Continuing on Cavell's essay "The Avoidance of Love: A Reading of King Lear" (1969), shifting away from Lear in particular to a more general discussion of tragedy and Cavell's psychological insights. Begin with Part One or get the ad-free, unbroken Citizen Edition. Please support PEL! End song: "Out of Your Hands" by Gretchen's Wheel, i.e., Lindsay Murray, as interviewed Continue Reading …
Ep. 242: Stanley Cavell on Tragedy via King Lear (Part One)
On Cavell's essay "The Avoidance of Love: A Reading of King Lear" (1969). Can money buy you love? What is tragedy? In this first Mark-free episode ever, Wes's new (sub)Text co-host, the poet Erin O'Luanaigh, joins Wes, Seth, and Dylan to discuss this major figure in literary theory. To get the most out of this, check out some performance of King Lear or just read the plot Continue Reading …
Playing God: The Rise of the Actor and the Decline of Tragic Art
In The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche argues that, through his protégé Euripides, Socrates had injected into Greek tragedy the seed of questioning doubt that brought an end to the religious animus of drama, the fire that fueled its creation and sustained it. Thus, cold reason killed tragedy. Although he would later modify this view, it remains a powerful and influential Continue Reading …
Reading ‘Antigone’ with Hegel
Mark W. Roche offers a convenient overview of Hegel's remarks on tragedy in his essay "Introduction to Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy." Listeners to the PEL episodes in which Antigone was read and discussed who wish to uncover more meaning from the play will benefit from his arrangement of Hegel's remarks on Greek tragedy and its context into a theoretical schema for interpreting Continue Reading …