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Very Short Introductions #131
Tragedy: A Very Short Introduction
To your local anchorperson, the word "tragedy" brings to mind an accidental fire at a low-income apartment block, the horrors of a natural disaster, or atrocities occurring in distant lands. To a classicist however, the word brings to mind the masterpieces of Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Racine; beautiful dramas featuring romanticized torment. What has tragedy been made to mean by dramatists, storytellers, philosophers, politicians, and journalists over the last two and a half millennia? Why do we still read, re-write, and stage these old plays? This lively and engaging work presents an entirely unique approach which shows the relevance of tragedy to today's world, and extends beyond drama and literature into visual art and everyday experience. Addressing questions about belief, blame, mourning, revenge, pain, and irony, noted scholar Adrian Poole demonstrates the age-old significance of our attempts to make sense of terrible suffering.
148 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1989
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March 12, 2022
Fundemental
May 26, 2020
I can't recall why I randomly picked this while going through a Wikipedia list of VSIs looking for something on Napoleon or Russia. The difference in a VSI on science/philosophy written by a scientist and one on the arts written by an artist is really telling. The writing flows much better within sections, and the prose is much prettier, while the sections themselves are hard to mentally organize and the width of references overwhelming in their range and speed, it's like walking through a corridor to see 10 different doors opening all at once and 10 doors within each of those doors also threatening to open at any second. I was gently eased through this book, a comforting swell on the surface of waters whose depths I glimpsed at briefly without really registering anything. It constantly reminded me of a very enjoyable long-read on Aeon or similar, written beautifully and depressing in its knowledge of plays, metaphors, and character complexities.
Of the 1000s of plays referenced, I've only read Oresteia, and my Shakespeare penury was highlighted once more, filling me with grim conviction that this time when I brush the dust off my giant Shakespeare collected works it will not be to do two sets of dumbbell curls to estimate the task ahead of me before quietly placing it back into the cupboard, in a different shelf from where I found it, as if something had changed between picking it up and replacing it. It must take such a stunning expertise of these works and characters that for every little philosophical statement there is a ready example at hand, not some direct reference like 'remember that time when Agamemnon sacrifices Iphigenia', but an exploration of ideas never mentioned in the text but consistent with the snapshot that is represented in it.
I read a lot of this book thinking of the current context of Covid-19, with questions like, is it a disaster or tragedy or comedy, is it tragedy or farce or business as usual, is it lachesism in an age devoid of true tragedy, is it nobody's fault somebody's fault or everybody's fault. Every chapter felt relevant and it added to the Aeon long-read feel of the whole thing, a reflection on the biggest event of our lives against the backdrop of the history of tragedy, heroism, and our attitudes towards life and death. I've been reading some of the stuff Agnes Callard has been putting out during this period and generally see the zeitgeist as ripe for deeper appreciation for philosophy and the arts. I could've read an entire chapter on analyses of tragedy in paintings, the Flaying Of Marsyas was one of my favorite sections in the entire book.
On that note, to the bookshelf and beyond, for some biceps gains.
Notes
Heroes belong in epics not tragedy, here they are more ambiguous. Out of place. Agamemnon and Coriolanus. Macbeth and Marc Anthony.
Ghosts became psychological in modern era, with Freud. Inner demons. Hell on earth, living death, empty, drained of meaning purpose joy.
Ghosts in all forms. Looming specter of unborn child in who's afraid of Virginia Woolf
Greek for ghost is eidolon, whence we get idol.
Greek creation of desert island, where man and beast are brought to same level. Philoctetes. Circe. Still they're loathe to leave it. Lear. Heracles returning from madness. Oliver sacks describes similar extreme behaviour of patients revived from sleeping sickness.
Dickens wanted to name little dorrit as nobody's fault. Act of God, politicians will say, stuff happens. Or someone else's fault. Dickens said it is everybody's business and fault.
Who is to blame for tragedy. Greek tragic hero. Fates like Romeo Othello. Aristotle's hamartia, fatal flaw, tragedy interested in what ppl do not what they think or how they are. Good character with specific fallibility.
God or daimon joins human will to make fatal error. Aphrodite and Phaedra. Poseidon and Pasiphae. Two agents absolute minimum.
Crete was that dark place from which pre Olympians came. Whatever inspired Minotaur. Furies.
Tragedy shows us what we miss. Characters act out our repressed desires, Freud. Reason and seriousness hide blood and horror, Nietzsche.
Are all victims scapegoats? Iphigenia, Astyanax son of hector.
Are martyrs tragic?
George Eliot on God, immortality and duty, the movers of men. How inconceivable the first, unbelievable the second and peremptory and absolute the third.
Hegel first to provide theory of tragedy, conflict, resolution and elevation. But no moral dubiousness, basement dark cellar like Freud Nietzsche.
Plato attacks tragedy as inflaming ppls passions, siding unthinkingly with the victim, or worse with the villain.
Philosopher and tragedian are rivals. Philosopher abstracts, tragedian particularises. Tragedy dethrones generalisation, though not exiling them
Today, criticism of tragedy turns from conservative Plato style to the left. Brecht says tragedy turns suffering into inevitable, an obstacle to political progress.
Roland barthes, tragedy assembles subsumes misfortune, justifying it as necessary, wise or pure.
Schopenhauer's wille und vorstellung or representation as Dionysus and Apollo. Nietzsche in birth of tragedy,
Apollo tends towards rigidity, Dionysus violent liberation.
Mel brooks: tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.
Oscar Wilde on death of little Nell in Dickens old curiosity shop: one needs a heart of stone to read it without laughing.
Point of tradition of dithyramb, satyr play to Dionysus after three tragedies was comic relief.
Racine Seneca Wagner don't acknowledge the body. Few times Racine's characters sit down are very dramatic. Neither weather nor nature
Hegel said important events occur twice. Marx added, first time tragedy second time farce.
Third time? Business as usual?
World has been flattened. Now we want to be tragic. Masha from Chekhov's seagull, Hamm in Beckett's endgame. Pseudo tragedy in a world where tragedy is no longer possible. Modern tragedy exists only in pathological forms as nostalgia. Farce.
Sisyphus laughs at his hell. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
What a dream to be articulate when in midst of passion, anger, grief, desire. Art gives us that.
While Greeks were stoically silent in grief, allowing audience to inject feeling, Seneca was given to excessive emotion like European renaissance opera and symphonies.
Of the 1000s of plays referenced, I've only read Oresteia, and my Shakespeare penury was highlighted once more, filling me with grim conviction that this time when I brush the dust off my giant Shakespeare collected works it will not be to do two sets of dumbbell curls to estimate the task ahead of me before quietly placing it back into the cupboard, in a different shelf from where I found it, as if something had changed between picking it up and replacing it. It must take such a stunning expertise of these works and characters that for every little philosophical statement there is a ready example at hand, not some direct reference like 'remember that time when Agamemnon sacrifices Iphigenia', but an exploration of ideas never mentioned in the text but consistent with the snapshot that is represented in it.
I read a lot of this book thinking of the current context of Covid-19, with questions like, is it a disaster or tragedy or comedy, is it tragedy or farce or business as usual, is it lachesism in an age devoid of true tragedy, is it nobody's fault somebody's fault or everybody's fault. Every chapter felt relevant and it added to the Aeon long-read feel of the whole thing, a reflection on the biggest event of our lives against the backdrop of the history of tragedy, heroism, and our attitudes towards life and death. I've been reading some of the stuff Agnes Callard has been putting out during this period and generally see the zeitgeist as ripe for deeper appreciation for philosophy and the arts. I could've read an entire chapter on analyses of tragedy in paintings, the Flaying Of Marsyas was one of my favorite sections in the entire book.
On that note, to the bookshelf and beyond, for some biceps gains.
Notes
Heroes belong in epics not tragedy, here they are more ambiguous. Out of place. Agamemnon and Coriolanus. Macbeth and Marc Anthony.
Ghosts became psychological in modern era, with Freud. Inner demons. Hell on earth, living death, empty, drained of meaning purpose joy.
Ghosts in all forms. Looming specter of unborn child in who's afraid of Virginia Woolf
Greek for ghost is eidolon, whence we get idol.
Greek creation of desert island, where man and beast are brought to same level. Philoctetes. Circe. Still they're loathe to leave it. Lear. Heracles returning from madness. Oliver sacks describes similar extreme behaviour of patients revived from sleeping sickness.
Dickens wanted to name little dorrit as nobody's fault. Act of God, politicians will say, stuff happens. Or someone else's fault. Dickens said it is everybody's business and fault.
Who is to blame for tragedy. Greek tragic hero. Fates like Romeo Othello. Aristotle's hamartia, fatal flaw, tragedy interested in what ppl do not what they think or how they are. Good character with specific fallibility.
God or daimon joins human will to make fatal error. Aphrodite and Phaedra. Poseidon and Pasiphae. Two agents absolute minimum.
Crete was that dark place from which pre Olympians came. Whatever inspired Minotaur. Furies.
Tragedy shows us what we miss. Characters act out our repressed desires, Freud. Reason and seriousness hide blood and horror, Nietzsche.
Are all victims scapegoats? Iphigenia, Astyanax son of hector.
Are martyrs tragic?
George Eliot on God, immortality and duty, the movers of men. How inconceivable the first, unbelievable the second and peremptory and absolute the third.
Hegel first to provide theory of tragedy, conflict, resolution and elevation. But no moral dubiousness, basement dark cellar like Freud Nietzsche.
Plato attacks tragedy as inflaming ppls passions, siding unthinkingly with the victim, or worse with the villain.
Philosopher and tragedian are rivals. Philosopher abstracts, tragedian particularises. Tragedy dethrones generalisation, though not exiling them
Today, criticism of tragedy turns from conservative Plato style to the left. Brecht says tragedy turns suffering into inevitable, an obstacle to political progress.
Roland barthes, tragedy assembles subsumes misfortune, justifying it as necessary, wise or pure.
Schopenhauer's wille und vorstellung or representation as Dionysus and Apollo. Nietzsche in birth of tragedy,
Apollo tends towards rigidity, Dionysus violent liberation.
Mel brooks: tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.
Oscar Wilde on death of little Nell in Dickens old curiosity shop: one needs a heart of stone to read it without laughing.
Point of tradition of dithyramb, satyr play to Dionysus after three tragedies was comic relief.
Racine Seneca Wagner don't acknowledge the body. Few times Racine's characters sit down are very dramatic. Neither weather nor nature
Hegel said important events occur twice. Marx added, first time tragedy second time farce.
Third time? Business as usual?
World has been flattened. Now we want to be tragic. Masha from Chekhov's seagull, Hamm in Beckett's endgame. Pseudo tragedy in a world where tragedy is no longer possible. Modern tragedy exists only in pathological forms as nostalgia. Farce.
Sisyphus laughs at his hell. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
What a dream to be articulate when in midst of passion, anger, grief, desire. Art gives us that.
While Greeks were stoically silent in grief, allowing audience to inject feeling, Seneca was given to excessive emotion like European renaissance opera and symphonies.
April 23, 2024
Did what it said on the tin. Great place to start for a very brief overview of tragic theory and criticism.
October 31, 2021
What an excellent 123 pages. Highly recommend for any teacher of English as an enhancement to subject knowledge and for general academic interest.
April 6, 2024
Finally finished my VERY SHORT introduction
June 22, 2025
The book constantly references other works. If you are not familiar with them, it takes you out of the flow of reading and it is difficult to enjoy. Not enough is done to say why the elements provided are relevant to tragedy and not story telling in general, nothing to put together the pieces.
December 2, 2018
A nice starter. Poole opens with distinctions and the present moment and brings in a succinct and critical summary of earlier attempts to grip on or theorise the subject. After that, he clears away the simple furnishings of theory and embarks on a kind of conceptual investigation that is open and various: it makes room for the vastness and complexities of classical texts without constraining them.
Even if you're not interested in academic approaches to tragedy, there's a lot to recommend this book. It draws from the plays of the new and ancient past and it meditates and moves on broader concepts. The beginning is deceptive and hard. But once it dips into its histories and texts, it turns to the opposite of dry theory.
Even if you're not interested in academic approaches to tragedy, there's a lot to recommend this book. It draws from the plays of the new and ancient past and it meditates and moves on broader concepts. The beginning is deceptive and hard. But once it dips into its histories and texts, it turns to the opposite of dry theory.
July 29, 2022
A lightning tour of language and literature in a light, literary manner. Some of the thoughts were dense, almost crystalline, like aphorisms, but the delivery was delicate. Squeezing Greek, French, and English literature, as well as Greek and German philosophy into such a short work takes some doing. As others have said, Mr. Poole swims better in the literary world than the philosophic. However, he presents so many thought nuggets to work on, the reader hardly feels cheated.
If you're wondering what to read next, try this: it's like being presented a literary box of chocolates. Just in case you were wondering why hope has to be blind:
If you're wondering what to read next, try this: it's like being presented a literary box of chocolates. Just in case you were wondering why hope has to be blind:
If we could see the future, then we might just sit down and despair. Adrian Poole, Tragedy: A Very Short Introduction,
September 26, 2019
Terrific
While this will serve as a "Introduction" to the concept of tragedy, you do need some familiarity with Shakespeare's plays and with the Greeks. If you have that familiarity, this will serve as reminder, reinvigorator, and spur. It's particularly good if you're writing fiction (probably also drama).
While this will serve as a "Introduction" to the concept of tragedy, you do need some familiarity with Shakespeare's plays and with the Greeks. If you have that familiarity, this will serve as reminder, reinvigorator, and spur. It's particularly good if you're writing fiction (probably also drama).
November 10, 2021
3.5 // i am soo thankful that i decided to bite the bullet and read this book for a uni book review. quick and jam-packed with digestible information, this handbook is a must read for anyone who has an interest in tragedy.
March 28, 2023
“In Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare carefully orchestrates the sequence of three deaths with which the play draws to its close: Enobarbus, Antony, Cleopatra. (There is no question which of the three is the most painful — the first.)” correct.
May 9, 2024
Chapter 1: Who needs it?
Chapter 2: Once upon a time
Chapter 3: The living dead
Chapter 4: Who's to blame?
Chapter 5: Big ideas
Chapter 6: No laughing matter
Chapter 7: Words, words, words
Chapter 8: Timing
Chapter 9: Endings
Chapter 2: Once upon a time
Chapter 3: The living dead
Chapter 4: Who's to blame?
Chapter 5: Big ideas
Chapter 6: No laughing matter
Chapter 7: Words, words, words
Chapter 8: Timing
Chapter 9: Endings
March 27, 2019
Enjoy some VSIs more than others, this one was pretty decent
July 24, 2019
It's a bit hard to understand this book, cause it cites a lot of novels that i had never read. However, it's worth to read.
December 10, 2019
Dense but informative
This is a densely erudite analysis of our relationships with tragedy and it covers music and painting, as well as literature.
This is a densely erudite analysis of our relationships with tragedy and it covers music and painting, as well as literature.
November 20, 2024
sometimes these very short introduction books are really good, and sometimes the person just yaps on and on without saying anything really of value
this was the latter.
this was the latter.
February 4, 2014
well-written and intelligent, but for some reason I just could not find it in myself to take any interest in the subject (obviously, not necessarily a deficiency on the part of the author). If only Mr. Poole wrote more extensively - i.e. on topics other than tragedy, as he is really very good
September 15, 2011
The first "A Very Short Introduction" book I've read, and an amazing introduction to the whole concept of them.
October 18, 2014
Mình không đọc được cuốn sách này rồi, không hiểu gì hết. Nội dung đã không dễ mà dịch còn làm khó mình hơn nữa. Biết mặt dịch giả, bữa sau tránh.
August 6, 2016
a fair intro but I had just read a journal article on the subject...
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews