Radical Tragedy is both a landmark study of the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries and a classic of cultural materialist thought. The third edition reproduces the original text with the addition of a Foreword by Terry Eagleton, and an extensive new Introduction which argues for the continuing relevance of the tragic aesthetic in today's world.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements - Foreword; T.Eagleton - Introduction to the Third 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

Author Biography

JONATHAN DOLLIMORE is Professor of English at the University of York. His books include Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism (with Alan Sinfield, 1985, 2nd ed 1994), Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault (1991), Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture (1998), and Sex, Literature and Censorship (2000). -