Table of Contents

Introduction
Part One: Defining Tragedy
George Steiner // "Tragedy," Reconsidered
Simon Goldhill // Generalizing About Tragedy
Wai Chee Dimock // After Troy: Homer, Euripides, Total War
Kathleen M. Sands // Tragedy, Theology, and Feminism in the Time After Time
Joshua Foa Dienstag // Tragedy, Pessimism, Nietzsche
Part Two: Rethinking the History of Tragedy
Page duBois // Toppling the Hero: Polyphony in the Tragic City
Martha C. Nussbaum // The "Morality of Pity": Sophocles' Philoctetes
Simon Critchley // I Want to Die, I Hate My Life— Phaedra's Malaise
Part Three: Tragedy and Modernity
David Scott // Tragedy's Time: Postemancipation Futures Past and Present
Stanley Corngold // Sebald's Tragedy
Olga Taxidou // Machines and Models for Modern Tragedy: Brecht/Berlau, Antigone- Model 1948
Timothy J. Reiss // Transforming Polities and Selves:Greek Antiquity, West African Modernity
Part Four: Tragedy, Film, Popular Culture
Elisabeth Bronfen // Femme Fatale—Negotiations of Tragic Desire
Heather K. Love // Spectacular Failure: The Figure of the Lesbian in Mulholland Drive
Michel Maffesoli // The Return of the Tragic in Postmodern Societies
Terry Eagleton // Commentary
Notes on Contributors
Index

About the Author

Rita Felski is a professor of English and chair of comparative literature at the University of Virginia.

Reviews

[A] stimulating symposium. Times Literary Supplement This is a stimulating and provocative collection. Anyone interested in our cultural and political fascination with 'endless Tragedie' will find plenty of red meat here. -- Adrian Streete English