Eclipse of Action: Tragedy and Political Economy

Description

According to traditional accounts, the history of tragedy is itself tragic: following a miraculous birth in fifth-century Athens and a brilliant resurgence in the early modern period, tragic drama then falls into a marked decline. While disputing the notion that tragedy has died, this wide-ranging study argues that it faces an unprecedented challenge in modern times from an unexpected quarter: political economy. Since Aristotle, tragedy has been seen as uniquely exhibiting the importance of action for human happiness. Beginning with Adam Smith, however, political economy has claimed that the source of happiness is primarily production. Eclipse of Action examines the tense relations between action and production, doing and making, in playwrights from Aeschylus, Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Milton to Beckett, Arthur Miller, and Sarah Kane. Richard Halpern places these figures in conversation with works by Aristotle, Smith, Hegel, Marx, Hannah Arendt, Georges Bataille, and others in order to trace the long history of the ways in which economic thought and tragic drama interact. Contents......Page 6 Acknowledgments......Page 8 Introduction......Page 10 Chapter One. “Thy Bloody and Invisible Hand”: Tragedy and Political Economy......Page 38 Chapter Two. Greek Tragedy and the Raptor Economy: The Oresteia......Page 84 Chapter Three. Marlowe’s Theater of Night: Doctor Faustus and Capital......Page 117 Chapter Four. Hamlet and the Work of Death......Page 147 Chapter Five. The Same Old Grind: Milton’s Samson as Subtragic Hero......Page 168 Chapter Six. Hegel, Marx, and the Novelization of Tragedy......Page 190 Chapter Seven. Beckett’s Tragic Pantry......Page 235 Postscript. After Beckett......Page 264 Notes......Page 282 Index......Page 312