific methodology in its theory and treatment. Certain branches of psychoanalysis like Jung’s analytic psychology are sometimes closer to philosophy and art than to science. Philosophy as a humanistic discipline has always been in between science and art.Disclosure of InterestNone Declared

Shadows of the Enlightenment: Tragic Drama during Europe's Age of Reason ed. by Blair Hoxby

Reviewed by: Shadows of the Enlightenment: Tragic Drama during Europe's Age of Reason ed. by Blair Hoxby Daniel Gustafson (bio) Blair Hoxby(ed). Shadows of the Enlightenment: Tragic Drama during Europe's Age of Reason. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2022. Pp. vii + 320. $99.95. The fate of eighteenth-century tragedy in the long sweep of Western theatre history is most often to get swept under the rug. Sandwiched between the early modern heights of Shakespeare or Racine and the twentieth century's revived interest in the tragic after Ibsen and Nietzsche, marked by philosophical optimism and the rise of the novel, the eighteenth century as a period is witness to "the decline of tragedy as a viable theatrical genre" (2). Such is a persistent narrative of theatre history that editor Blair Hoxby describes in the opening pages of Shadows of the Enlightenment and that the volume on the whole convincingly dispels. The eleven essays collected here unearth the assorted ways in which dramatic tragedy remained essential to European intellectual life between the late seventeenth century and Romanticism. Wide-ranging in locale and language (the featured scholars work in and sometimes across the English, Dutch, French, and German national traditions), discipline, and method, the essays render the long eighteenth century as a complex and exciting moment in the genre's history for the way it operated, as Hoxby argues, as "a period of transition in which dominant, residual, and emergent ideas of – and practical experiments in – tragedy coexist" (8). One of the book's strengths is how fruitfully it substantiates this claim, as it documents a lively cultural moment in which the inheritance of tragic models from classical antiquity sits side-by-side, both productively and uneasily, with fresh designs for the genre. The book's second strength lies in its account of how dramatic tragedy addresses issues on the vanguard of current eighteenth-century studies, particularly affect theory, form and history, and the role of theatre as a public institution. After clarifying the stakes of the volume's intervention in his introduction "Tragedy at the Crossroads of the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment," Hoxby opts to proceed via a discussion of illuminating examples rather than pursue a more pointed line of argument. He outlines the neoclassical theories of the French l'abbe Batteux as a launching point to explore the diversity of Enlightenment thought on tragedy in a pan-European setting: from discussions of Aristotelianism and tragic pleasure to different contemporaries' takes on the form, history, and public function of the genre. On the one hand, the preference for multiplicity of example over more sustained critical synthesis of the field has its drawbacks. Perhaps the most notable of these is that Hoxby has a real command of the material (as evidenced in his own 2015 monograph What Was Tragedy?, which possessed a similarly impressive scope), but his authoritative voice is not always evident in this format. On the other hand, what emerges in the [End Page 418] introduction is an intriguing series of motifs that connect Enlightenment ideas of tragedy to classical and modern ones, depicting tragedy as the grounds in the period for a productive "collision between antiquity and modernity" (25). To take an example: if the 1960s debate between George Steiner and Raymond Williams on tragedy as universal or as historically contingent remains a flashpoint for studies of tragic theory still today, then Hoxby's readings uncover how eighteenth-century writers were already working through the same crux. The critical lineage of these two camps—with full awareness of inevitable slipperiness between them, Hoxby denotes them "Enlightened" and "Counter-Enlightened"—becomes one of the more fascinating throughlines of the volume (9-10). Shadows of the Enlightenment is judiciously divided into three sections with three distinctly thematic (rather than national) focal points. To resist the urge to group the essays by nation or by chronology is a nice touch, and the thematic categories do much to advance the volume's comparativist impulses. Part I, "Ancient Forms, Modern Affects," assembles four essays on Enlightenment theories of the passions, but takes readers from the early eighteenth-century she-tragedies of Nicholas Rowe through discussions of reason, enthusiasm, religion, and...

A Comparative Analysis of Classical, Shakespearean and Modern Tragedies

Tragic drama since the Classical Greece has had some distinct changes in the course of its development. Since the time of Sophocles, tragedy has been shaped by different theatrical conventions and philosophies. It has experienced different kinds of change under various kinds of situations, pressures etc., which obviously came from the changing world about it. Each period sees the development of a special orientation and emphasis, a characteristic style of theatre. The framework of this paper falls on its search to draw a comparative analysis of the Classical, Renaissance and Modern tragedies. The tragic conception from the time of the Greeks to the present has undergone a metamorphosis in definitions and experience This paper therefore highlights the fundamental similarities and differences between the tragedies of the Classical, the Renaissance and the Modern ages. It discusses the overall significance of changes in convention which tragedy like every other genre has undergone from the ancient period. The paper concludes that it is obvious from the consideration of the three great periods of tragedy that no theatrical period ever repeats itself as there are differences among them as there must be since the theatre of any given period reflects the world in which it exists.

“Impersonality” in Shakespeare’s Hamletand Its Modern Adaptation in BBC Hamlet

If one is to inherit a theatrical text to let it survive throughout time, there is a twofold task to be committed: in Roland Barthes’s terms, preserving its studium and at the same time devising its new punctum; in other words, maintaining consistency of the work without seriously ravaging it on one hand, and on the other, ingeniously appreciating the work to save it from repeated reception without any peculiar variation. In the case of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the prince Hamlet as a character with inward personality has been a punctum since the seventeenth century. However, now that such concepts as the unconscious or psychology have become so familiar a concept to the contemporary, Hamlet’s personality is hardly effective as a punctum. Alternately, the concept of impersonality in Hamlet is now new to us, hence a new punctum of the play. In this perspective, the foundational story of Hamlet is not the tragic drama itself, but rather the positionality of the prince Hamlet in Elsinore, that is, personality versus impersonality. Gregory Doran’s Hamlet (2009), produced by BBC in collaboration with Royal Shakespeare Company, provides an example of alternate reading of Hamlet by suggesting surveillance technology as the embodiment of impersonality in the play.

Dr. Faustus as a Morality Play

Dr. Faustus's tragic history embodies a play by Christopher Marlowe, in which a man sells his soul to the evil spirit for power and knowledge. The play begins with the hero at the height of his arrival and ends with his falling into grief, death and curse. Faust entered into a contract with Lucifer, 24 years of life on Earth will be allocated, during which time he will have Mephistopheles as his personal servant and attached to the use of magic; however, in the end, he will give his body and soul to Lucifer as a push and spend the rest of his time as a cursed man in hell. This transaction must be sealed in the form of a contract written in the blood of Faustus. After cutting off his arm, the wound heals divinely and the Latin words Homo, fuge! ("Man, run!") Then he shows up on it. Faust ignores the inscription while asserting that he has already cursed his actions so far, thus leaving nowhere to escape. Faust seems to repent in the end and regret his actions, yet it may be too late or irrelevant, because Mephistopheles takes his soul together, so Faust obviously goes to hell with him. The current research addressed "Dr.&nbsp;Faustus" as a morality play after explanation the importance of "morality play", and then its connection through this tragic drama.

Shadows of the Enlightenment: Tragic Drama during Europe's Age of Reason ed. by Blair Hoxby

Reviewed by: Shadows of the Enlightenment: Tragic Drama during Europe's Age of Reason ed. by Blair Hoxby Jeffery Moser Blair Hoxby, editor. Shadows of the Enlightenment: Tragic Drama during Europe's Age of Reason. Ohio State UP, 2022. 328 p. Stanford professor Blair Hoxby's newest editorial production is a multi-author volume that considers the theory and practice of tragedy produced during Europe's Age of Reason, that intellectual and philosophical period promulgated during the late-seventeenth century and early- to mid-eighteenth century. Hoxby has an impressive record of research and publishing about European literature and culture. This text continues his theoretical approach to refigure and reassess traditional views about tragedy's power, versification, and imparts from classical beginnings during the Enlightenment, between 1685 and 1815, and beyond. For any student of history and literature, it is worth remembering that plays written and performed in the late-seventeenth century and after were post-Shakespeare's lifetime, post-Civil War, and post-Interregnum for England. With the public staging of plays licensed to reopen in 1660 after eighteen years of closure, not only did English theatre undergo a restoration, but so did England and the whole British Isles on an expansive socio-political scale, leading up to the Act of Union, which went into effect in the spring of 1707. The act created the Kingdom of Great Britain. Right on these heels followed political restoration and reform afoot in Europe, too, resulting in changes and adjustments. With Napoleon Bonaparte's dethronement in 1814, most of Europe was challenged to determine a new path forward. Events like another French Revolution or Russian conquest occurring again suddenly seemed to be impossibilities. The boundaries of European countries were renegotiated and seemingly settled, and the United States was well on its way to dominating Western ideals about democracy and sovereignty, while Imperial England's colonial grasp around the globe began to wane and fade. So it was, in many ways, that literature and culture during the late seventeenth-century and early- to mid-eighteenth century found itself in the crosshairs of optimism and pessimism. This is a particular prong that Hoxby stresses about tragedy, arguing in the introduction [End Page 333] that tragedy found itself at a "crossroads of the Enlightenment and the Counter-Enlightenment" (1). In other words, tragedies of the time were caught between the expectations of doom and gloom of classical Greek and Roman tragedy traditions and the "optimism, reason, and a faith in human progress and productivity" still regarded today as the majority assessment that scholars associate with the Enlightenment. Hence, for Hoxby, and others who have contributed to this volume, the tragedy of this time must be seen to "teeter on the brink of paradox" (1). In this accord, the essays affirm that the scope of tragedy written and performed during this time was both expansive and transitional. It should not be easily categorized as stale or a noncontroversial accoutrement to the period, nor a genre that was subjugated to something less and not as entertaining, edgy, or discursive as its counterpart of comedy that rose in popularity among the masses during the Restoration. Instead, tragedy of this time must be newly seen and understood as "dynamic" and "paradoxical," experimenting and juggling classical, early modern, romantic, and emerging modern ideals and expectations about the genre. In addition to Hoxby, scholars contributing to this worthwhile academic collection include: Alex Eric Hernandez, Logan J. Connors, James Harriman-Smith, Russ Leo, Cecile Dudouyt, Adrian Daub, Stefan Tilg, Larry F. Norman, Joseph Harris, and Joshua Billings. Their essays are categorized into three relevant sections: Part 1-- Ancient Forms, Modern Affects; Part II – Philosophy, Religion, and the Institutions of Tragedy, and Part III – Ancients, Moderns, and the Historical Turn. Hoxby's own essay, "Joanna Baillie, the Gothic Bard, and Her Tragedies of Fear," concludes the first section. The Scottish poet and dramatist's books of verse and plays reveal her extensive study and critical appreciation of Shakespeare, especially the Bard's proficiency in the passions. Baillie's (1762-1851) tragedy of fear, Orra, is set "in the context of the critical reinvention of Shakespeare as a primitive genius whose mastery of the...

From The Editor

From The Editor Roger D. Woodard Earlier versions of the papers that constitute this special thematic issue of Arethusa were presented at a symposium on Greek tragedy—one meeting of a series of three symposia informally known as the "Peradotto Sessions." The series was made possible through the generous financial support of Milton Ezrati, distinguished economist, who, as an undergraduate at the University at Buffalo, had undertaken coursework with John J. Peradotto. It was in the fall term of 1968 that Mr. Ezrati began studying with Professor Peradotto, enrolling in Classics 103: Greek Literature in Translation (readings in Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics). The beginning of Milton Ezrati's studies with Jack Peradotto thus coincided with the beginning of Arethusa, the first issue of which is dated Fall 1968 and edited by Charles Garton. As I mentioned in my editorial preface to the preceding issue of Arethusa (55.2), the lead article of that inaugural issue of the journal is Charles Segal's "Ancient Texts and Modern Criticism: Some Recent Trends in Classical Literary Studies" (pp. 1–25). Segal is joined in the issue by Ernst Badian: "Sulla's Augurate" (pp. 26–46), Brooks Otis: "A Reading of the Cleopatra Ode" (pp. 47–61), Molly Miller: "Solon's Timetable" (pp. 62–81), Albert Cook: "The Patterning of Effect in Sophocles' Philoctetes" (pp. 82–93), John P. Anton: "The Ultimate Theme of the Phaedo" (pp. 94–102), and Robert K. Sherk: "The Date of Menander's Dyscolus" (pp. 103–108). To draw once more from Charlie Segal's prescient contribution—early in his article (p. 2), Segal references an essay from the Prologue (that portion entitled "Reading") of Auden's The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays (p. 4, first published 1948, London, Faber and Faber), writing that "one must at least consider the problem raised by W. H. Auden that in criticizing a classic one is dealing with a work that is already a part of one's spiritual biography." Taking a broader pass at Auden's lines we find (pp. 4–5): "To read is to translate, [End Page 209] for no two persons' experiences are the same … our judgment of an established author is never simply an aesthetic judgment … [for the author] is also a character in our biography." Segal then adds: "Be this as it may, a reasoned desanctification is salutary, in some cases even necessary." The very existence of the "Peradotto Sessions" testifies to the continued potentiality of classic works becoming a part of one's biography, something one may carry through decades, especially when acquired from or reinforced by a gifted and dedicated teacher. What follows in this issue of Arethusa is a set of four remarkable, salutary, reasoned desanctifications (and thus resanctifications) of Greek tragic drama, offered in celebration of Jack Peradotto's 90th birthday. RDW [End Page 210] Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press

Masters of Their Fates: Byron’s Marino Faliero and Brecht’s Epic Theater

ABSTRACT Byron has more than once been described as a “Brechtian” or “proto-Brechtian” dramatist, meaning that he anticipates the politicized, Marx-influenced dramatic theory and practice developed by Bertolt Brecht in the first half of the twentieth century. Focusing mainly on Byron’s historical tragedy Marino Faliero, this essay explores hitherto neglected implications of reading Byron in this way, by comparing Byron’s and Brecht’s approaches to tragedy, and to the closely related idea of fate. The essay first reads Faliero with Brecht’s Life of Galileo, surveying critical perspectives on the politics of Byron’s historical tragedy in the process. It then employs two key Marxist concepts—Marx’s Bestimmung (determination) and Jameson’s concept of “Necessity”—and uses two Renaissance intertexts—Machiavelli’s The Prince and Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar—to further illustrate connections between Byron’s and Brecht’s writings about fate, tragedy, history, and politics. In so doing, the essay contends that the politics of Byron’s tragic drama is best understood using a “Brechtian” method of reading, derived in part from Brecht’s own comments on Galileo. It thus argues that reading Byron with Brecht remains highly productive, with potential well beyond the fascinating but fleeting moments of conjunction both writers have enjoyed in previous Byron criticism.