Reader in Tragedy

Marcus Nevitt is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Sheffield, UK. He is the author of Women and the Pamphlet Culture of Revolutionary England, 1640-1660 (2006) and is a contributing editor to the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Aphra Behn (2019).Tanya Pollard is Professor of English at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA. Her books include Greek Tragic Women on Shakespearean Stages (2017), Drugs and Theater in Early Modern England (2005), and Shakespeare’s Theater: A Sourcebook (2003).

• AcknowledgementsNotes on the TextsGeneral IntroductionChapter One: Antiquity and the Middle AgesIntroduction1.1. Plato, The Republic1.2. Aristotle, On The Art Of Poetry1.3. Horace, The Art of Poetry1.4. Longinus, On the Sublime1.5. Evanthius, “On Drama”1.6. Augustine, “On Stage-plays”Chapter Two: The Early Modern PeriodIntroduction2.1. Giovan Battista Giraldi Cinthio, Discourse or Letter on the Composition of Comedies and Tragedies2.2. Lodovico Castelvetro, The Poetics of Aristotle2.3. Stephen Gosson, Plays Confuted in Five Actions2.4. Philip Sidney, Defense of Poetry2.5. Thomas Heywood, The Apology for Actors2.6. Pierre Corneille, from Three Discourses on Dramatic Poetry2.7. John Milton, “Of That Sort of Dramatic Poem Which is Called Tragedy”2.8. René Rapin, Reflections on Aristotle’s Treatise of Poesie2.9. John Dryden, “The Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy”Chapter Three: The Eighteenth CenturyIntroduction3.1. Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator3.2. George Lillo, “The Dedication” and “Prologue” to The London Merchant3.3. David Hume, “Of Tragedy”3.4. Edmund Burke, “Sympathy,” “Of the Effects of Tragedy” and “The Sublime”3.5. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Letter to M. D’Alembert On the Theatre3.6. Samuel Johnson, “Preface to Shakespeare”3.7. Voltaire, "Letter XVIII. On Tragedy"3.8. Elizabeth Montagu, An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespear3.9 Joanna Baillie, “Introductory Discourse”Chapter Four: The Nineteenth CenturyIntroduction4.1. August Wilhelm Schlegel, A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature4.2. Charles Lamb, “On the Tragedies of Shakespeare Considered with Reference for Their Fitness for Stage Representation”4.3. William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays4.4. Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry4.5. Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation4.6. G.W.F. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art4.7. George Eliot, “The Antigone and its Moral”4.8. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of TragedyChapter Five: 1900 to 1968Introduction5.1. Sigmund Freud, from The Interpretation of Dreams5.2. A.C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy5.3. William Butler Yeats, “The Tragic Theatre”5.4. Virginia Woolf, “On Not Knowing Greek”5.5. Bertolt Brecht, “A Short Organum for the Theatre”5.6. Robert Warshow, “The Gangster as Tragic Hero”5.7. George Steiner, Death of Tragedy5.8. Raymond Williams, “Tragedy and Revolution”5.9. Athol Fugard, “On A View from the Bridge”Chapter Six: Post-1968Introduction6.1 Augusto Boal, from The Theatre of the Oppressed6.2. René Girard, “The Sacrificial Crisis”6.3. Joseph Meeker, “Literary Tragedy and Ecological Catastrophe”6.4. Catherine Belsey, The Subject of Tragedy6.5. Biodun Jeyifo, “Tragedy, History and Ideology”6.6. Nicole Loraux, The Rope and the Sword6.7. Hélène Cixous, “Enter the Theatre (in between)”6.8. Judith Butler, “Promiscuous Obedience”6.9. Martha Nussbaum, “The ‘Morality of Pity’”6.10. David Scott, Conscripts of ModernityPermissions Acknowledgements Supplementary ReadingIndex