Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic

by Terry Eagleton

Terry Eagleton's Tragedy provides a major critical and analytical account of the concept of 'tragedy' from its origins in the Ancient world right down to the twenty-first century.

A major new intellectual endeavour from one of the world's finest, and most controversial, cultural theorists.

Provides an analytical account of the concept of 'tragedy' from its origins in the ancient world to the present day.

Explores the idea of the 'tragic' across all genres of writing, as well as in philosophy, politics, religion and psychology, and throughout western culture.

Considers the psychological, religious and socio-political implications and consequences of our fascination with the tragic.

Genres: Philosophy, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Theory, History, Tragedy, Literature

352 pages, Paperback

First published September 27, 2002

About the author

Widely regarded as England's most influential living literary critic & theorist, Dr. Terry Eagleton currently serves as Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster and as Visiting Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He was Thomas Warton Prof. of English Literature at the University of Oxford ('92-01) & John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at the University of Manchester 'til '08. He returned to the University of Notre Dame in the Autumn '09 semester as Distinguished Visitor in the English Department.

He's written over 40 books, including Literary Theory: An Introduction ('83); The Ideology of the Aesthetic ('90) & The Illusions of Postmodernism ('96).
He delivered Yale's '08 Terry Lectures and gave a Gifford Lecture in 3/10, titled The God Debate.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a frustrating book. Eagleton writes with all his characteristic flair. The text is peppered with witty quips and compelling analogies. His sentences are terse. His arguments are concise. But he never propounds a clear overarching thesis of his own, he never slackens the pace, and he chases every new thought straight down the rabbit hole, even if it is difficult to connect with the rest of the chapter he chooses to chase it through.

The book is about "The Idea of the Tragic." It is a book about other books about tragedy—it is not a history of tragedy itself, and only analyses actual tragedies in passing, to illustrate or refute a theory. Eagleton begins with an overview of the theory of tragedy, then takes us through a few common themes in tragic writing, such as "Heroes," and "Pity, Fear and Pleasure." He concludes with a couple of chapters about the moral and political significance of tragic writing today.

Despite being digressive and tiresome, the book earns five stars from me because I found it so challenging. Like his hero Brecht, Eagleton aims to estrange the world, to force us to think and reason, and to accept both the imperfection of our understanding and the unavoidable duty to understand. His basic theory of tragedy is that there is no good theory of tragedy. Attempts to define the common essence of tragedy have all failed and will all fail:

In fact, tragedy would seem exemplary of Wittgenstein's 'family resemblances', constituted as it is by a combinatoire of overlapping features rather than by a set of invariant forms or contents.

He takes up the arguments of scholars, critics, and philosophers, from Aristotle to the present, and breaks them to pieces with his trademark wit. The moment you think he has found an idea to rest his argument on, he turns around and breaks it to pieces as well.

This is not to say that Eagleton has no thesis of his own at all. In the end, it turns out that tragedy does have a kind of essence for Eagleton, and this is contradiction. Tragedy is a mixture of hope and despair. It tells us the world is inexorably shit, and that we must rise from the dung. It fills us with pity for the victim, and loathing for humankind. It is this contradictoriness that has made it so prickly for philosophers and theorists. As Eagleton rather amusingly points out, those theorists like George Steiner who praise tragedy as the very peak of human art, and wax lyrical about its ability to portray the highest ideals, seem to be repressing the guilty feeling that perhaps their enjoyment of tragedy is all schadenfreude at the suffering depicted on stage. In the final two chapters of the book, Eagleton puts a Marxist spin on the contradictory nature of tragedy. As an orthodox Marxist, Eagleton of course believes that history is contradictory, particularly modern history. This makes tragedy vitally important today:

If tragedy springs from the contradictions inherent in a situation—a large enough supposition, to be sure—then modernity is tragic in exactly this classical sense.

If you love a dismal play, movie or novel, and can stomach 300 pages of unremitting intellect, then this book is likely to enrich your experience in the theatre, cinema or armchair. If you prefer comedy and delight, then this book, despite his humour and rationality, is perhaps not for you.

[A L]

Jameson says dialectical thinking takes the strangeness of a given paradox and makes it even stranger with its solution, and this book does that with the scapegoat and the social order.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was ultimately just overly ambitious. Eagleton's basic thesis is that the Tragic is neither limited to a specific era within the arts (Greek) nor is it highly conservative. Rather, aesthetically, tragedy spans all eras of literature from the biblical up through the twentieth century. I don't entirely buy this premise, as he tends to argue that anything that is sad is tragic, which I don't agree with. At the same time, he is right that literature that addresses human fragility is inherently tragic is spot on.

[Matilda Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite what Harold Bloom might term his allegiance to the 'School of Resentment', I've enjoyed Eagleton's literary criticism in the past. At his best, his books are intelligently argued, hugely informative and well written. Unfortunately, this is Eagleton at his worst. Stylistically, it is characterised by long, rambling digressions and his argument lacks clarity. Content-wise, this consists of a number of vehement dismissals of a long string of theories and only bold, unsubstantiated generalisations to offer in their place. The following extract is one of many examples of the moral outrage, dismissal and lack of critical engagement which characterise his writing in this book:

"Susanne K. Langer, who believes that tragedy shows 'the rhythm of man's life at its highest powers in the limits of his unique, earth-bound career', sees it as a 'mature' art form which requires the development of individuality - a development 'which some religions and some cultures - even high cultures - do not possess . . . Tragedy can arise and flourish only when people are aware of individual life as an end in itself, and as a measure of other things.' The message is clear: potential tragedians should first of all ensure that they are not denizens of Sarawak or the Kalahari desert. Only Western cultures need apply."

Eagleton appears to have completely misinterpreted Langer's simple observation (such a simple observation, in fact, that it is practically a tautology): the tragedy of the individual can only be produced by societies which have undergone the development of individuality. It is not that "only Western cultures need apply" but that "only Western cultures have applied". Unless Eagleton is suggesting that only Western cultures are capable of ever reaching this development, other cultures will also produce the tragedy of the individual as and when the development of individuality occurs. After that poorly thought-out (but nonetheless morally outraged) objection to Langer's argument, Eagleton admits in the following paragraph that "only Western cultures" have indeed produced tragedy in this sense.

Elsewhere, Eagleton claims that anyone who judges tragedy to be the highest art form, who considers it to speak to the human condition in a way that no other form can, who thinks it the best mode of expression for "what is most precious" about humanity, is indulging in Western supremacy:

"If tragic art really does bear witness to the highest of human values, as so many of its advocates insist, then this carries one generally overlooked implication: that societies in which such art is either marginal or unknown are incapable of rising to what is most precious. As often in the West, a generous-spirited humanism has its darker, more disreputable roots."

This argument is also invalid, this time due to a category error: he attempts, in moral terms, to dismiss the aesthetic argument for tragedy. It is clear that Eagleton suspects that the reason so many people consider tragedy to be the highest art form is not due to the reasons outlined above, but instead because of a pernicious and deepseated hatred of non-Western cultures and an blind appreciation of everything produced by the West. But unless he can substantiate that argument (either by taking down tragic art on purely aesthetic terms, or outlining the aesthetic merit of a different art form which he considers to be higher than the tragic), his argument, once again, holds no weight.

To conclude with some positive thoughts... Although the aphorisms and generalisations throughout the book make no attempt to distinguish between fact and opinion, to Eagleton's credit he does always explicitly lay out his Marxist agenda in the introductions of his books. He is consistent in criticising those who base their definitions of "tragedy" on a select one or two texts, and throughout the book he helpfully broadens the definition of tragedy. His chapter on "Heroes" is particularly insightful; he makes the case for extending the criteria for a tragic protagonist beyond someone of high status capable of a tragic fall, so that the impoverished protagonists of such writers as Emile Zola and Thomas Hardy (two of my favourites) can too be classed as tragic.

[Yenreads · Rating 3 out of 5]

imagine being trapped in a conversation at the family gathering by that one weird uncle who’s into a super specific longwinded niche interest and keeps going off on even longer and irrelevant tangents … yeah

[Descabellos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uno de los mejores libros escritos sobre la tragedia como género literario. La audacia de su lectura marxista, trufada expertamente de ironías certeras, hicieron de esta una lectura deliciosa.

[Alina Kokina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terry knows his stuff

[Thebookanaconda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Next on my list is salty violence

[Leonardo]

...más modalidades de violencia divina.

Sobre la Violencia Pág.213

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Messy but comprehensive. He reminds us what's at stake when it comes to the issue of tragedy.

[Alex]

Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic by Terry Eagleton (2002)

[Mary Vermillion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gotta love a snarky academic book.

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only book I've read so far that manages to efficiently 'pass through' (a key phrase in Eagleton's argument) temporal boundaries and make sense of Greek AND Shakespearean AND Other tragedy.