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Williams writings in the post-war period had a kind of existentialist motif of blocked individual

liberation. The essay Tragedy and Tradition is a discussion on the common and the traditional
interpretations of tragedy. He has used his power of perception and has come with a strong
thesis on the evolution of tragedy in the essay. Raymond Williams takes the subject of tragedy
as a form of art and tragedy as an experience. He retraces the tradition of tragedy as he believes
in the continuity of tradition. He doesnt want to reject the present by the past or vice versa; but
he thinks that concept of tradition is important to understand modern tragedy. In the previous
essay, he tells the basics of tragedy in these words: we come to tragedy by many roads.
It is an immediate experience, a body of literature, conflict of theory, an
academic problem
He believes that tragedy is not the death of kings; it is more personal and general. Tragedy is not
simply death and suffering and it is certainly not accident. Nor is it simply a response to death
and suffering. It is a particular kind of event and particular kind of response which are genuinely
tragic and which the long tradition embodies. His basic thesis in this article is:
The meaning of tragedy, the relationship of tradition to tragedy and the
kinds of experience which we mistakenly call tragic
Discussing the historical development of tragedy, Williams says that when the unique Greek
culture changed, the chorus which was the crucial element of dramatic form was discarded and
the unique meaning of tragedy was lost. He says that things change and concepts change. On the
basis of our concepts we tend to seek permanent meanings in art, which, according to Williams,
is a serious mistake. People think that the medieval period produced no tragedy, but Monks
Tale is the example in which we see protagonist falling from prosperity to adversity. Thus again,
according to him, is the result of the fixation to an absolute meaning of tragedy. He says:
It is not that we lack the evidence. But we fail to use it because it doesnt fit
our idea of tragedy
Later tragedy became more secularized in the Renaissance and Neoclassical age. During
Renaissance, there is a precise emphasis on the fall of famous men, as Rank was still important
because the fate of ruling class was the fate of the city. But with the dissolution of feudal world,
the practice of tragedy made new connections. The stories were transformed. During the
neoclassical period emphasis on dignity and nobility of the hero continued. But the moving force
of the tragedy was now a matter of behavior rather than a metaphysical condition. The real
question of tragedy now was moral than metaphysical. The tragic error was moral, a weakness in
an otherwise good man who could still be pitied. After Williams has discussed the idea of
tragedy, he gives his reading of 18
th
and 19
th
century tragic theories.
Lessing was a noted German critic and dramatic poet. He said the Neoclassicism was a false
classicism and the real inheritor of the Greeks was Shakespeare and the real inherit of
Shakespeare was the new national bourgeois tragedy. Raymond Williams doesnt agree with
Lessing. He holds that Shakespeare was not the real inheritor of the Greeks; rather he was a
major instance of a new kind of tragedy. The character of Elizabethan tragedy is determined by a
very complicated relationship between elements of an inherited order and elements of a new
humanism. If the historical idea of the development is to be fully understood, we must
understand the complicated process of secularization. The only fully religious tragedy we have is
Greek because Elizabethan drama was totally secular. Williams calls it a case of Backward
assimilation which ignores forward assimilation. Secular drama was a major step in the
historical development in the idea of tragedy. In fact, Elizabethan tragedy anticipates the trends
of Humanism and Romanticism. Raymond William says:
In one sense, all drama after Renaissance is secular
Elizabethan drama was secular in practice but retained a Christian consciousness. Neo-
classical is the first stage of substantial secularization. It insisted on relating suffering to moral
error. Tragedy, in this view, shows suffering as a consequence of moral error and happiness as a
consequence of virtue; meeting the demands of poetic justice. The weakness is that morality is
static and moral emphasis is merely dogmatic. Further he discusses Hegel who didnt reject the
moral scheme of poetic justice but he said that emphasis on morality would make a work social
drama not tragedy. Tragedy, he said, was a specific kind of spiritual action. What is important
for Hegel is not the suffering mere suffering but its causes. Mere pity and fear are not tragic. It
does not consider the external contingency beyond the control of the individual i.e. illness, loss
of property, death or the like. To Hegel, conscious individuality, individual freedom and self
determination are essential for genuine tragic action. Hegel asserts that tragedy recognizes
suffering as:
Suspended over active characters entirely as the consequence of their own
act.
The modern tragedy is wholly personal and our interest is directed not to the abstract ethical
questions but to the individual and his conditions. As with Karl Marx, Renaissance tragedy has
been seen as the result of the conflict between dying feudalism and the new individualism.
Individual suffers, not because he is conflict with gods or fate, but with the process of the social
transformation. Tragic hero, in Marxist Criticism becomes world historical individual, in
conflict with world-spirit. Williams reads Schopenhauer who believes that tragedy and
sufferings are rooted in human nature and that these above and beyond particular causes. To
this tragic sense of life, ethical and historical considerations are irrelevant. Misfortunes and
sufferings are not exceptions but normal facts of life. So, the meaning of tragedy is resignation to
the nature of life. For Nietzsche, tragedy dramatizes a tension which is resolved in higher order.
According to him, the action of tragedy is not moral, not purgative, but aesthetic. Williams
argues that we usually try to make a contrast between the traditional and the modern and try to
compress and unify the various thinking of the past into a single tradition. About tradition
Williams explains:
It is a question, rather of realizing that a tradition is not the past; but an
interpretation of the past a selection and evaluation of ancestors rather than a
neutral record and the present serves as a link between the traditional and the
modern

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