Tragedy and the return of the dead / John D. Lyons.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lyons, John D., 1946- author.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Rethinking the Early Modern

Rethinking the early modern

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

French drama--17th century--History and criticism.

French drama.

French drama (Tragedy)--History and criticism.

French drama (Tragedy).

Tragic, The, in literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xii, 276 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2018.

Summary:

Early modernity rediscovered tragedy in the dramas and the theoretical writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Attempting to make new tragic fictions, writers such as Shakespeare, Webster, Hardy, Corneille, and Racine created a dramatic form that would probably have been unrecognizable to the ancient Athenians. Tragedy and the Return of the Dead recovers a model of the tragic that fits ancient tragedies and early modern tragedies, as well as contemporary narratives and films no longer called "tragic"' but which perpetuate the same elements. Authoritative, wide-ranging, and thought provoking, Tragedy and the Return of the Dead uncovers a set of interlocking plots of family violence that stretch from Greek antiquity through the popular culture of today. Casting aside the elite, idealist view that tragedy manifests the conflict between two equal goods or the human struggle against the divine, John D. Lyons looks closely at tragedy's staging of gory and painful deaths, ignominious burials, and the haunting return of ghosts. Through this adjusted lens Le Cid, Hamlet, Frankenstein, The Spanish Tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, Phèdre, Macbeth, and other works appear in a striking new light, at the center of a panorama that stretches from Aeschylus's Agamemnon to Hitchcock's Psycho, and are placed against the background of the gothic novel, Freud's "uncanny," and Burke's "sublime." Lyons demonstrates how tragedy under other names, such as "gothic fiction" and "thrillers," is far from dead and continues as a vital part of popular culture. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction

Home and hearth

Burial and the care of the dead

Specters

The aesthetics of fear

Conclusion: What's in a word?

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9780810137103

0810137100

9780810137042

0810137046

OCLC:

1013477917