Tragic Plots: A New Reading from Aeschylus to Lorca

Rosslyn (English, U. of Leicester) traces the central stream of feeling in tragic drama across time and cultural barriers, particularly looking at what the audience needs expressed and what the artist does to meet that need. Though the plays themselves provide the evidence, and the plots reveal which problems the audience is most preoccupied with, she warns that scholars must be alive to the difference between what they say they are about, what they think they are about, and what audiences sense they really are about. The playwright, she says, may be as unclear as everyone else about the real motive for writing. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR