Getting Even
Adam Phillips, 19 September 1996
Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon
by John Kerrigan.
Oxford, 404 pp., £40, April 1996,0 19 812186 5 Show More
by John Kerrigan.
Oxford, 404 pp., £40, April 1996,
Why Does Tragedy Give Pleasure?
by A.D. Nuttall.
Oxford, 110 pp., £20, June 1996,0 19 818371 2 Show More
by A.D. Nuttall.
Oxford, 110 pp., £20, June 1996,
“... were we to need reminding – that a death has meaning. ‘Tragedy, which might be noble,’ John Kerrigan remarks, ‘always, just the same, means waste’; as though some imagined economy has gone awry. Either there’s an anomaly in the system, or there’s no system. What happened at Dunblane is called a tragedy because we take it for granted that ... ”