Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries

When it was first published, Radical Tragedy was hailed as a groundbreaking reassessment of the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. An engaged reading of the past with compelling contemporary significance, Radical Tragedy remains a landmark study of Renaissance drama. The third edition of this critically acclaimed work includes a new foreword by Terry Eagleton and an extensive new introduction by the author.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments ix Foreword / Terry Eagleton x Introduction to the Third Edition xiv i September 1914 xiv ii September 2001 xvi iii September 1939 xix iv Art and Humanism xxii v Humanism and Materialism xxv vi Returns xxvi vii Knowledge and Desire xxx Notes xxxv Bibliography xxxvii Introduction to the Second Edition xli Part I: Radical Drama: Its Contexts and Emergence 1. Contexts 3 i Literary Criticism: Order versus History 5 ii Ideology, Religion and Renaissance Scepticism 9 iii Ideology and the Decentering of Man 17 iv Secularism versus Nihilism 19 v Censorship 22 vi Inversion and Misrule 25 2. Emergence: Marston's Antonio Plays (c. 1599-1601) and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (c. 1601-1602) 29 i Discontinuous Identity (1) 30 ii Providence and Natural Law (1) 36 iii Discontinuous Identity (2) 40 iv Providence and Natural Law (2) 42 v Ideology and the Absolute 44 vi Social Contradiction and Discontinuous Identity 47 vii Renaissance Man versus Decentered Malcontent 49 Part II: Structure, Mimesis, Providence 3. Structure: From Resolution to Dislocation 53 i Bradley 53 ii Archer and Eliot 56 iii Coherence and Discontinuity 59 iv Brecht: A Difference Reality 63 4. Reniassance Literary Theory: Two Concepts of Mimesis 70 i Poetry versus History 71 ii The Fictive and the Real 73 5. The Disintegration of Providentialist Belief 83 i Atheism and Religious Scepticism 83 ii Providentialism and History 87 iii Organic Providence 90 iv From Mutability to Cosmic Decay 92 v Goodman and Elemental Chaos 99 vi Providence and Protestantism 103 vii Providence, Decay and the Drama 107 6. Dr. Faustus (c. 1589-92): Subversion Through Transgression 109 i Limit and Transgression 110 ii Power and the Unitary Soul 116 7. Mustapha (c. 1594-6): Ruined Aesthetic, Ruined Theology 120 i Tragedy, Theology and Cosmic Decay 120 ii Mustapha: Tragedy as Dislocation 123 8. Sejanus (1603): History and Realpolitik 134 i History, Fate, Providence 134 9. The Revenger's Tragedy (c. 1606): Providence, Parody and Black Camp 139 i Providence and Parody 139 ii Desire and Death 143 Part III: Man Decentered 10. Subjectivity and Social Process 153 i Tragedy, Humanism and the Transcendent Subject 156 ii The Jacobean Displacement of the Subject 158 iii The Essentialist Tradition: Christianity, Stoicism and Renaissance Humanism 161 iv Internal Tensions 163 v Anti-Essentialism in Political Theory and Renaissance Skepticism 169 vi Renaissance Individualism? 174 11. Bussy D'Ambois (c. 1604): A Hero at Court 182 i Shadows and Substance 182 ii Court Power and Native Noblesse 185 12. King Lear (c. 1605-6) and Essentialist Humanism 189 i Redemption and Endurance: Two Sides of Essentialist Humanism 191 ii King Lear: A Materialist Reading 195 iii The Refusal of Closure 202 13. Antony and Cleopatra (c. 1607): Virtus under Erasure 204 i Virtus and History 206 ii Virtus and Realpolitik (1) 207 iii Honour and Policy 213 iv Sexuality and Power 215 14. Coriolanus (c. 1608): The Chariot Whell and its Dust 218 i Virtus and Realpolitik (2) 218 ii Essentialism and Class War 222 15. The White Devil (1612): Transgression Without Virtue 231 i Religion and State Power 231 ii The Virtuous and the Vicious 232 iii Sexual and Social Exploitation 235 iv The Assertive Woman 239 v The Dispossessed Intellectual 242 vi Living Contradictions 244 Part IV: Subjectivity: Idealism versus Materialism 16. Beyond Essentialist Humanism 249 i Origins of the Transcendent Subject 250 ii Essence and Universal: Enlightenment Transitions 253 iii Discrimination and Subjectivity 256 iv Formative Literary Influences: Pope to Eliot 258 v Existentialism 262 vi Lawrence, Leavis and Individualism 264 vii The Decentered Subject 269 Notes 272 Bibliography of Works Cited 290 Index of Names and Texts 307 Index of Subjects 311

About the Author :
Jonathan Dollimore is Professor of English at the University of York. His books include Death, Desire, and Loss in Western Culture; Sex, Literature, and Censorship; Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism (with Alan Sinfield); and Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault.

Review :
"A welcome new edition of a pathbreaking book complete with a brilliantly incisive and thought-provoking introduction that will enthuse a new generation of students. With an iconoclastic energy all too rare in academic circles, Dollimore fearlessly revalues his own project and poses questions central to the larger critical, cultural, and philosophical debates within English Studies, to which Radical Tragedy continues to make a major scholarly contribution."-John Drakakis, University of Stirling "I put this book right at the top. I read it with excitement and sustained interest throughout."-David Bevington, University of Chicago "Prefaced by a powerful, provocative essay that brings its argument bang up to date, this splendid new edition of Radical Tragedy puts its status as a classic of cultural-materialist criticism beyond question."-Kiernan Ryan, Royal Holloway, University of London "Some critical studies are full of insight, but not many of them are necessary. Radical Tragedy ranks among the necessary critical interventions of our time."-Terry Eagleton, from the foreword