1

Modern
Critical Appreciation

Tragedy:
By Raymond Williams

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
Williams 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 Williams lectures in Cambridge with the we who had been described
appreciatively in Border Country. However deep Williams 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 Leavis 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 prerevolutionary 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.
Williams 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
Williams 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 nontragic 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 antipolitical 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

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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

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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

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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

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are not ceremoniously and ritually religious it does not mean that they are nonreligious 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

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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

15

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

16

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

17

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

18

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 criticism as 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

19

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

20

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.