Tragedy: The Basics

Sean McEvoy teaches Literature at Varndean Sixth Form College in Brighton and the University of Cambridge, UK.

Introduction

1. Greeks and Romans: Classical Tragedy



Contexts: The Festival of Dionysus at Athens

Aeschylus, The Oresteia

Sophocles, Oedipus the King

Sophocles, Antigone

Euripides, Medea

Euripides, Bacchae

Contexts: Seneca and Roman Tragedy

Seneca, Phaedra



2. ‘When the bad bleed’ ? Early Modern English Tragedy



Contexts: Elizabethan Tragedy

Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy and Revenge Tragedy

Christopher Marlowe, Dr Faustus

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Contexts: Jacobean Tragedy

William Shakespeare, Othello

William Shakespeare, King Lear

William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi



3. Neo-Classicism, Restoration Tragedy and Sentimentality



Contexts

Jean Racine, Phaedra

John Dryden, All for Love

Thomas Otway, Venice Preserv’d



4. ‘From Hero to Victim’: Romantic Tragedy and After



Contexts

Heinrich von Kleist, The Prince of Homburg

Georg Büchner, Woyzeck

Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler



5. Modernism and Tragedy



Contexts

Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

Eugene O’Neill, Mourning Becomes Electra

Federico Garcia Lorca, Blood Wedding

Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and her Children

Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot



6. The Survival of Tragedy

Contexts

Edward Bond, Lear

Howard Barker, Victory

Tony Kushner, Angels in America

Caryl Churchill, The Skriker

Sarah Kane, Blasted.

Conclusion

Glossary

References

Index