Tragedy and Redress in Western Literature This book offers a unique interpretation of tragic literature in the Western tradition, deploying the method and style of analytic philosophy. Richard Gaskin argues that tragic literature seeks to offer moral and linguistic redress (compensation) for suffering. Moral redress involves the balancing of a protagonist’s suffering with guilt (and vice versa): Gaskin contends that, to a much greater extent than has been recognized by recent critics, traditional tragedy represents suffering as incurred by avoidable and culpable mistakes of a cognitive nature. Moral redress operates in the first instance at the level of the individual agent. Linguistic redress, by contrast, operates at a higher level of generality, namely at the level of the community: its fundamental motor is the sheer expressibility of suffering in words. Against many writers on tragedy, Gaskin argues that language is competent to express pain and suffering, and that tragic literature has that expression as one of its principal purposes. The definition of tragic literature in this book is expanded to include more than stage drama: the treatment stretches from the Classical and Medieval periods through to the early twentieth century. There is a special focus on Sophocles, but Gaskin takes account of most other major tragic authors in the European tradition, including Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides, Virgil, Seneca, Chaucer, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine, Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Büchner, Ibsen, Hardy, Kafka, and Mann; lesser-known areas, such as Renaissance neo-Latin tragedy, are also covered. Among theorists of tragedy, Gaskin concentrates on Aristotle and Bradley; but the contributions of numerous contemporary commentators are also assessed. Tragedy and Redress in Western Literature: A Philosophical Perspective offers a new and genuinely interdisciplinary perspective on tragedy that will be of considerable interest both to philosophers of literature and to literary critics. Richard Gaskin is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, UK. He is the author of seven books, including Horace and Housman (2013), Language, Truth, and Literature: A Defence of Literary Humanism (2013), and The Unity of the Proposition (2008). Routledge Research in Aesthetics Michael Fried and Philosophy Modernism, Intention, and Theatricality Edited by Mathew Abbott The Aesthetics of Videogames Edited by Jon Robson and Grant Tavinor Tragedy and Redress in Western Literature A Philosophical Perspective Richard Gaskin Tragedy and Redress in Western Literature A Philosophical Perspective Richard Gaskin First published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis The right of Richard Gaskin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-49808-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-01703-9 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC To the memory of Christopher Gray 1964–96 et tamen adhuc per fidem, nondum per speciem: spe enim salvi facti sumus. spes autem quae videtur non est spes. adhuc abyssus abyssum invocat, sed iam in voce cataractarum tuarum. adhuc et ille qui dicit, ‘non potui vobis loqui quasi spiritalibus, sed quasi carnalibus’, etiam ipse nondum se arbitratur comprehendisse, et quae retro oblitus, in ea quae ante sunt extenditur et ingemescit gravatus, et sitit anima eius ad deum vivum, quemadmodum cervi ad fontes aquarum, et dicit, ‘quando veniam?’, habitaculum suum, quod de caelo est, superindui cupiens, et vocat inferiorem abyssum dicens, ‘nolite conformari huic saeculo, sed reformamini in novitate mentis vestrae’. Augustine, Confessions XIII, 13. Contents Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 PART I Tragedy and Moral Redress 19 1 Oedipus: Hamartia, Freedom, and the Supernatural 21 2 Antigone’s Holy Crime 84 3 From Cognitive Failure to No-Fault Tragedy 131 PART II Tragedy and Linguistic Redress 187 4 Theoretical Considerations 189 5 Can Suffering Be Expressed in Words? 266 6 Tragedy and Linguistic Idealism 322 Bibliography 358 Index 404 Acknowledgements I am most grateful to several anonymous readers for their useful criti- cisms of earlier drafts of part or all of this book, and especially to Mal- colm Heath for his detailed and incisive comments on a late draft of the whole thing. All these commentators found much to contest in my argument; I am of course responsible for the final product, and for any errors, factual or argumentational, that it may contain. In a few places I have relayed, and responded to, some of these readers’ objections, since I imagine that others will share their worries. As I explain in the Intro- duction, the book is analytic and polemical in method and style. It chal- lenges a number of settled views in the criticism of literature in general, and in the reception of tragedy in particular. Whether I have made out a satisfactory case will be for the reader to judge. I could not have undertaken and completed this project without the support and encouragement of my wife Cathrin and my sons Thomas and Markus, and to them I express my deep gratitude, as I do also to my sisters Rosemary, Hilary, and Fiona, to my brothers-in-law Chris, Ray- mond, and Christopher, and to my friends and colleagues Barry Dainton, Daniel Hill, and David Langslow: all of these helped me during a test- ing bout of illness that befell me suddenly and unexpectedly during the period of writing this book, and their support was invaluable in seeing me through that difficult time. Barry and Daniel also commented on part of an early draft of the book, as did Chris Bartley and Stephen McLeod. I am further indebted to George Gereby and the members of an audi- ence at Budapest to whom a syncopated version of the first chapter was delivered as a talk. I dedicate the book to the memory of my friend Christopher Gray, with whom I had many discussions on topics philosophical and literary during the time of our acquaintance, which, alas, proved all too brief. We did not discuss the passage of Augustine that I quote in the dedication, but I am confident that he would have loved it; and he would have read it with the eye of faith, unlike me, who must secularize it to make it render Acknowledgements ix up its riches. But, to anticipate a point I shall make at more length in the book, that secularizing move not only can be made, but has been avail- able to be made since the earliest beginnings of Western literature. Richard Gaskin January 2018