The Subject of Tragedy: Identity and Difference in Renaissance Drama

by Catherine Belsey

'The Subject of Tragedy' takes the drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the starting point for the analysis of the differential identities of man and woman.

Arguing that fiction is not outside the meanings in circulation in a society, but is one of the locations of these meanings, Catherine Belsey charts in a range of fictional and non-fictional texts the production in the Renaissance of a meaning for subjectivity which is identifiable modern. The subject of liberal humanism- self-determining free origin of language, choice and action- is the product of a specific epoch. Constructed at once in the theatre and on the stage of history, modern man, solitary, aggressive and sexist, brought with him woman, the opposite but indispensable sex, who defies him by her difference. The two have subsequently been held in place in the family and the state by reiterated meanings of which they are an effect rather than an origin. The liberal-humanist subject was constructed in conflict and in contradiction - with conflicting and contradictory consequences.

'The Subject of Tragedy' identifies the past as a site of change, and as the ground, in consequence, of the politics of change.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Shakespeare, Renaissance

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Catherine Belsey is currently Research Professor at Swansea University and formerly Distinguished Research Professor at Cardiff University. Best known for her pioneering book, Critical Practice (Methuen, 1980), Catherine Belsey has an international reputation as a deft and sophisticated critical theorist and subtle and eloquent critic of literature, particularly of Renaissance texts. Her main area of work is on the implications of poststructuralist theory for aspects of cultural history and criticism. Her present project is ’Culture and the Real’, a consideration of the limitations of contemporary constructivism in the light of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Professor Belsey chairs the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, a research forum for discussion and debate on current views of the relation between human beings and culture.

Reviews

[Riley · Rating 3 out of 5]

was good

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

'The Subject of Tragedy' is an outstanding study on subjectivity, identity, ideology and many other aspects as they emerge in the major English Renaissance plays of the period, including some of Shakespeare's.

It is well-written and researched, very informative and in general it has really opened my eyes to countless implications that I have missed on my first reading of the plays. Although, 'The Subject of 'Tragedy' also tends to focus on specific plays, like Kyd's 'The Spanish Tragedy', 'Everyman', 'Doctor Faustus' and 'Hamlet' (to mention but a few), its general message and study can be applied to the whole theory or notion in general. There is a lot to chew on in this book, and I will definitely give it another look some of these days.

I have also just learned that there has been a 'Routledge Revival' of this book. Good to learn that these sort of books are being republished.