Tragedy Since 9/11: Reading a World out of Joint

(Paperback)

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From the trauma of September 11th, through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to the aftermath of the Arab Spring and the environmental warning signs of climate change, this book reflects on the crises and terrifying events of the early 21st century and argues that a knowledge of tragedy from the works of Sophocles to Shakespeare to Samuel Beckett can help us understand them. Jennifer Wallace offers a cultural analysis of the tragic events of the past two decades with reference to a litany of key dramatic texts, including Aeschylus Oresteia, Euripides Hecuba, Iphigenia in Aulis, Trojan Women and Bacchae, Homers Iliad, Ibsens Emperor and Galilean and Enemy of the People, and Shakespeares Julius Caesar, Macbeth and King Lear, among others.

Reviews

This rich analysis is valuable not only because it underlines the importance of a broader cultural horizon, showing the topicality of more or less ancient literary and philosophical resources, but also because it celebrates different evaluations of current events and historical consciousness in a remarkably original approach. * Modern Drama *
Tragedy since 9/11 is a demanding, provocative readwell researched, articulate, and persuasive. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. * CHOICE *
Powerful, deeply felt, thoughtful and convincing. * Times Higher Education *
[A] remarkable book [that] draws attention to the relationship between the horrors of the first two decades of the twenty-first century and the wider human conditions of tragedy and suffering. * Studies in Theatre and Performance *
A bold and ambitious book ... It is the astonishing range of material [Wallace] draws from our more immediate past and present that makes her book so rich and suggestive ... One ends Wallaces impassioned book with a deepened sense of the historical crisis through which we are living. * Modern Language Review *
Jennifer Wallaces gripping book explores how the tragic tradition can still engage us today. In a learned yet passionate study, Wallace overturns tired commonplaces about canonical tragedies and makes these plays compelling models for framing the horrors of the past two decades. -- Rebecca W. Bushnell, University of Pennsylvania, Emerita Professor of English
This book is unique in its conception of the ancient trope of the tragic as the best guide to the crisis of the 21st century. Concerned with tragedy as both a literary and a political mode, Wallace brilliantly explains how it helps us negotiate the most pressing problems of modern society, from terrorism and environmental catastrophe, to the suffering of refugees on the shifting sands of our time. -- Simon Gikandi, Princeton University, USA

Author Bio

Jennifer Wallace is Director of Studies in English at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge, UK, and editor of A Cultural History of Tragedy in the Modern Age (Bloomsbury, 2019). Her previous books include Digging the Dirt: The Archaeological Imagination (2004) and The Cambridge Introduction to Tragedy (2007).