EBOOK Strangeness of Tragedy

This book reads tragedy as a genre in which the protagonist is estranged from the        world around him, and, displaced in time, space, and language, comes to inhabit a        milieu which is no longer shared by other characters. This alienation from others        also entails a decomposition of the integrity of the individual, which is often seen        in tragedy's uncertainty about the protagonists' autonomy: do they act, or do the        gods act through them? Where are the boundaries of the self, and theboundaries of        the human? After an introductory essay exploring the theatrical and linguistic means        by which the protagonist is made to inhabit a strange and singular world, the book        devotes essays to plays from classical, renaissance, and neo-classical literature by        Aeschylus, Sophocles, Seneca,Shakespeare, and Racine. Close attention is paid to the        linguistic strangeness of the texts which is often smoothed over by editors and        translators, as it is through the weirdness of tragic language that the deep        estrangement of the characters is shown. Accordingly, the Greek, Latin, and French        texts are quoted in the originals, with translations added, and attention is paid to        textual cruces which illustrate the linguistic and conceptual difficulties of these        plays.