Modern Literature and the Tragic

193 Pages·2008·0.66 MB·English

by  K. M. Newton

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O D E R N
THIS BOOK EXPLORES MODERN LITERATURE’S RESPONSES TO THE L
tragic. It examines writers from the latter half of the nineteenth century I T E R AT U R E
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through to the later twentieth century who respond to ideas about
tragedy. O
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Although Ibsen has been accused of being responsible for the ‘death of E
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tragedy’, Ken Newton argues that Ibsen instead generates an anti-tragic
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AND THE R AGIC
perspective that had a major influence on dramatists such as Shaw and
Brecht. By contrast, writers such as Hardy and Conrad, influenced by L
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Schopenhauerean pessimism and Darwinism, attempt to modernise the T
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concept of the tragic. Nietzsche’s revisionist interpretation of the tragic
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influenced writers who either take pessimism or the ‘Dionysian’ commit- A
ment to life to an extreme, as in Strindbergand D. H. Lawrence. Different T
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views emerge in the period following the Second World War with the
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‘Theatre of the Absurd’ and postmodern anti-foundationalism. E
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Key Features N
• Broad coverage of drama and fiction by British, European, and D
American writers
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• Provides detailed readings of particular texts including Tolstoy’s Anna H
Karenina, Ibsen’s Ghosts, Strindberg’s Miss Julie, Brecht’s Mother E
Courage, Chekhov’s Three Sisters, Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the T
d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, Shaw’s Saint Joan, Miller’s Death R
of a Salesman, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and D. H. Lawrence’s The A
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Rainbow and Women in Love
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• Combines literary interpretation with philosophical discussion, e.g. of
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Derrida, Rorty
Professor Ken Newton teaches at the University of Dundee. He K
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specialises in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and literary
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theory. He has published several books on George Eliot and numerous
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articles on her and nineteenth-centuryfiction generally,as well as books,
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articles, and anthologies on literary theory.
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Jacket illustration: Old Man with His Head n
in His Handsby Vincent van Gogh
© Francis G. Mayer/Corbis
Design: www.riverdesign.co.uk
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Edinburgh University Press d
22 George Square in
Edinburgh EH8 9LF b
u
K. M. Newton
www.eup.ed.ac.uk r
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ISBN978 0 7486 3673 0
M1347 NEWTON PRELIMS.qxp:Andy Q7 14/5/08 07:48 Page i
Modern Literature and the Tragic
M1347 NEWTON PRELIMS.qxp:Andy Q7 14/5/08 07:48 Page ii
For Cate, Carol, Claire, and John
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Modern Literature and
the Tragic
K. M. Newton
Edinburgh University Press
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©K.M. Newton, 2008
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
Typeset in Sabon and Futura
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 3673 0 (hardback)
The right of K.M. Newton
to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
1. Ibsen’s Ghostsand the Rejection of the Tragic 9
2. Anti-Tragic Drama after Ibsen 21
3. Chekhov and the Tragic 51
4. The Return of the Tragic in Fiction 63
5. Nietzsche and the Redefining of the Tragic 97
6. The ‘Tragico-Dionysian’ and D. H. Lawrence 121
7. The Theatre of the Absurd and the Tragic 144
8. The Tragic, Pragmatism and the Postmodern 159
Index 177
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Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of the material on Hardy in Chapter 4 and Trollope
in Chapter 8 can be found in ‘Modernising Tragedy in Hardy’s Later
Fiction’, The Thomas Hardy Journal 23 (2007: 142–55), and in
‘Allegory in Trollope’s The Warden’, Essays in Criticism 54 (2004:
128–43). The discussions of Shaw and Tolstoy in Chapters 2 and 4 make
use of and rework material from an earlier book, In Defence of Literary
Interpretation: Theory and Practice(Macmillan Press, 1986). I’m grate-
ful to Robert Clark for giving me the idea for this study by inviting me
to write an article on Modern Tragedy for the Literary Encyclopedia.
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Introduction
This book is concerned with literary responses to the tragic in the
modern period. The tragic is, of course, derived from tragedy as a dra-
matic genre but it tended to have an independent existence almost from
the start. Plato – a near contemporary of the major tragic dramatists –
discussed tragedy without referring to any specific tragic drama and
mentioned writers of tragedies only in passing, so that the tragic became
an idea or a concept partially separate from Greek tragedy as a genre.
On the surface, Aristotle in his Poetics is more objective and literary
in his approach as he focuses on the form of tragic drama, and judged
Sophocles’ Oedipus the King to be the exemplary tragedy. It can be
argued, however, that like Plato his real interest was in the tragic as an
idea and that he valued the dramatic form of Oedipusbecause it could
be aligned with his concept of the tragic, the play’s plot – for him the
most important element in tragedy – ‘produce[ing] the distinctively
tragic effect of engendering phobosand eleos[fear and pity]’.1Aristotle
in effect elevated himself above the writers of tragedy, just as Plato did,
suggesting that he understood its nature better than literary practition-
ers. One consequence of this for later writers of tragedy was to make
it difficult to separate tragedy in general from Aristotle’s poetics of
tragedy, even if the play he had selected as his model tragedy was not
necessarily typical of Greek tragedy in general.
A consequence of Aristotle’s view that the purpose of form in tragic
drama is to engender certain emotions that he identifies with the tragic
is that there was scope for creating alternative dramatic forms that could
also engender these or related emotions, so that tragedy was thus able
to transcend its Greek origins. This made it possible for later writers,
notably Shakespeare, to produce works which were called tragedies
even if they were significantly different in form from classical tragedy. It
has been argued, however, that though Aristotle created a poetics of
tragedy that still has powerful influence, it was only with the German