Tragedy and the Witness : Shakespeare and Beyond.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Parker, Graham F., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tragedy--History and criticism.

Tragedy--Psychological aspects.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (258 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK : Open Book Publishers, 2025.

Summary:

As he dies, Hamlet pleads with Horatio to 'report me aright ... tell my story'. This book deals with the task of bearing witness to anguish, atrocity, and madness, as these are staged in the tragic theatre. Focusing on the relationship between the protagonist and the onlooker or witness, it explores how the tragic figure, often and understandably viewed as alien or culpable or profoundly strange, struggles to be understood. Centred on Shakespeare, its wide-ranging approach also introduces works by (among others) the Greeks, Racine, Ibsen, Pirandello, Kafka, Beckett, and Kane. The discussion intersects with trauma studies and with psychoanalytic theory, especially around how subjective experience is 'held' by others. The challenge of entering into such difficult experience is likened to the offering of hospitality to the foreigner or stranger: the challenge of overcoming xenophobia. Another large concern is with how tragedy represents madness, and how far such states of mind may be shared with an audience, particularly through the lens of King Lear. Written in an accessible style, this book grounds tragedy in matters that resonate in common experience, from mental breakdown and our need to be heard to questions around grieving, trauma, and the ethics of telling someone's story.

Contents:

Intro

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Preface

1. Overview: Phaedra and the Nurse

2. Welcoming the Stranger

Hamlet's request

Antigone and the chorus

Telling the hero's story

Admitting the alien

3. Imperfect Witness

Representation as betrayal in Shakespeare

Heroes and megastars: seeing double

Fantasising the heroic: The Wild Duck and The Master Builder

Antony and Cleopatra

4. The Crime and Punishment Story

Phèdre

The Trial

Molora: a post-apartheid Oresteia

5. Giving Audience to Madness

'Witness me. See me.' Beckett's Not I and Kane's 4.48 Psychosis

Othello, Hamlet, and maternal support

Playing and playing mad: Pirandello's Henry IV

Macbeth

King Lear

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-80511-444-1

1-80511-445-X