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.)