Modern Tragedy: Critical Appreciation

Modern Tragedy is a compilation of 11 essays written on various aspects of tragedy and a play
Koba. These essays were published in various magazines, later they were printed in book form
Modern Tragedy. Modern Tragedy is the most important 20thc inquiry into the ideas and
ideologies that have influenced the production and analysis of tragedy. William sees tragedy in
terms of both literary tradition and in relation to the tragedies of modern times, of revolution
and disorder and of experiences of all of us as individuals. Modern Tragedy has three major
parts: the first part is about the history and criticism of ideas regarding tragedy; the second part
deals with Drama from Ibsen to Eliot as the name suggests.
This part if s revised version of the lectures delivered by Williams at Cambridge and the third
part consists of a play called Koba. The literature of ideas and of experience is a single
literature. Tragedy is the most important example of this complex and necessary unity. So, the
writer says, the book is about the connections, in modern tragedy between event and experience
and idea and its form is designed at once to explore and to emphasize these radical connections.
He presented tragedy of experience as contrasted with tragedy of theory. The essays: Tragedy
and the Tradition, Tragedy and Contemporary Ideas and A Rejection of Tragedy are part of the
syllabus. Like Culture and Society, Modern Tragedy discussed textsthe main tragic texts and
texts about tragic theory that had been written in Europe and the United States since Ibsenand
extracted from them a political message about the inadequacy of individuation and about the
desirability of revolution. Modern Tragedy was written in a dense, coded prose. Decoded, it
manifests the confusion between the cultural elite and the people which was a feature of
Williamss doctrine throughout his work and which became particularly troublesome in this
book, where dramatic and fictional tragedy were presented as realizations of the shape and set
of modern culture, and the dramatists and novelists who had produced it were assumed to
represent our minds and experience.
This thesis was both elitist and anti-elitist, nave about the prospect of bridging the gap between
the cultural elite and the people but emphasizing the affiliations that kept Williams, as a
member of the former, in conscious empathy with the latter. The effect was nevertheless odd,
implying that Strindberg, Brecht, and Arthur Miller, for example, were not arcane, and
amalgamating the we who went to their plays or listened to Williamss lectures in Cambridge
with the we who had been described appreciatively in Border Country. However deep
Williamss desire was to make critical discrimination relevant to the people among whom he
had grown up, moreover, it neglected the consideration that critical discrimination was in fact a
minority activity which spoke meaningfully only to those who had already heard Leaviss voice.
In Drama from Ibsen to Eliot (1952) Williams had criticized the English theater as a
manifestation of literary decline and for failing to achieve either the communication of an
experience and a radical reading of life, or that total performance which reflected changes
in the structure of feeling as a whole. In Modern Tragedy the central contentions were that
liberal tragedy, while being liberal because it emphasized the surpassing individual, and
tragic because it recorded his defeat by society or the universe, reflected the inability of the
money-oriented privacy of the bourgeois ethic to provide a positive conception of society. It
was the individual fight against the lie embodied in false relationships, a false society and a
false conception of man that Ibsen had made central, but it was the liberal martyrs discovery of
the lie in themselves and their failure to relate themselves to a social consciousness that
heralded the breakdown of liberalism and the need to replace its belief in the primacy of
individualist desire and aspiration by a socialist perception of the primacy of common desire
and aspiration.
Williams wished to give tragic theory a social function. He pointed out that significant
suffering was not confined to persons of rank, and that personal belief, faults in the soul,
God, death, and the individual will had been central to the tragic experience of the present.
It was the human agency and ethical control manifested in revolution and the deep social
crisis through which we had all been living that were the proper subjects of modern tragedy,
and it was human agency and ethical control that tragic theory needed to accommodate.
The first point that had to be explained was the Burkean point that revolution caused suffering.
The second point was the anti-Burkean point that revolution was not the only cause of suffering,
that suffering was in the whole action of which revolution was only the crisis, and that it
was suffering as an aspect of the wholeness of the action that needed to be considered. And
this, of course, disclosed the real agenda in Modern Tragedythe use of tragic texts to formulate
a socialist theory of tragedy in which revolution would receive a literary justification and society
would become more important than the individual.
In all this Williams was moving out from the defensiveness of Culture and Society and making a
central feature of the argument that, when the revolutionary process was complete, revolution
would become epic, suffering would be justified, and pre-revolutionary institutions, so far
from being the settled innocent order that they had claimed to be, would be seen to have
been rooted in violence and disorder. This was the route by which tragedy and tragic theory
could remove cynicism and despair, could give revolution the tragic perspective that Marx had
given it, and could show what tragedy had hitherto failed to show, that degeneration,
brutalization, fear, hatred and envy were endemic in existing societys tragic failure to
incorporate all its people as whole human beings. It was also the route by which tragedy and
tragic theory could incorporate the fact that further degeneration, brutalization, fear, hatred
and envy would be integral to the whole actionnot just to the crisis and the revolutionary
energy released by it or the new kinds of alienation which the revolution against alienation
would have to overcome if it was to remain revolutionary, but also, and supremely, to the
connection between terror and liberation.
Williamss rhetoric was ruthless, and yet in retrospect looks faintly silly. Nor were the tasks that
he attributed to tragic theory plausible. It remains true, nevertheless, that Modern Tragedy,
while reiterating the formal denial that revolution was to be identified with the violent capture
of power and identifying it rather as a change in the deepest structure of relationships and
feelings, implied, more than any other of Williamss works, a circuitous but indubitably evil
attempt to encourage the young to think of violence as morally reputable.
In evaluating Williams, one wishes to be just. He should not be dismissed merely because his
followers have helped to keep their party out of office, since many of them, and perhaps he also,
regarded party politics as merely a convenient way of inserting their moral messages into the
public mind. Like the theorists of the student revolution of the Sixties, Williams was against
liberalism, but those who are against liberalism for conservative reasons do not need his sort of
support. They should not be misled by the organicism of Culture and Society, which ignored
the moral solidarity of twentieth-century English society and used the language of solidarity in
order to subvert such solidarity as monarchy and two world wars had created by denying that it
existed.
The most general fault in critical works is not avoided by even Williams. Most of the critical
books are written with and on the general assumption of some creative work by others. To write
or give views on others is certainly not objectionable. What seems objectionable is the way of
giving views or opinions without quoting the original creative work.
What most of the critics do is very non-critical in a sense. They give first their own
understanding of the work and then their views or opinions against or for this said work. What
they do in this way is the critical analysis of their own understanding. It seems having nothing to
do with the understanding of the writers work or others views about it. While going through a
book of criticism one should keep in mind the original work the criticism is about.
In Modern Tragedy, the central contentions were that liberal tragedy, while being liberal
because it emphasized the surpassing individual and tragic because it recorded the defeat by
society or the universe, reflected the inability of the money-oriented privacy of the bourgeois
ethic to provided a positive conception of society. William wished to give tragic theory a social
function. He pointed out that significant suffering was not confined to the persons of rank and
that personal belief, faults in the soul, God, Death and Individual Will had been central to the
tragic experience of the present. It was the human agency and ethical control manifested in
revolution and the deep social crises through which we had all been living that were the proper
subjects of modern tragedy and it was human agency and ethical control that tragic theory
needed to accommodate.
Williams criticized the English theater as a manifestation of literary decline and for failing to
achieve either the communication of an experience and a radical reading of life or that of
total performance which reflected changes in the structure of feeling as a whole
The first chapter of Modern Tragedy by Raymond Williams seems dealing with the word tragedy
in its historically theoretical and social background. These are the topics Raymond Williams is
going to discuss in this book.
The book is directly concerned with the social aspects of the above topics. In other words the
book is concerned with the ways these topics are derived from the surrounding life in.
By his own sense of tragedy he means the sense of tragedy he had got through reading books on
tragedy or tragedies in general. The examples he offers from surrounding society are in fact the
conditions or circumstances that lead to some tragic action. This approach to see Life as a
tragedy in general shall be discussed in the later part of the book. The above sentence seems
rather ironical. The words trained, impatient, contemptuous, loose and vulgar are enough
to convey the underlying tone of this sentence. The writing of word tragedy in inverted commas
is itself significant of this ironic tone. Raymond Williams has used this way of expression to give
us the justification for writing his views in this book. The Modern Tragedy in this way is
intended to explain us the history of word tragedy both in perspective of theoretical tradition
and social experience.
What he wants to say is the relative suitability of modern tragic experience to theoretical and
explanatory definitions of tragedy since twenty-five centuries. In this brief paragraph Williams
has denied most of the theories we r going to meet in the discussion of this word Tragedy. What
he means to say is not said however here and is left to the following chapters. Particular kind of
event and response that is genuinely tragic is and that the long tradition of this word embodies
is left unexplained. To confuse this tradition with other kinds of event and response is merely
ignorant. What he means to say here is the difference in tragic and common experience. All
painfully and pathetically charged events and happenings can not be tragic in nature. In
Williams views the problem does not lye in calling some work of literature a tragedy and the
other not. The real problem lies in defining what experience in life we should call tragic and
what not what suffering or event can be called tragic and what not. The naming of certain
dramas as tragedy and certain as other than tragedy is easier than naming certain experiences
and events as tragic and others as non-tragic.
These kinds of sentences in a critical work leave their peculiar atmosphere. Though they seem
rather an outcome of intellectual gymnastic, they give an impression of living social mind
behind all stark theoretical discussions.
Just to prepare us for detailed discussion, Williams asks for a while what we can say a
parenthetic question. Though it has nothing to do with what he is going to say, the question
shakes our mind for the time being and makes us think it over a bit more carefully. We can take
it as another quality of Williams rhetoric. He does not write in the form of a soliloquy that he
is talking to himself. Rather he writes as if he is engaged in a kind of dialogue with his reader.
What his reader may desire to ask is asked mostly by Williams himself.
On the other hand the word tradition is very important to be considered here. The tradition
means the tradition or continuity of tragedy as a form of literature. It also means the continuity
of different theories pertaining to the peculiar nature of tragedy and its influence on audience
as well as their response to that influence. What Williams wants us to be prepared for is the
different critical views about this particular form and experience. He seems asking a very simple
question if the definition of tragedy or the discussion on this literary form is the same since
Aristotle. Here again Williams seems interested more in classifying the experiences into tragic
and non-tragic than in justifying the most true definition of this work of art. This emotional and
mental inclination may help us understand the title of this book Modern Tragedy. We can feel
that the modern experiences involving all kinds of pain and agonies are going to be discussed
under suitability for being called tragic.
The other important word is experience. We undergo so many experiences. They may be
pleasant or painful. If we take for a while the painful experiences, we have to ask us what painful
experiences are tragic and what non tragic. Seeing and going through the definitions of different
critics we can easily say that all painful experiences are not tragic and so the word tragic or
tragedy should not be used so meaninglessly.
What Williams says in this chapter is a kind of introduction to the coming chapters.
Tragedy And The Tradition
The separation of tragedy from tragedy means the separation of some painful experiences from
others. These some painful experiences should be considered different from other painful
experiences on the bases of certain grounds. We may take these grounds as defining element in
tragic and non-tragic experiences. The word coincidence is somewhat important to be kept in
mind. We may have to read it in detail in the coming chapters. To start the new chapter Williams
has however given is point on tradition and experience as an introduction. Here in this chapter
we can also see the gradual forwarding of his point of view in some type of elaboration. We may
also take it as his condensed prose style. Williams has used the word continuity as collate of
tradition. Yet the basic difference in two words is not ignored in any sense. So tradition is the
word used for continuity of something through a long past. This continuity may be of some
ritual, behaviour or idea. In case of tragedy the continuity is of the word tragedy used for a
specific form of literature. It is not only the continuity of word but also the continuity of that
form of literature this word is used for. So the tradition of tragedy is on two levels: the views and
explanation about the word tragedy, and the definitions and interpretations of a literary form
called tragedy.
The Christian culture is the continuity of Grecian culture. What westerns have given the utmost
importance in these days are the issues of culture and language. On my part the culture and
language are not the products of mankind. They are not subject to human beings. Rather human
beings are subject to certain culture and language. Now with the progress of time the culture of
the whole world shall undergo considerable changes. As all the human beings r using same type
of things the culture of the world shall no more be varying from country to country, but be same
every where.
What Williams has said is important not in the context of tragedy as form or tragedy as
experience, but culture and its transformation to present and modern. Why do we take
something from past and leave the other is the question that can be understood in the context of
present and modern only.
The culture is a living thing. It never remains stagnant or still. It grows and wears out with time.
What comes to present through past is a kind of genetic transformation. As the population never
remains same, the culture never stays still.
Williams has taken enough advantage of this style. It helps him take time to put forward the
next point. It also makes his reader to get prepared for something new. And it also keeps a kind
of suspense without which a book of criticism may feel drier.
What he means by contemporary deadlock is perhaps the insensitivity of the people of twentieth
century towards this form of literature. He may also a mean a particular set of feelings the
modern people are unable to stand for.
The Greek tragedy remains untransferable throughout ages. What we now have as tragedy is not
Greek in its treatment and nature. Williams emphasis on tragedy as mature form in a mature
culture is noteworthy. It seems a kind of pun on the tragedies written afterwards. They were as
immature in form as the cultures they were written in. The word systematise should be
understood in the sense of harmonise. The written tragedy and experienced tragedy are not
harmonised in any sense. The tragedies written in the modern times are different from those
written by Greeks. The very nature and content of these tragedies resist them to come under any
systematisation. The failure in systematising these tragedies to the contemporary life is for
unsystematised issues of Fate, Necessity and Gods. By the way they were not systematised even
by Greeks. What we are going to understand and apply through theories and philosophies was a
kind of belief, practice and feeling for them. What we can not adopt was their daily posture.
Williams tries to give us reasons for our inability to understand the concept of Greek tragedians.
We cannot experience that concept if we are not living in that set of beliefs and feelings.
Necessity means determinism. What we do we do not do with our free will. Rather we are
designed to do it. We cannot understand Greek tragedy if we have no concept of Necessity.
Williams gives his cultural concept of literary form. As it is impossible to import a whole culture
so it is impossible to import a whole literary form. A literary form is mostly inspired by the
particular set of feelings the people are living with or in.
Having abstracted the concept of Necessity the modern system of feelings has reduced the tragic
hero to a suffering individual. We cannot see this individual but in isolation. He is isolated from
his surrounding social norms. The chorus in this sense plays the role of a unifying factor. He is
external as well as internal. The presence of chorus in Greek tragedy makes it a collective
experience. It no more remains individual in any sense. The form was not given any importance.
It was considered that a tragedy could be written like other things. Secondly the mediaeval
structure of beliefs and feelings was not suitable for any tragedy. So the two most important
elements of Greek tragedy were unavailable in Mediaeval Age.
It is commonly said that Elizabethans acquired their beliefs and feelings from mediaeval world.
If the Mediaeval world was unable to produce any tragedy how could the Elizabethans do so? In
Williams views the Mediaeval people did not have any concept of tragedy. Their concept of
tragedy was not real in any sense. We can say that in Mediaeval world there were no chances of
real tragic experience. What they called tragedy was purely a Greek ideal in its apparent form.
They could not have imported any concept as a tradition. Their feelings were unable to
experience the true tragedy. What they called tragedy was non-existent in their society or social
structure. What Williams gives us as Greek view of Tragedy is in fact based on the
understanding of his own view of Greek Tragedy. As we are not provided with the views of Greek
critics in their original text and context, and that too without any translation, we cannot trust on
Williams understanding of their views and then elaboration with his own.
I would have considered Williams words true to his own understanding if he had given us what
he had understood once and for all. I feel it greatly inconvenient to come across a new
understanding of Greek views every now and again. What we have gone through as Williams
understanding of Greek views in the previous chapters is quite different from the one we meet in
these chapters or shall come to know in the following ones. Either it is Williams technique or the
pattern for book, it seems and feels manipulated. If I am true I can say that Williams is a kind of
critic who distorts and deshapes the facts to make them look suitable for the propagation of his
certain views.
If not possible in any other way he should have written the views of other critics with words in
the beginning of sentences as I think Aristotle means to say that or If Aristotle says that
etc.
Williams socialist or leftist bent of mind is not difficult to detect in the book. His ideas about sin,
morality and religion are always derogatory and ironical in tune. So we can say and feel that his
purpose of writing this book was not analyse the change in the use of word tragedy in its literal
and social sense; but to give air to his political or anti-political views. The underlying idea in
Modern Tragedy should not be overlooked in any sense. What I think necessary for ideal
criticism is therefore unfound in Williams. A critic should give his unbiased views without
distorting and deshaping the original views of writers or other critics. He should not try to
challenge the general understanding of common people even. If he has any such purpose in
mind he should not name his work as criticism then. The category or nature of his work shall fall
it in some other form of literature ultimately. What Williams means by all this rhetoric way of
convincing is nothing more providing solid grounds for the acceptability of his own views. It is
we can say a kind of rational convincing though like all convincing prejudiced and biased.
What we need to do is to put side by side the views given in the previous pages and present ones.
What growth he wants to point out in the idea of tragedy seems fake and personal in some
respects.
On my part I feel that the word tragedy has undergone no changes at any level. In what sense
Greeks used this word for a form of literature and experience is still the most prevailing of all
senses. The differences we feel in the use of this word are not because of its transformation from
one society to another (or from one age to another), but because of the complexity, not only the
word tragedy, but every other word, involved in it.
I am sure the words undergo these types of changes even within the society and language they
are born in or from. Even the Greeks must not be using the word tragedy in the same meaning
Aristotle or others used in their times. In fact it so happens that the meanings or ideas once
accepted by certain group of people are seldom proved acceptable for the coming generations of
the same society. The words exist in their different shapes or shades right from the beginning of
that language. They change in their shades of meanings because of the acceptability of every
other group they are transformed or transferred.
The possible meanings of the word tragedy Williams discusses in this book with respect or
reference to different ages and societies are the same meanings that existed in the times of
Aristotle even. The change in the meanings of a word is not the matter of society or time. It is the
matter of duration a language is spoken in some society. The societies do not extinct before
languages. These are the languages that extinct before societies. The falls of civilizations and
societies are never tried to be read as falls of languages. Though actually they are the falls of
languages. The society cannot die before its language. It is the language that has to die first. And
the possibility of no other meanings of words is the death of a language.
Another important thing we should keep in mind while going through not only the Modern
Tragedy but all other works of the same genre, is the usage of a persons views as representative
of the whole society. The sense Greek intellectuals and people of imagination used this word
tragedy was not the one and only sense for this word even in their own time. The religious and
political minded people must have their own sense of tragedy. As knowledge up to the last
century was based wholly on imaginative mind the meanings conveyed to books and written
traditions should not be considered final in any sense.
(The world up to nineteenth century was running on imaginative and religious mind. Now it is
running, and will go on running for the coming four or five millenniums, on political and
imaginative mind. As all the things in the previous millenniums were considered in the light of
imaginative and religious mind, they shall be considered in the light of imaginative and political
mind in the coming millenniums.)
What seems new to Williams is quite old for me. The very meaning of catharsis involves in it a
kind of pleasure. Catharsis without pleasure is impossible. So what other critics said about
tragedy was mostly a repeated version of what Aristotle had said already. On my part I dont feel
any growth in the concept and practice of tragedy. There is indeed a kind of change but that
too is quite apparent one. Tragedy as form and experience is still the same in its very concept. It
is as same and different as weeping and laughing are same and different from the people of past.
If in modern tragedy the hero is a Lowman and in Greek a king. The writer has to present this
Lowman in the grandeur of a king. It was not the wealth and prosperity that mattered in
Oedipus but the grandeur of Oedipus. Willy Lowman in Death of the salesman and John Proctor
in Crucible are also wearing the same grandeur. Their prosperity is not the material prosperity
but the prosperity of mind and soul the prosperity of their living image.
The thoughts Williams attributes to other critics are in fact his own. The development he feels in
the idea of tragedy is based completely on his own understanding of the Classical, Mediaeval and
Renaissance theories. If we put all the theories Williams gives with respect to different ages side
by side we shall find a big contrast in Williams own understanding. What he seems
understanding in the first chapter is not felt understood in the second, third and fourth chapter
of this book. His ideas about tragedy and experience seem confused when we reach the second
chapter named tragedy and tradition. In each chapter the Greek ideal of tragedy is repeated
from different angles and perspective. What I want to say seems very simple when I say that
Williams should have given the Greek views about tragedy once and for all. He should not have
repeated them in each chapter from a different angle. If Williams aim had been to analyse the
different theories given in different ages, the book might not have been so difficult and confused.
What makes this book so complex a piece of argument is Williams effort to put forward his
views about culture and society far and deep in between the lines. The discussion about the
growth and development of the idea of tragedy hence becomes secondary and very much a kind
of allegory.
What I feel and want to say is quite different from what they call the general concept of
literature as an interpretation of society. In my view the literature and society has nothing to do
with each other. The idea of their being inter-influencing is merely an illusion. The forces
working behind literary development and social development are quite different in nature. The
poets or literary people have hardly been social, and society and culture have hardly been
poetical or literary. Rather they have been the opposite of each other. In the most materialistic
and powerfully political society of Greece, the writers and poets were the most imaginative of all
ages. When we talk about the truth and greatness of Socrates, we should not forget that we are
also talking about the injustice and blind judicial system prevailing upon the society of that time.
This type of injustice and judicial murder is common in the societies where the material values
and surface truths give no place to even graver and stronger realities. I therefore hesitate to
admit that the theoretical and philosophical world of Greek intellectuals had anything to do with
the surrounding society of their times. The same is the case with Roman, Egyptian and Indian
civilizations. The politically best societies have always been criticised strongly for their moral
discrepancies.
What mistake we always have been committing in defining the greatness of some civilization is
the attribution of greatness to some society on its political achievements. We have never called
any civilization or society great if it has not been politically strong. What relationship do we
suggest in this case in between the political strength of a certain group of people called society or
civilization and their cultural and social strength. Has there ever been a civilization politically
weak but culturally very strong and powerful? The obvious answer seems No. The politically
strength and that also got having conquered the neighbouring territories of certain
civilization has been very much helpful in crediting it the name of a strong and powerful
civilization. Should we say that the political strength of certain civilization lies in its pre-existing
cultural strength? And should we say that the cultural strength of certain civilization lies in its
pre-existing literary and lingual strength? If I say yes it seems rather confusing but I say no. All
these strengths have their respective origins.
The words remade and tragic cause are ambiguous. Perhaps Williams wants to say that the
tragic hero stood for his spectators, and the spectators were conscious of their feelings for tragic
hero. The tragic response of pity and terror was incorporated in the spectators mind. The
spectator therefore remained detached in his response. This detachment was minimised by
creating an affinity in the tragic hero and the spectator. The spectator was supposed to take part
in the tragic action. And he did so having consumed his response to fear and pity. Though we
call it a Romantic excess, its basis are found in the concept of shared behaviour a result of
decorum.
The word assimilation is very ambiguously used. We are not sure whether we should take it in
the sense of hypothesis or theory or definition. Whether it is merging up of certain ideas or
emerging out of certain things. The word order is important in so many ways. It means both in
physical and metaphysical terms. It can be taken as social order; and it can also be taken as
natural order of things. Again it may mean the order of events and happenings in which a tragic
hero is put to perform a determined action. As a whole we can feel and see that Williams is not
rejecting Lessing and nor he is accepting him completely. In other words his rejection and
acceptance is not on the basis of the views a person gives but on the basis of his own views he
feels different from him. As Williams himself is against neo-classicism he seems accepting
Lessing. And also that Williams seems having no power to say his views against a person who
commends Shakespeare. To challenge Shakespeares position in not only English but in the
history of drama is meant mostly a kind of intellectual suicide. And Williams seems unable to
commit it anyway. If we take Williams true to his socialist and Marxist views, we cannot imagine
and accept him as an advocate or supporter of Elizabethans a mixture of feudal and
aristocratic minds.
In all respects this is what Williams wants to bring us to the secularisation of tragedy not
only tragedy but also the tradition of tragedy. The secularisation of drama is not on the basis of
theories and social bents but on the basis of beliefs. In Williams view the transformation of
tragedy from religious to secular is in fact the transformation of society from religious to secular.
I say the secularism is nothing in itself. If the people are not ceremoniously and ritually religious
it does not mean that they are non-religious or secular. The concept or identity of God is
ingrained in human nature. He cannot be separate from it. If one stops believing in certain
myths and codes his ancestors have been believing for centuries, it does not mean that one has
ceased to be religious any more. The understanding of God is changing from person to person
and age to age, but it remains very much there in us.
On my part I think Hamlet as a complete religious tragedy. If Hamlet had not been believing in
hereafter he might have killed Polonius knelt in prayers; he might not have been convinced to
take revenge of his fathers murderers. If Elizabethan tragedy is not religious who is the secular
hero or character in secular tragedy of Elizabethan age. If Marlows heroes are non-religious in
typical sense it does not mean that they are secular. They are merely ambitious. Doctor Faustus
has never been secular minded or non-religious in the whole tragedy. It was his ambitious
nature that made him go against the common prevalent forms of religion. In other words it the
religious nature of Doctor Faustus that makes him a tragic hero. This is what I call the
intellectual kidnapping in Raymond Williams prose. He gives his understandings and views
about others and then start accepting or rejecting them on his own account. He does not take the
opinion of others and especially his readers in confidence. A great part of this book is based on
Williams own understanding of some theories and theorists. I think when a person is criticising
some other persons work he should either give first that other persons work or view in original
and then give his own opinion. If he is giving his opinion against or for some other opinion
about that work he should state that opinion first in full text and then give his own as a
supplicant.
What one gets the very first time is the secular nature of Elizabethan drama. The phrases
immediate practice and Christian consciousness are given to get intellectual security. In this
and other ways, the definition of tragedy became centred on a specific kind of spiritual action,
rather than on particular events, and a metaphysic of tragedy replaced both the critical and
ordinary moral emphasis.
Williams is evaluating his own understanding of Hegels definition. Hegel is certainly not meant
in this way. His definition of tragedy is nearest to perfection. Do we find this characteristic in
Oedipus Rex? On my part I feel it a great drawback in critical works. They should not be the
overflow of powerful feelings. The critical works should base on facts and figures of
mathematical nature. Otherwise they may better be called personal analysis. Most of Williams
judgements seem an overflow of powerful feelings. They are so common and general that we feel
no doubt in their truth. They are very much like poetic feelings general and true to all of us.
However, if Williams had not tried to intersperse them here and there and had put them under
headings and chapters, they might have been more effective and comprehensive than they are
now.
In my view a genuine criticism should not have anything to do with emotions and passions. It
should be as arid and dry as mathematics. Anyhow it is my personal opinion. Some one may
have a right to consider Williams work the only true criticism written through ages. One may
also say that Williams is also an approach among so many others. The Greek tragedy is a
conflict between primitive social forms and a new social order. But we see that the conflict is
solved in the favour of primitive social forms. And we also see in the history of Oedipus text that
the new social order prevailed upon, and Sophocles could not revive the old believes.
It seems very strange when we read about Sophocles intentions to revive the old social order.
He tried to do it with a character utterly a puppet in gods hands. But Sophocles forgot a very
crucial point that the new order he thinks against old believes is also a will of gods.
All definitions of Oedipus Rex are true. In other words all definitions of tragedy are true. The
aspects of tragedy critics have been discussing in various ages with reference to various tragedies
are true. The tragedy of Oedipus can be discussed in all these contexts and perspectives. Not
only the tragic events can be discussed under these headings or with respect to these aspects but
also the comic and parodic events. The aspects and angles critics point out of a tragic action are
the possible aspects of all actions. All people can be seen as tragic heroes provided only focus.
What we need to know about is very simple and very hard the fact that there are two kinds of
people. One who believe in fate and one who do not. The tragedy takes place where the opposites
fall opposite to each other. If Oedipus had not met the circumstances opposite to his instincts
means if he had been put in the circumstances favourable to his instincts of free will he might
have met a very happy end. The forces of fate are not same for all. There are people who believe
in free will and they are provided with circumstances utterly dependent on their free will. And
there are people who are fatalists and they are provided with circumstances utterly out of
control. The tragedy takes place where a person of free will falls counter to fate. If Oedipus had
been of fatalist instincts he might have succumbed to fate from the very first day he came to
know about his future from oracles. In the above discussion the word Idea is also used in the
sense of moral code. The most difficult and absurd thing to do is to debate on the validity of
moral concepts. We dont know and we can never judge in what particular circumstances the
moral concepts spring and generate from one generation and time period to the other.
The way Williams tries to convince his reader on his point is strange. What he wants to say is the
uselessness and absurdity of the concept of poetical justice. But the way he conveys it to his
reader is quite non critical in my view. He relates the unjustifiability of poetical justice to the
group of people who and whose views are considered nonsense in most of the people. In other
words it is quite an emotional way of delivering critical thoughts suitable to orators and
preachers. I think a literary critic should not adopt this way of delivering his ideas. Otherwise he
may justly be called a political theorist and a propagandist. This is where we feel us forced to put
Williams in the category of philosophers or reformers. What he says is totally his own opinion.
But he gives it with reference to other works and makes it feel sprung out of them.
Now as a reader it is our duty to compare Williams definitions in each case. Whenever there is a
new theory Williams not only repeats it in his own words but also in the context of former
theories. Also he repeats the former theories in his own words and tries to interpret them in the
context of new theories. This creates a kind of confusion in the minds of his readers. They feel
hesitate to accept each version of the old theories as true. For example in the case of modern
interpretation of tragedy Williams repeats Greek, Mediaeval and Renaissance definitions in a
kind of new perspective. We feel confused to accept them as true each time. The concept of myth
and ritual in tragedy is discussed purely in its new perspective. What we have met in the former
chapters seems totally another debate. This is how I feel this book merely a kind of discussion.
We dont feel these discussions centred upon any point. Williams has either accepted the views
of other critics or rejected them. He has not given at any moment his own views. If he has given
any he has given it in the explanation not as an independent view but as a supporting one. In the
discussion on tragedy we dont find Williams views on tragedy but on every other thing.
In this way we can say that Williams discussion on tragedy is in fact an expression of his views
on culture, society and politics. And he wants his reader to see not only tragedy but also the
whole literary activity as an interaction or an outcome of this interaction in cultural, social and
political forces.
Williams reversion to the ideas discussed in the first chapter seems a surrendering effort to join
beginning to the end. In fact the intervening and last chapters are but of parenthetic importance.
The structure of the whole book is developed on academic approaches. The dominant mode of
expression is of discussion and debate. If Williams had not been a teacher he might not have
depended so much on evaluating, explaining and elaborating the ideas already given in theories
or critical works. Instead of writing a helping book he might have written a textbook. Having
gone through such works I feel as if modern mind is afraid of passing any theoretical view about
anything. Williams has not used the instances taken from other works to support his own view.
Rather he has given his views inspired by those instances. With respect to the style discussed
above we cannot count Williams in the category of critics Sidney, Wordsworth and Coleridge
were.
Tragedy And Contemporary Ideas
This is what Williams has himself done. However, he has taken the work from past not to reject
it but to accept it and interpret it in terms of past. But we should keep in mind, whatever
discussion on accident and tragedy there goes, that it is not the nature of event that makes it
tragedy or accident but the perspective in which that event takes place. If an accident is detailed
in all its perspective it can be felt as a tragedy.
On the other hand if we are told that a king gouged his eyes out in rage on learning that he had
killed the former king himself we may not feel any tragic feelings. In the case of written tragedy
we should not anyhow neglect the role of description. The description here should not be
considered in terms of an authority on the part of writer, but a kind of knowledge we have got
already through our identification with the deceased. In case of Oedipus Rex, not only Oedipus
but all the involving characters are bearing tragic postures.
If we focus our attention to Liaus and get the details we shall find him a complete tragic
character himself. Same is the case with Jocasta, Creon and Oedipus children. So the dominant
characteristic of a tragedy is also its quality of being a tragedy of all the joining persons. As for
analysis of tragedy with respect to its effects on its audience I would like to say that the category
or quality of audience is very noteworthy a fact. If Oedipus had been played on modern stage it
would not have been so effective a tragedy. This is where we can say Williams can talk about
tragedy in its social context.
Means if suffering related to ordinary people is ordinary suffering the suffering related to noble
people is noble suffering.
But I think Williams is not true in his judgement. What we have come to know in the above
discussion about suffering is the ordinary and particular nature of suffering, not the ordinary
and particular kind of sufferer. A socially noble person may have to suffer an ordinary suffering,
and a layman on the other hand may suffer a particular or noble suffering. The ordinary and
noble sufferings therefore should not be understood as socially relative terms. Suffering is not a
subordinate clause. It has its separate identity that is active in nature.
We have discussed already that the history and knowledge about sufferer can help us
understand his suffering as tragic or accidental. On the other hand if our experience of seeing
suffering is too common, too often and too much, we cannot feel it tragic in most of the ways. If
the story of Oedipus had been the common happening in Greek society, even Sophocles would
not have presented it as a play. So the uniqueness of incident also helps it make a tragedy.
It does not mean however that the number of sufferings or deaths in present age has changed
and shaped the meanings and effect of tragedy to some other proportions. Death has never been
so rare as it is in these days. The people in past were more used to death than we are now. It
means the view is given completely in its social perspective. The types of events or accidents
given in the support of this argument and the categories of sufferer as you and I are also social.
The power of this argument lies not in its relativity but use of deprecating words. The
comparative stress on the particularity of event and suffering person is however too obvious to
be mentioned in this view. We have seen Williams and other critics talking on the point of rank
that some deaths matter more than others. But I dont find a tragedy where the death or
suffering of a tragic hero becomes the death and suffering of whole community. Even Oedipus
gouging his eyes and expelling himself from Thebes is no more a kind of personal suffering for
Thebans. Hamlets death is not the death of his countrymen. The Thebans and Hamlets
countrymen were mere observers or spectators. Their suffering was more or less equal to the
suffering of present day audience.
If Sophocles presented Oedipus as a tragic hero it does not mean that a tragic hero should
always be of a kingly stature. He might have written tragedies on common men that
unfortunately could not survive to us. Secondly the ability of gaining lessons in those days was
not related to the things of daily experience. The people in those days got lessons from the tales
of animals and birds. They got lessons from supernatural and mythological lore. Unlike to the
psychology of present day people who get lessons from the happenings and matters related to
their immediate experience, for the people of those days the things or stories taken from their
immediate experience were not mostly considered of any importance. It was not the rank but the
alienation or strangeness of tragic hero that inspired the audience in those days. Though to meet
the king was not as difficult as it is today yet the love of public for their king that was far more
and far greater than the love of public for president or prime minister in these days, made the
suffering of king or a man of rank something worthy to mourn at. The reasons of this modern
view are based on the points we have discussed in the above explanations for rank and suffering.
The fate of tragic hero in relation to the fate of dynasty or kingdom is emphasised again in the
false old context. The example of King Lear is not sufficient. The play itself is not decided as a
tragedy yet. We feel sorry for King Lear but this feeling sorry for him is different from what we
feel for Oedipus. Faith does not mean the faith in the existence of God only. We cannot live
without faith. In whatever thing or idea we shall have faith its intensity or importance shall be
equal to that of what we have for God. To have no faith in God is also a kind of faith. This is
again a kind of poetic statement. Neither we can accept it nor deny. It seems said in the light of
Oedipus Rex. But the fact I always try to penetrate is again invitingly open. Why Aristotles
definition of tragedy is considered only the best available definition? Why Oedipus Rex is
considered the best available tragedy. If Sophocles had not written Oedipus Rex would Aristotle
have been able to present his theory of ideal tragedy?
What I want to say is quite simple in a way. If Aristotles theory of tragedy is accepted as
faultless and the most perfect, it should have its value for other tragedies written in his times
also. If it is dependent on Oedipus Rex only, it should rather be called an evaluation than a
theory. To reach the final concept of tragedy in Greek society we should keep in mind the other
tragedies written in those times also. If we find any difference in the tragedies written by other
tragedians and those written by Sophocles, we should conclude very simply that the concepts we
have studied as growth of the idea of tragedy were existing even in those early days also.
Williams arguments and counter arguments are obviously the creation of his own mind the
fact we should not forget at any moment. Whatever he provides us as a common view or opinion
of people and critics is in fact his own view or opinion.
We cannot take this type of criticismas genuine criticism. The type of criticism Williams offers
us is a kind of political or social propaganda. Williams has adopted criticism as a form of
creative activity to spread only his views. His main aim is not to discuss the social or historical
perspective of tragedy but to convey his social and political views. The underlined statement is
given to support the arguments given in the above paragraph. The concentration camp is the
name given to one of the prison camps used for exterminating prisoners under the rule of Hitler
in Nazi Germany What we have come to know so far are the relevant details and explanations of
the theories of tragedy. If Williams has discussed experience he has discussed it in its relevancy
to theoretical progress of tragedy.
Rejection of Tragedy
Except one or two sentences, whatever Williams has said about Brecht so far is merely an
approval or appraisal from a teacher. He seems unable to do with Brecht what he has been doing
with other critics contriving and deducting from their views and opinions the views and
opinions of his own. In between the lines we feel him saying if we want to know his (Williams)
views about the concept of tragedy in modern times we should simply read Brecht or any
available criticism on him and thats all. Whatever Brecht says and practices seems on Williams
behalf true, accepted and agreed.
The chapter seems a kind of evaluation of Brechts work. Rather it should have been the
evaluation of his theories. The instances given from plays seem unnecessary when we recall to
mind the earlier chapters of the book. What we except to read in this chapter is the theoretical
growth in the idea of tragedy. What we read in real is the growth in the writing style of tragedies.
All Brechts statements are left unexplained as if they were already agreed upon. We find very
little of evaluating or interpreting nature. Unlike to the demand of the topic or Williams former
expression, the chapter seems bearing no cultural or political perspective.
What he says in these lines seems irrelevant or imposed. I have been unable to see this all in the
above discussion or commentary. Williams could have said this even for Eliot or Pinter. I dont
find it subjectively coherent. However the argument he gives about Brechts rejection of tragedy
with respect to the former tragedies seems interconnecting to some extent. Throughout this
chapter Williams has been like a traditional academic critic. The chapter seems merely an
introductory or interpretative article worthless in all respects to be included in a book of more
philosophical than critical judgements on the tragedy in theory and experience. We dont see the
vigour of arguments he discussed with the Greek, Mediaeval and Elizabethan critics. We have
seen this argumentative helplessness in discussion on Nietzsche. But it was not so tangible as it
is in case of Brecht. At moments I feel that the chapter has nothing to do with the rest of the
book. All Williams has done is to explain and interpret Brechts ideas and experiments. His
effort to see things in social and political perspectives also seems minimised. He looks but an
intellectually kidnapped. In fact what Brecht writes does not suit to the taste of Modern Tragedy.
I am unable to understand Brechts theoretical contribution to tragedy. His aim was to portray
the mind or society, not the theory. His intention was to discover mainly some new form of
expression, not to reject the old ones. In fact I dont think that Brechts experimental work has
anything to do with the idea of tragedy. Brecht was an innovator, but could not be a pioneer.