ENGLISH

Modern literature and the tragic

By Newton , K. M

Book information

Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Year
2008
ISBN
0748636730, 978-0-7486-3673-0, 9780748636747, 0748636749, 9781281785930, 1281785938
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
673 kB (688715 bytes)
Edition
1
Pages
179\188
Time added
2015-12-23 22:00:00
in literature. TRAVEL -- Special Interest -- LiterLiteratureModern -- 19th century -- History and criticism. LModern -- 20th century -- History and criticism. TModern. TraThe

Description

This book explores modern literature's responses to the tragic. It examines writers from the latter half of the nineteenth century through to the later twentieth century who respond to ideas about tragedy. Although Ibsen has been accused of being responsible for the 'death of tragedy', Ken Newton argues that Ibsen instead generates an anti-tragic perspective that had a major influence on dramatists such as Shaw and Brecht. By contrast, writers such as Hardy and Conrad, influenced by Schopenhauerean pessimism and Darwinism, attempt to modernise the concept of the tragic. Nietzsche's revisionist interpretation of the tragic influenced writers who either take pessimism or the 'Dionysian' commitment to life to an extreme, as in Strindberg and D. H. Lawrence. Different views emerge in the period following the second world war with the 'Theatre of the Absurd' and postmodern anti-foundationalism

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