Cosmos and Tragedy

Cosmos and Tragedy
Author: Brooks Otis
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2017-10-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1469640112

Otis clarifies the moral and theological issues raised in the Ortesia and relates them to certain stylistic and structural qualities of the three plays. He tackles the central questions of guilt, retribution, and the relation between human and divine justice, and he sees a carefully prepared evolution in the trilogy from a primitive to a more civilized form of justice. Otis treats the trilogy as a poem, a play, and a work of theological and philosophical reflection. Originally published in 1981. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Shakespeare's Tragic Cosmos

Shakespeare's Tragic Cosmos
Author: T. McAlindon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 1996-04-18
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780521566056

This study focuses on Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, the four main tragedies and Antony and Cleopatra. Tom McAlindon argues that there were two models of nature in Renaissance culture, one hierarchical, in which everything has an appointed place, and the other contrarious, showing nature as a tense system of interacting opposites, liable to sudden collapse and transformation. This latter model informs Shakespeare's tragedy.

Our Tragic Universe

Our Tragic Universe
Author: Scarlett Thomas
Publisher: HMH
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2010-09-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0547504659

This “delightfully whimsical novel riffs on the premise that ordinary lives stubbornly resist the tidy order that a fiction narrative might impose on them” (Publishers Weekly). Can a story save your life? Meg Carpenter is broke. Her novel is years overdue. Her cell phone is out of minutes. And her moody boyfriend’s only contribution to the household is his sour attitude. So she jumps at the chance to review a pseudoscientific book that promises life everlasting. But who wants to live forever? Consulting cosmology and physics, tarot cards, koans (and riddles and jokes), new-age theories of everything, narrative theory, Nietzsche, Baudrillard, and knitting patterns, Meg wends her way through Our Tragic Universe, asking this and many other questions. Does she believe in fairies? In magic? Is she a superbeing? Is she living a storyless story? And what’s the connection between her off-hand suggestion to push a car into a river, a ship in a bottle, a mysterious beast loose on the moor, and the controversial author of The Science of Living Forever? Smart, entrancing, and boiling over with Thomas’s trademark big ideas, Our Tragic Universe is a book about how relationships are created and destroyed, how we can rewrite our futures (if not our histories), and how stories just might save our lives.

Death By Black Hole

Death By Black Hole
Author: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2007-01-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780393062243

A collection of essays on the cosmos, written by an American Museum of Natural History astrophysicist, includes "Holy Wars," "Ends of the World," and "Hollywood Nights."

Theology and Existentialism in Aeschylus

Theology and Existentialism in Aeschylus
Author: Richard Rader
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2014-11-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317633873

Theology and Existentialism in Aeschylus revivifies the complex question of fate and freedom in the tragedies of the famous Greek playwright. Starting with Sartre’s insights about radical existential freedom, this book shows that Aeschylus is concerned with the ethical ramifications of surrendering our lives to fatalism (gods, curses, inherited guilt) and thoroughly interrogates the plays for their complex insights into theology and human motivation. But can we reconcile the radical freedom of existentialism and the seemingly fatal world of tragedy, where gods and curses and necessities wreak havoc on individual autonomy? If forces beyond our control or comprehension are influencing our lives, what happens to choice? How are we to conceive of ethics in a world studiously indifferent to our choices? In this book, author Ric Rader demonstrates that few understood the importance of these questions better than the tragedians, whose literature dealt with a central theological concern: What is a god? And how does god affect, impinge upon, or even enable human freedom? Perhaps more importantly: If god is dead, is everything possible, or nothing? Tragedy holds the preeminent position with regard to these questions, and Aeschylus, our earliest surviving tragedian, is the best witness to these complex theological issues.

Archetypes and the Fourth Gospel

Archetypes and the Fourth Gospel
Author: Brian Larsen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2018-06-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 056767648X

Employing Northrop Frye's system of archetypal literary criticism - the use of romance, tragedy, irony and satire, and comedy - Brian Larsen offers a compelling summary of the essential governing framework and means of exchange between literature and theology. Characters in the Fourth Gospel are examined through a specific archetype, and, reciprocally, these characters illuminate and inform important theological aspects of their respective archetypes: Jesus and romance (hero story); Pilate and tragedy; the Jews and Thomas and irony; and Peter and comedy. This volume further clarifies the understanding of Frye's archetypesand identifies the key variable between each one: the relationship between (1) a belief or ideal and (2) experience or reality. Helping to advance dialogue between literature, biblical studies and theology, and providing insightful readings for a number of Fourth Gospel characters and texts, Larsen's examination will appeal to those seeking a new perspective on the themes of the New Testament or those seeking theological insights into literature.

Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre

Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre
Author: Hans-Thies Lehmann
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2016-05-05
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1317276272

This comprehensive, authoritative account of tragedy is the culmination of Hans-Thies Lehmann’s groundbreaking contributions to theatre and performance scholarship. It is a major milestone in our understanding of this core foundation of the dramatic arts. From the philosophical roots and theories of tragedy, through its inextricable relationship with drama, to its impact upon post-dramatic forms, this is the definitive work in its field. Lehmann plots a course through the history of dramatic thought, taking in Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Lacan, Shakespeare, Schiller, Holderlin, Wagner, Maeterlinck, Yeats, Brecht, Kantor, Heiner Müller and Sarah Kane.

Quarterly Review

Quarterly Review
Author:
Publisher: UM Libraries
Total Pages: 426
Release: 1954
Genre:
ISBN:

Includes section: "Some Michigan books."

A Cultural History of Tragedy in Antiquity

A Cultural History of Tragedy in Antiquity
Author: Emily Wilson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2021-05-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350154881

In this volume, tragedy in antiquity is examined synoptically, from its misty origins in archaic Greece, through its central position in the civic life of ancient Athens and its performances across the Greek-speaking world, to its new and very different instantiations in Republican and Imperial Roman contexts. Lively, original essays by eminent scholars trace the shifting dramatic forms, performance environments, and social meanings of tragedy as it was repeatedly reinvented. Tragedy was consistently seen as the most serious of all dramatic genres; these essays trace a sequence of different visions of what the most serious kind of dramatic story might be, and the most appropriate ways of telling those stories on stage. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual, and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.

REviewing REthinking REturning

REviewing REthinking REturning
Author: Alan Wittbecker
Publisher: 3 Muses Books, SynGeo ArchiGraph
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2006
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0911385134

This book reviews and recasts many popular ideas, using an ecological perspective, ecological design principles and ecological thought experiments.