Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic
"The aspects of tragedy I have in mind take with utmost  seriousness the lethal as well as life-giving inheritances of  which the present is partly made up, and which an amnesiac  postmodernism has conveniently suppressed." With chapters on  "The Value of Agony," "Pity, Fear and Pleasure" and "Freedom,  Fate and Justice," British literary critic and political  theorist Eagleton (whose well-received memoir The Gatekeeper is  just out from St.Martin's) runs through the West's tragic  literature, from Sophocles to Ibsen and beyond, to begin  constructing a new, tragically informed language for the  political left: "Don't settle for that set of shabby fantasies  known as reality, but cling to your faith that the deathly  emptiness of the dispossessed is the only source from which a  more jubilant, self-delighting existence can ultimately spring."  (Sept.)Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.