Shakespeares Tragic Art

(Hardback)

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A new account of Shakespearean tragedy as a response to life in an uncertain world

In Shakespeares Tragic Art, Rhodri Lewis offers a powerfully original reassessment of tragedy as Shakespeare wrote itof what drew him toward tragic drama, what makes his tragedies distinctive, and why they matter.

After reconstructing tragic theory and practice as Shakespeare and his contemporaries knew them, Lewis considers in detail each of Shakespeares tragedies from Titus Andronicus to Coriolanus. He argues that these plays are a series of experiments whose greatness lies in their authors nerve-straining determination to represent the experience of living in a world that eludes rational analysis. They explore not just our inability to know ourselves as we would like to, but the compensatory and generally unacknowledged fictions to which we bind ourselves in our hunger for meaningfrom the political, philosophical, social, and religious to the racial, sexual, personal, and familial. Lewiss Shakespeare not only creates tragedies that exceed anything written before them. Through his art, he also affirms and invigorates the kinds of knowing that are available to intelligent animals like us.

A major reevaluation of Shakespeares tragedies, Shakespeares Tragic Art is essential reading for anyone interested in Shakespeare, tragedy, or the capacity of literature to help us come to terms with the human condition.

Author Bio

Rhodri Lewis teaches English at Princeton University. His previous books include Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness (Princeton) and Language, Mind, and Nature: Artificial Languages in England from Bacon to Locke.