Shakespearean Tragedy

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This ground-breaking book reveals the prophetic, revolutionary vision that drives Shakespeares tragedies, tracing its unbroken development from its beginnings in the Henry VI plays and Shakespeares first tragedy, Titus Andronicus, right through to his last, Coriolanus. The four full-length studies at the heart of the book focus in depth on Shakespeares four greatest tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. Shakespearean Tragedy engages with each of these titanic masterpieces as a singular, complete work of dramatic art with its own distinctive concerns and critical challenges, but with the same unmistakably Shakespearean tragic vision at its core. Through compelling new readings of the plays, grounded in close analysis of their language and form, Kiernan Ryan shows how Shakespeare dramatizes the tragic realities of his world from the standpoint of the transfigured future that our world still awaits.

Reviews

Kiernan Ryan approaches Shakespearean tragedy like a visitor from the future, to reveal how these centuries-old plays still dream on things to come through the politics of time. He shows how the lovers are crossed by stars dead for millennia; and why the light that breaks in their day is a dawn that hasnt yet arrived. But we are the future Hamlet awaits, in Ryans time frame; Cordelias smiles and tears are our cues for a better way. So, this is truly a world turned upside-down, where the hero counts the hours, days, years before desolation begins to make a better life. In short, Shakespearean Tragedy gives us a master-class in the revolution of the times. * Richard Wilson, Sir Peter Hall Professor of Shakespeare Studies, Kingston University, UK *
Kiernan Ryan has done more than anyone else to bring to light what he calls, in this splendid and beautifully written book, the mutinous utopian logic of Shakespeares dramato show us that, as Shakespeare said, Thought is free, able to peer beyond a cabined, cribbed, confined present to an emancipated, more human, future. Shakespearean Tragedy is not only a masterwork of subtle, scrupulous, attentive criticism, written in admirably straightforward prose, it is also a major contribution to a leftist politics characterized above all by universalism and solidarity. Here is Shakespeare criticism for the 99%! * Peter Holbrook, Professor of English Literature, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia *
This brilliantly written and consistently illuminating book presents a wholly original perspective on every one of Shakespeares tragedies, and makes a compelling case for their importance now. With a refreshing range of reference across the breadth of the critical tradition, not to mention the whole scope of theory and philosophy, it thrillingly opens our ears to Shakespeare as the prophetic soul of the wide world. Thanks to Ryan, the most famous characters in literature come close and confess that they are haunted by their own fulfilled selves in the transfigured future to which Shakespeare is ushering us, even as they fall prey to their times. * Ewan Fernie, Chair and Professor of Shakespeare Studies, Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK *

Author Bio

Kiernan Ryan is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, and an Emeritus Fellow of Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, UK.