The Tragic Vision: Variations on a Theme in Literary Interpretation (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Tragic Vision: Variations on a Theme in Literary InterpretationEach chapter from the second through the seventh, then, is meant to be another step in that apparent progression from the most to the least demoniacal, except that each is meant finally to prove deceptive as we see the reduction and - almost - the identification of all, however significant the differences appear with which I begin. But within each of these chapters too there are the contrast and the similarity that befit my intention of thematic variation. For, after treating in the first part of each chapter the example of the tragic vision, in the second part I try to add a second voice in counterpoint. These constitute what I might call nontragic or sometimes even anti-tragic analogues to the novels with which these chapters begin - in all but the last of these chapters of analysis, Chapter Seven, where what seems to be an answer to the tragic finally returns even more forcefully to it.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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Murray Krieger

Spiritual

Forgotten Books

In an earlier book Professor Krieger discussed the tragic vision as the confrontation with extremity―the writer's commitment to a master metaphor even as he acknowledges the incompleteness of that metaphor. The term "classic" is used here to indicate "the sense of restraint, of acceptance, of coming to terms with limitations self-imposed―as well as the awareness of the alternative one rejects in turning away from self-indulgence." The writer is thus viewed as one who accepts the common use of language while he endeavors to defy it through metaphor, one who accepts classically the common lot of man whereas his tragic impulse would lead him to reject it.Professor Krieger begins with the Renaissance lyric, which for him represents both the last moment of union and the first moment of collision between the classic and tragic visions in literature. He then moves through poems, novels, and a play, ranging in time from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and delineates four kinds of retreat from extremity.In the works of Pope and Samuel Johnson he finds retreat through the worship of bloodless abstractions. The second form of retreat is the embrace of the natural human community, and the focus is on Wordsworth, George Eliot, Jane Austen, and Anthony Trollope. Through analyses of Sterne's  Tristram Shandy, Robert Penn Warren's  All the King's Men, and works by Swift, Professor Krieger demonstrates retreat through acceptance of the "human barnyard." The final form of retreat, through an alternative to sainthood, is shown in Faulkner's  Light in August and T. S. Eliot's  Murder in the Cathedral.In each case, Professor Krieger finds, by analyzing the pervading metaphor one is confronted with a counter-metaphor that mysteriously asserts itself: "The metaphors may have been unmetaphored, but they remain forms of imagination that constitute a reality, though it is now seen as imperfect. As such forms, the metaphors sustain us still. And that is perhaps the most classic notion of all."

The Classic Vision, The Retreat from Extremity in Modern Literature

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

The Johns Hopkins University Press

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