We are living through tumultuous times, in which the discourse of the War on Terror draws upon terms that hark back to ancient notions of tragedy- heroes, sacrifice, good and evil. People respond to disaster in ways that have much in common with practices in tragic drama. What can we learn from the tradition of tragedy? And how can a literary attention to tragedy help us to analyse current dilemmas of citizenship, political responsibility, spectacle, grief and mourning, justice and ethical responsibility?
From the trauma of September 11th, through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to the aftermath of the Arab Spring and the environmental warning signs of climate change, this book reflects on the crises and terrifying events of the early 21st century and argues that a knowledge of tragedy from the works of Sophocles to Shakespeare to Samuel Beckett can help us understand them. Jennifer Wallace offers a cultural analysis of the tragic events of the past two decades with reference to a litany of key dramatic texts, including Aeschylus's Oresteia, Euripides' Hecuba, Iphigenia in Aulis, Trojan Women and Bacchae, Homer's Iliad, Ibsen's Emperor and Galilean and Enemy of the People, and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Macbeth and King Lear, among others.
