Fred Parker

Tragedy and the Witness (eBook, ePUB)

Shakespeare and Beyond

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

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.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Open Book Publishers
• Erscheinungstermin: 15. April 2025
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781805114468
• Artikelnr.: 73884780

Autorenporträt

Fred Parker is a Fellow of Clare College and recently retired as Associate Professor in the English Faculty at Cambridge. His previous books include: Scepticism and Literature: An Essay on Pope, Hume, Sterne, and Johnson; The Devil as Muse: Blake, Byron, and the Adversary; and On Declaring Love: Eighteenth-Century Literature and Jane Austen. He has been learning to teach the Cambridge Tragedy paper for many years.