Description
Book SynopsisThe Politics and Poetics of Contemporary English Tragedy is a detailed study of the idea of the tragic in the political plays of David Hare, Howard Barker, Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill, Mark Ravenhill, Sarah Kane, and Jez Butterworth. Through an in-depth analysis of over sixty of their works, Sean Carney argues that their dramatic exploration of tragic experience is an integral part of their ongoing politics. This approach allows for a comprehensive rather than selective study of both the politics and poetics of their work.
Carney’s attention to the tragic enables him to find a common discourse among the canonical English playwrights of an older generation and representatives of the nineties generation, challenging the idea that there is a sharp generational break between these groups. Finally, Carney demonstrates that tragic experience is often denied by the social discourse of Englishness, and that these playwrights make a crucial critical intervention by dram
Trade Review
'The study discusses a unique combination of English playwrights and their works and offers a valuable resource for academics, serious readers and theatergoers who appreciate contemporary English drama. Highly recommended.' -- J.S. Baggett Choice Magazine, vol 51:02:2013 'Sean Carney has written a study which every student and academic interested in contemporary English theatre, in political drama, and in the concept of tragedy has been waiting for... This will prove a valuable resource for students in Literature and Drama.' -- Anne Etienne New Theatre Quarterly vol30:02:2014 'Carney's account of these plays is patient and rigorous, and his delineation of tragedy as a postmodern category cogent...His study illuminates the powerful politics contained within a theatre of joy and despair.' -- Lily Cui Modern Drama vol 57:02:2014Modern Drama vol 57:02:2014 'This volume serves as a compelling intellectual history of the era, a detailed analysis of the work of the playwrights at its centre, and a crucial addition to the theory of both the transhistorical tragic and the place of tragedy in (post)modernity.' -- Ariel Watson Theatre Journal vol 67:01:2015
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter One David Hare: The Work of Mourning, or, The Agony and the Ecstasy of the Bourgeoisie The Year of Magical Thinking - Teeth 'n' Smiles - Plenty -- The Secret Rapture - Skylight - The Judas Kiss - Amy's View - My Zinc Bed - The Permanent Way -- The Vertical Hour - Gethsemane Chapter Two Howard Barker: Will and Desire - From the Tragedy of Socialism to the Ecstasy of the Unconscious Claw - Fair Slaughter - That Good Between Us -- The Power of the Dog - Victory - The Castle - The Europeans -- The Possibilities - Gertrude-The Cry - Dead Hands - The Seduction of Almighty God by the Boy Priest Loftus in the Abbey of Calcetto, 1539 Chapter Three Edward Bond: Tragedy and Postmodernity, or, The Promethean Impulse Saved - Lear - Bingo - The Fool -- Restoration -- The War Plays - Olly's Prison - At the Inland Sea - Coffee- The Crime of the Twenty-First Century - Chair Chapter Four Caryl Churchill: The Dionysian Mobius Strip Seven Jewish Children - Lovesick - Abortive -- Owners - Traps -- Light Shining in Buckinghamshire - Cloud Nine - Top Girls - Fen - A Mouthful of Birds -- Lives of the Great Poisoners - The Skriker - Thyestes --- Far Away -- A Number Chapter Five New English Tragedians: The Tragedy of the Tragic Mark Ravenhill: Shopping and Fucking - Faust is Dead - Handbag - Some Explicit Polaroids - Product - The Cut - pool (no water) - Sarah Kane: Blasted - Phaedra's Love - Cleansed - Crave - 4.48 Psychosis Conclusion: Late Modernism in Jerusalem Works Cited Index
