Pity and Terror: Christianity and Tragedy

169 Pages·1989·39.807 MB·English

by  Ulrich Simon (auth.)

PITY AND TERROR

Pity and Terror
Christianity and Tragedy
ULRICH SIMON
Emeritus Professor
University of London
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-20345-1 ISBN 978-1-349-20343-7 ( eBook)
DOl 10.1007/978-1-349-20343-7
© Ulrich Simon 1989
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1989 978-0-333-44398-9
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1989
ISBN 978-0-312-03237-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Simon, Ulrich E.
Pity and terror: Christianity and tragedy/Ulrich Simon.
p. em.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-312-03237-1: $35.00 (est.)
1. Tragic, The-Religious aspects-Christianity. 2. Tragedy
- History and criticism. 3. Christianity in literature. I. Title.
BR115.T73S56 1989
201--dc20 89-10169
CIP
For Richard Harries

Contents
General Editor's Preface ix
Introduction X
1 Classical Tragedy and the Old Testament 1
2 The Patriarchal Tragedy 8
3 Tragic Anti-Heroes 18
4 Tragic Heroes 27
5 Job 35
6 Jesus the Christ and Tragedy 42
7 The LossofTragedy 51
8 The Rebirth of Tragedy 61
9 The Claims of the Ideal 73
10 Women in the Struggle for Power 79
11 Othello and Macbeth 90
12 Beyond the Catastrophe 96
13 The Unbridgeable Divide 102
14 Casterbridge and Geneva 114
15 The Paradox of War 123
vii
viii Contents
16 The Transcendence of War 129
17 Christian Tragedy 136
Notes 146
Further Reading 150
Index 151
General Editor's Preface
This is a remarkable book. Readers expecting another textbook
about tragedy and the tragic texts of Western literature will be
disappointed. It is more than that, and can claim to be poetic in its
own right.
Ulrich Simon begins and ends with our place in a world which
has, in the space of a lifetime, experienced the trenches of the Great
War, and the concentration camps of Hitler's Germany. We have
reached, perhaps, the death of tragedy, a despair even beyond the
tragic catharsis of the Christian Passion. At best, Christian
tragedy's task of redeeming the 'meaningless and heartless horrors'
is a daunting one. Never for one moment may we forget the vital
and pressing urgency of the things which are here discussed. Great
literature is no optional extra to life. From the great texts of the Old
Testament to the classical tragedians, to Shakespeare, Racine, and
the German Romantics, even to Thomas Hardy, Solzhenitsyn and
the modem American novel, Professor Simon explores the survival
and the expression of what is tragically necessary and lastingly true
in human experience.
In this study of literature and religion we are with concerns from
which there is no escape. The approach avoids generalities and
boring theory. It takes the texture and life of great literature
altogether seriously and without the pedantry of much false
scholarship. Almost nothing in the Western tragic tradition is
forgotten in a deep and lyrical meditation upon the issues of hope,
despair, Christian theology, the Cross and the Resurrection.
DAVID }ASPER
ix