literary Criticism

Sir Tariq Usman

Modern Tragedy by
Raymond William
Anam Misbah
Anila Bashir
Mehwih Idrees
Iqra Mushtaq
Raymond William
• Important Writer
• Thinker about Culture and
Politics
• Thinker about Literature
and Drama
• Socialist and Activist.
 Raymond William (Biography)
• Raymond William (August 31, 1921 – January 26, 1988) , United Kingdom
• Williams attended King Henry VIII Grammar School in Abergavenny, at this time, he was a
supporter of the League of Nations
• after schooling he joined Trinity College, Cambridge, where he joined the Communist Party
of Great Britain.
• Williams interrupted his education to serve in World War II.
• He was a Welsh academic, novelist, critic founders of the movement Cultural Materialism.
• His writings on politics, culture, the mass media and literature are a significant contribution.
 Overview of Book

• Modern Tragedy, first published in 1966.

• It is a study of the ideas and ideologies which have
influenced the production and analysis of tragedy.
• In this book, Williams sees tragedy both in terms of
literary tradition and in relation to the tragedies of
modern society, of revolution and disorder, and of
individual experience.
 Tragedy and Tradition

What is Tragedy ? What is not Tragedy?

• We come to tragedy by many roads. It is
an immediate experience, a body of
literature, conflict of theory, an academic
problem.
• It is more personal and general.
• It is a particular kind of event and
particular kind of response which are
genuinely tragic and which the long
tradition embodies.
• Tragedy is not simply death and
suffering and it is certainly not
accident.
• Tragedy is not the death of kings.
• Nor is it simply a response to death
and suffering.
 The Relationship of Tradition to Tragedy
• About tradition Williams explains:
It is a question, rather of realizing that a tradition is not the past; but an
interpretation of the past – a selection and evaluation of ancestors rather than
a neutral record and the present serves as a link between the traditional and the
modern.
For example: When the unique Greek culture changed, the chorus which was
the crucial element of dramatic form was discarded and the unique meaning of
tragedy was lost.
 Tragedy in different Eras
• People think that the medieval period produced no tragedy, but Monk’s
Tale is the example of it.
• Later tragedy became more secularized in the Renaissance and
Neoclassical age.
• The moving force of tragedy was now (Recent time) quite clearly a matter
of behavior, rather than either a metaphysical condition or metaphysical
fault.
 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and The Tradition

• Lessing (1729-1781) was a German Lessing contribution to the idea of

critic and dramatic poet.
tragedy:-
a) A theoretical rejection of neo-
classicism
b) A defense of Shakespeare
c) An advocacy and writing of
bourgeois tragedy
 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and The Tradition
(Continue)
Lessing’s views Raymond William’s views
• He said the Neoclassicism was a • He doesn’t agree with Lessing he
false classicism and the real inherit holds that Shakespeare was not the
of the Greeks was Shakespeare and real inherit of the Greeks; rather he
the real inherit of Shakespeare was was a major instance of a new kind
the new national bourgeois (middle of tragedy.
class) tragedy.
 Secular
Difference between Greek and Elizabethan
Drama
Greek Drama Elizabethan Drama
• The only fully religious tragedy we • Elizabethan drama was totally
have is Greek secular, but there was a concept of
• Suffering as well as happiness as a good and evil and poetic justice.
will of fate • Suffering as a consequences of
error and happiness as a
consequences of virtue
 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• Hegel (1770-1831) was a famous German
Philosopher.
Hegel contribution to the idea of tragedy:-
• He described the moral scheme of poetic
justice as a triumph (victory) of ordinary
morality.
• What is important for Hegel is not the
suffering ‘mere suffering’ but its causes.
Mere pity and fear are not tragic.
• Genuine tragedy, there must be individual
freedom and independence.
 Hegel (Continue)
Hegel’s theory of tragedy in term of
Marxism
• Hegel’s interpretation of tragedy is
part of a general philosophy rather
than a historical criticism, it emphases
upon the conflict and its resolution but
later under the influenced of Carl
Marx the conflict of ethical forces
looked in social and historical terms.
Raymond William differentiate
modern and ancient tragedies
• First, in ancient tragedy, the characters clearly
represent the substantive(practical)ethical ends;
in modern tragedy, ends are wholly personal.
• Secondly, in ancient tragedy, there is not only
the downfall of conflicting persons and ends in
the achievement of eternal justice. An
individual may surrender under a higher
command; in modern tragedy, Reconciliation,
will often be within the character and will be
more complicated. .
 Arthur Schopenhauer
• Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was a Schopenhauer contribution to the
German philosopher. idea of tragedy:-
• He secularized the idea of fate
when he said, ‘the true sense of
tragedy is the deeper insight, that is
not his own individual sins that the
hero atones for, but original sin, i.e.
the crime of existence itself ’.
 Friedrich Nietzsche
• Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German
philosopher.
Nietzsche contribution to the idea of
tragedy:-
• Dramatizes a tension, which it resolves in a
higher unity. There the hero, the highest
manifestation(sign) of the will, is
destroyed, but the eternal life of the will
remains unaffected.
• The action of tragedy is not moral, not
purgative(cleansing), but aesthetic
(appealing).
 Tragedy and
Contemporary Ideas
Raymond William has
discussed the four things in
relation to the contemporary
(modern) ideas:-
a) Order and accident
b) The destruction of the hero
c) The irreparable (permanent) action and
its connections with death
d) The emphasis of evil.
 Tragedy and
Contemporary Ideas
Raymond William has
discussed the four things in
relation to the contemporary
(modern) ideas:-
a) Order and accident
b) The destruction of the hero
c) The irreparable (permanent) action and
its connections with death
d) The emphasis of evil
 a) Order and Accident
Accident
• It is generally said that ‘everyday tragedies’
have not any significance but Williams
does not agree to this view. In the case of
ordinary death and suffering, when we see
mourning we have entered tragedy. But a
burnt family or a mining disaster which
leaves people without feeling are called
Accidents. The events not seen as tragic
are deep in the pattern of our own culture.
Order
• Rank was the dividing line because the
death of some people mattered more
than others but our middle class
culture rejects this. Order in tragedy is
the result of the action and we should
see this variation as an indication of
the major cultural importance of
tragedy as form of art.
 b) The Destruction of the Hero
• The most common interpretation of tragedy is that it is an action in which
the hero is destroyed.
• In most tragedies, the story does not end with the destruction of the hero; it
follows on.
• Modern tragedy is not what happens to the hero; but what happens through
him
• When we concentrate on the hero, we are limiting our attention to the
individual.
 c) The Irreparable Action and its Connections
with Death
• The tragic experience lies in the fact that life does not come back.
• Death gives importance and meaning to life.
• The death of an individual brings along the whole community in the form of
rituals and condolence, so, tragedy is social and collective and not individual
and personal.
• Death is universal so a man tied to it quickly claims university.
 d) The emphasis of evil
• Man dies alone is an interpretation and not a fact because when he dies, he
affects others.
• Tragedy dramatizes evil in many particular forms: not only Christian evil but
also cultural, political and ideological.
• Good and evil are not absolute. We are good or bad in particular ways and in
particular situations; defined by pressures we at one received and can alter
and can create again.
 The Rejection of Tragedy
• Raymond William reject the tragedy in modern age with special reference to
Bertolt Brechet who made tragedy more experiential and rational.
 Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)
• Bertolt was a German theatre practitioner,
playwright, and poet.
• He best known for his contribution to
Epic theatre that was a theatrical
movement.
• Brecht’s work and ideas about theatre are
generally thought of as belonging to
modernism.
• There is recent thought that he is the
forerunner of contemporary postmodern
theatre practice.
 Epic Theatre
Theatre
• Theatre is the performing arts
concerned with acting out stories in
front of an audience using
combinations of speech, gesture,
mime, music, dance, sound and
spectacle, indeed any one or more
elements.
Why Theatre
• Brecht believed that the theatre’s broadest
function was to educate.
• He created an influential theory of theatre, the
epic theatre, wherein a play should not cause the
spectator to emotionally identify with the action
before him or her, but should instead provoke
rational self-reflection and a critical view of the
actions on the stage.
• He described plays as “a collective political
meeting”
 Bertolt’s Techniques for Epic Theater
a) Estrangement Effect
• This techniques included the direct address
by actors to the audience, transposition of
text to third person or past tense, speaking
the stage direction out loud, exaggerated,
unnatural stage lighting, the use of song,
and explanatory placards.
• The purpose of these techniques that
remind the spectator that the play is a
representation of reality and not reality
itself.
b) Historicisation
• The content of plays dealt with fictional
telling of historical figures or events.
• The purpose of this technique was after
viewing these historical stories from a
critical perspective, the contemporary
issues that was addressing would be
illuminated to the audience.
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