Mocked with Death: Tragic Overliving from Sophocles to Milton

by Emily Wilson

In Paradise Lost, Adam asks, "Why do I overlive?" Adam's anguished question is the basis for a critical analysis of living too long as a neglected but central theme in Western tragic literature. Emily Wilson examines this experience in works by Milton and by four of his literary predecessors: Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, and Shakespeare. Each of these writers composed works in which the central character undergoes unbearable suffering or loss, hopes for death, but goes on living.

Mocked with Death makes clear that tragic works need not find their moral and aesthetic conclusion in death and that, in some instances, tragedy consists of living on rather than dying. Oedipus's survival at the end of Oedipus Tyrannus and Oedipus Coloneus is clearly one such instance; another Euripides' Heracles. In Seneca's Hercules Furens, overliving becomes an expression of anxieties about both political and literary belatedness. In King Lear and Macbeth, the sense of overliving produces a divided sense of self. For Milton, in both Samson Agonistes and Paradise Lost, overliving is a theological problem arising from the tension between mortal conceptions of time and divine providence.

Each writer in this tradition, Wilson concludes, attempts to diminish the anxieties arising from living past one's time but cannot entirely minimize them. Tragedies of overliving remain disturbing because they remind us that life is rarely as neat as we expect and hope it be and that endings often come too late.

Genres: Nonfiction, Classics, Literary Criticism, Philosophy

304 pages, Hardcover

First published November 30, 2004

About the author

Emily R. Wilson (b. 1971) is a Professor in the Department of Classical Studies and Chair of the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory. She has a BA from Oxford in Classics, an M. Phil., also from Oxford, in English Literature (1500-1660), and a Ph.D. from Yale in Classics and Comparative Literature. Her first book was Mocked with Death: Tragic overliving from Sophocles to Milton (Johns Hopkins, 2004). Her second book was The Death of Socrates: Hero, Villain, Chatterbox, Saint (Harvard UP 2007). Her third was "Seneca: A Life" (also published in the US as "The Greatest Empire": Penguin/ OUP USA, 2015). She has published verse translations of Seneca's tragedies (Oxford World's Classics), Euripides ("The Greek Plays", Modern Library Random House), and The Odyssey (Norton, fall 2017). Other publications include various chapters and articles on the reception of classical literature in English literature, and reviews in the TLS and LRB. She is the classics editor for the revised Norton Anthology of World Literature, and Western Literature.

Reviews

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book version of the author's doctoral dissertation, and it shows occasionally in that she is compelled to answer every possible objection and footnote even the most hesitant conjecture. But other than that, it is a fascinating and clearly written study of tragedy from Sophocles to Milton. The official description is quite accurate and complete, so I won't repeat it here. A blurb on the back cover of the book expresses astonishment that in this day and age Wilson is able to say anything fresh about tragedy, but there's no doubt that she does. I was particularly fascinated by her long discussion of the last four books of Paradise Lost, a poem I haven't read since my freshman year in college. Inspired, I'm about to read it again. Adam and Eve are the perfect exemplars of her thesis about "over-living": they are told that if they eat the fruit they will surely die. But they don't. Instead they are doomed to a long day's dying full of hardship and woe, and they have doomed all of their descendants to the same. I was astonished to learn that Milton has Eve suggest suicide as the ultimate means of family planning--just think of all the future suffering they could prevent by failing to have any children! The author has also written an excellent biography of Seneca, and her recent translation of the Odyssey (the first ever into English by a woman) has a first-rate introduction and is both accurate and readable.

[Matt McCormick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some books you read at just the right time.

I've been trying to gain a better understanding of important literature and I have found that coming at the Greeks, the Romans, Shakespeare and Milton from a sharp angle, rather than head-on, is helpful. Harold Bloom's short series on Shakespearean characters, Stephen Greenblatt's discussion of Shakespeare's politics and even Madeline Miller's Homeric fiction help me understand and evolve my understanding of characters, plot lines and messaging. Emily Wilson has contributed to my endeavor immensely by teaching me more about the Greek tragedies and tragedians, Seneca's plays and epistle and Milton's great epic. However, all of this is just a bonus to the purpose and value of Mocked with Death. That is, an understanding of the value of life and death through the thinking of timeless writers. Who today hasn't thought about death in relation to time and who hasn't thought about what it means to exist well or simply in the state of living death. I know, gloomy sad thoughts, but relevant none the less.

I could never have appreciated Wilson's work 15 years ago and I am amazed she herself could have brought such analysis and insight into the subject at the relatively young age in which she authored the work. But now, being (in the words of my least favorite Sinatra song) "in the autumn of my years" overliving as a concept is real and worth consideration. At the same time, however, I found that while understanding, appreciating and even agreeing with the premise of the concept personified in the characters of Oedipus, Hercules and Adan & Eve I was constantly pushing back against it - wanting to fight it - wanting to argue is was almost dangerous. The all encompassing scope the creators of the these characters gave to endless recycled death while living came close to a description of tragic mental illness in extremis. But moderation held, I didn't scream aloud from my chair and startle the neighbors. I read will appreciation and interest.

I am fast becoming an admirer of Emily Wilson and have her Socrates, Seneca and Odysseus stacked up before me. Ms. Wilson is an intelligent, well educated, articulate and thought provoking writer and I must imagine these traits make her an exceptional educator and scholar.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been interested in Wilson's work since hearing her give a paper on Yeats about seven years ago and witnessing the dissertation on which this book is based receive the Comparative Literature Association prize. Slightly more of the real world than the usual comp lit study -- MOCKED WITH DEATH gives a new view of tragedy that is more appropriate for prosperous societies.

[Brian Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The anakysis of Oedipus decision not to suicide after Jocastas death is extremely thought provoking