When it was first published, Radical Tragedy was hailed as a groundbreaking reassessment of the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. An engaged reading of the past with compelling contemporary significance, Radical Tragedy remains a landmark study of Renaissance drama and a classic of cultural materialist criticism. The corrected and reissued third edition of this critically acclaimed work includes a candid new Preface by the author and features a Foreword by Terry Eagleton.
Acknowledgements
Foreword; T.Eagleton
Preface to the Reissued Third Edition
Introduction to the Third Edition
Introduction to the Second Edition
PART I: RADICAL DRAMA: ITS CONTEXTS AND EMERGENCE
Contexts
Emergence: Marston's Antonio Plays (c.1599
1601) and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (c.1601-2)
PART II: STRUCTURE, MIMESIS, PROVIDENCE
Structure: From Resolution to Dislocation
Renaissance Literary Theory: Two Concepts of Mimesis
The Disintegration of Providentialist Belief
Dr Faustus(c.1589-92): Subversion Through Transgression
Mustapha (c.1594-6): Ruined Aesthetic, Ruined Theology
Sejanus (1603): History and Realpolitik
The Revenger's Tragedy (c.1606): Providence, Parody and Black Camp
PART III: MAN DECENTRED
Subjectivity and Social Process
Bussy D'Ambois (c.1604): A Hero at Court
King Lear (c.1605-6) and Essentialist Humanism
Antony and Cleopatra (c.1607): Virtus under Erasure
Coriolanus (c.1608): The Chariot Wheel and its Dust
The White Devil (1612): Transgression Without Virtue
PART IV: SUBJECTIVITY: IDEALISM VERSUS MATERIALISM
Beyond Essentialist Humanism
Notes
Bibliography of Work Cited
Index of Names and Texts
Index of Subjects.
