What distinguishes modern tragedy from other forms of drama? How does it
relate to contemporary political and social conditions? To what ends
have artists employed the tragic form in different locations during the
20th century?
Partly motivated by the urgency of our current situation in an age of
ecocidal crisis, Modern Tragedy encompasses a variety of drama from
throughout the 20th century. James Moran begins this book with John
Millington Synge's Riders to the Sea (1904), which shows how
environmental awareness might be expressed through tragic drama. Moran
also looks at Brecht's reworking of Synge's drama in the 1937 play
Señora Carrar's Rifles, and situates Brecht's script in the light of
the theatre practitioner's broader ideas about tragedy. Brecht's tragic
thinking - informed by Hegel and Marx - is contrasted with the
Schopenhauerian approach of Samuel Beckett. The volume goes on to
examine theatre makers whose ideas were partly motivated by applying an
understanding of the tragic narrative of Synge's Riders to the Sea to
postcolonial contexts*.* Looking at Derek Walcott's The Sea at Dauphin
(1954), and J.P. Clark's The Goat (1961), Modern Tragedy explores
how tragedy, a form that is often associated with regressive assumptions
about hegemony, might be rethought, and how aspects of the tragic may
coincide with the experiences and concerns of authors and audiences of
colour.
