One of the most memorable literature lectures I attended began where a group discussion was instigated by the following quote:
‘Tragedy: when the feeling’s gone and you can’t go on it’s tragedy …’.
Needless to say, this prompted some areas of heated debate and discussion. We eschewed referencing Shakespeare’s big four, and concepts of hamartia, hubris and anagnorisis, in favour of arguing whether it was proof of the injustice of a godless universe that Steps had been allowed to cover the Bee Gees’ classic hit.
Tragedies in performance always have, and always will, remain an enigma. On the one hand Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Othello and King Lear continue to enjoy perennial popularity through various interpretations and incarnations on stage and screen. On the other hand: who really wants to endure something as miserable as a tragedy?
Sean McEvoy, with Tony Coult and Chris Sandford, strive to address this dichotomy with the newly released title, Tragedy: A Student Handbook. As the authors observe in the introduction
One of the paradoxical characteristics of tragic drama – and a defining difference between the literary and everyday concept of tragedy – is that at the same time as feeling sorrow and pity for those whose suffering we see on stage, we also take pleasure in the representation of suffering. (12-13)
To some, this might look like a justification for the literary version of schadenfreude. However, as a working definition for an erstwhile indefinable genre, this presents a tenable way of looking at tragedy.
Tragedy, particularly as it is portrayed in theatre, is an abstruse concept. The distinctive and characteristic elements of the genre – from classical Greek through to Edward Bond’s Bingo – are a phenomenon more readily identified than understood or explained. Is Hamlet a tragedy because the eponymous hero is unlucky enough to be caught in his stepfather’s villainous machinations? Or is it a tragedy because the play ends with more senseless deaths than soap operas at Christmas? How can the same genre label be applied to compositions as diverse as Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot?
One of the most illuminating ways of prompting valid responses to these questions is through the process of a thorough and comprehensive comparison with examples from the genre. To that end, Tragedy: A Student Handbook, contains an overview of a broad range of tragedies from the time of Aeschylus through to the contemporary writings of Bond. The book provides insights into the opuses of major playwrights from within the genre, as well as comprehensive notes and criticism pertinent to individual works.
Admittedly, the content here isn’t the line-by-line autopsy familiar to readers of individual title analyses (of the ’York Notes/Spark Notes’ variety), but this book is aiming to present readers with an insight into a major literary concept rather than an ’Idiot’s Guide’ to a single work or cheat sheets for a specific playwright.
Key concepts are explained and explored in a clear and accessible language. The book includes a glossary of specific terminology as well as a timeline that relates the appearance of various authors and their literary tragedies to those important political, social and cultural events that potentially shaped each work’s inception, production and success. In a climate where the current trends in literary criticism tend to favour cultural historicism, the provision of such detail certainly seems like an ideal springboard for renewed interpretations and reconsiderations of established works. As the overview and discussion of each examined work is also presented against critical opinions from a range of disciplines – from Freudian to Feminism and Nietzsche to New Criticism – the potential for further reading on this absorbing subject is limited only by the reader’s tenacity for tragedy.
Tragedy: A Student Handbook is a compact volume providing an invaluable insight for any literature student needing a comprehensive understanding of tragedy as a genre or requiring an accessible introduction to specific material and comparative titles. Aimed at A-Level students and undergraduates, this text should be core reading for any student on a course that broaches dramatic tragedy as a genre and advised reading for any learner requiring additional material for their studies on a specific tragedy. Not only will this title give learners a grasp of this enormously enjoyable subject, but it should also help to provide a scaffold of understanding that can be applied to each student’s criticism and interpretation of works that fall under the umbrella of tragedy.
Ashley Lister
Blackpool & the Fylde College
