Description
Book SynopsisThe book moves in a nonreductive way between literary and theological criticism to show how drama and religious thought discern the experience of evil. Tragic method refers to how tragic art functions as inquiry; tragic theology refers to how drama and theology render in thematic or symbolic form certain irreducible dimensions of evil and negativity. Bouchard defines no single tragic method or any single view of evil but searches for the distinctive interplay of tragic method of theology in each dramatist. The work opens by scrutinizing certain important interpretations of Greek tragedy. Paul Ricoeur's interpretation of the Wicked God and the Tragic Vision receives major focus, as does Sophocles, who as a tragedian dramatized the action of inquiry and interpretation. Bouchard then examines Augustine's views of evil and sin, Reinhold Niebuhr's critique of the ironies of history, and Tillich's conceptions of the demonic. By interpreting tragedy in terms of sin or the effects of sin,
