Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-49602-5 — Tragedy and the Modernist Novel Manya Lempert Frontmatter More Information
TRAGEDY AND THE MODERNIST NOVEL
This study of tragic fiction in European modernism brings together novelists who espoused, in their view, a Greek vision of tragedy and a Darwinian vision of nature. To their minds, both tragedy and natural history disclosed unwarranted suffering at the center of life. Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, Albert Camus, and Samuel Beckett broke with entrenched philosophical and scientific traditions that sought to exclude chance and undeserved pains from tragedy and evolutionary biology. Tragedy and the Modernist Novel uncovers a temporality central to tragic novels’ structure and ethics: that of the moment. These authors made novelistic plot the delivery system for lethal natural and historical forces, and then countered such plot with moments of protest – characters’ fleeting dissent against unjustifiable harms.
is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Arizona. She specializes in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century novel, ancient and modern tragedy and philosophy, and theories of evolution.
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© in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-49602-5 — Tragedy and the Modernist Novel Manya Lempert Frontmatter More Information
TRAGEDY AND THE MODERNIST NOVEL
MANYA LEMPERT University of Arizona
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For my mother
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© in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-49602-5 — Tragedy and the Modernist Novel Manya Lempert Frontmatter More Information
Contents
Acknowledgments page ix
Introduction: Modernist Tragedy Attic Novelists Tragedy versus Philosophy Tragic Nature Modernism versus Nihilism Tragic Sociality and Overview of Chapters Hardy’s Theory of Tragic Character Neo-Greek Modernism Hardy versus Plato and Aristotle Two Tesses Sue’s Reversals Scapegoating Nightmare Skies Woolf and Darwin: Tragic Time Scales and Chances Immitigable Trees Darwinian Tuchē Jane Ellen Harrison’s Ritual Gilbert Murray’s Tragedy Friedrich Nietzsche’s Love of Fate Not “Amor fati” but “It is enough!” Woolf’s Tragic Chances Camus’s Modernist Forms and the Ethics of Tragedy Camus’s Idea of Tragedy The Moment in Camus and Woolf Camus versus Sartre Janine: A Moment of Being Jacques and Jessica: Tragic Affirmation The Absurd Meursault The “good modern nihilist” Clamence
vii
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viii Contents Beckett: Against Nihilism The Unnamable: “alleviations of flight from self” Losing Species: From Mahood to Worm Beckett’s Oedipus and Lispector’s Mystic Nihilism and Recoil from Nihilism Beckett’s Ancient Philosophy No Counter-Tragic Calm Company: “That was I. That was I then.” Palliative Moments
Notes Bibliography Index
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Acknowledgments
With their incomparable support, Dorothy Hale, Ann Banfield, and Catherine Gallagher have made this book possible. Dori, exemplar and mentor, has been my lodestar. Virtuosic and giving, Ann has shown me the way. Cathy has been the finest interlocutor and ally. At Stanford, Brett Bourbon and Josh Landy kindled my interest in modernism and philosophy early on. At the University of California, Berkeley, Debarati Sanyal and Chenxi Tang crystallized my thinking in their French and German seminars. Juliana Chow, Spencer Engler- Coldren, Seulghee Lee, Rosa Martinez, Rasheed Tazudeen, and Sunny Xiang have been my muses and confidants. I am grateful to the Mabelle McLeod Lewis Memorial Fund for affording me the time to finish my dissertation. Ian Duncan has fostered this work with his sparkling conver- sation and unstinting generosity. Maura Nolan has been an unparalleled advisor on tragedy. At Tilburg Philosophy Summer School, Simon Critchley inspired and encouraged me. At the University of Arizona, Laura Berry championed this work. David Sterling Brown, trusted comrade, wrote with me. Paul Hurh and Lynda Zwinger were crucial readers in departmental review. Homer Pettey commented on drafts shrewdly and indefatigably. For their invaluable guidance, I also relied on Dan Blanton, Jennifer Jenkins, Doug Mao, Ander Monson, Trudy Obi, and Johanna Skibsrud. Ronan McDo- nald and Ato Quayson were vital and indispensable manuscript readers. Catherine Flynn and Cindy Weinstein gave pivotal advice, and Arum Park and Sarah Weinstein provided decisive assistance with manuscript prepa- ration. Carolyn Vega at the New York Public Library’s Berg Collection helped me a great deal. I would also like to recognize the labor of Stephanie Sakson, and that of Edgar Mendez at Cambridge University Press. Earlier versions of parts of Chapters and have appeared as “Virginia Woolf, Charles Darwin, and the Rebirth of Tragedy,” Twentieth-Century Litera- ture , no. (): –, and as “Thomas Hardy’s Theory of Tragic ix
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x Acknowledgments Character,” Studies in the Novel , no. (): –. I owe much to these journals’ editors; I appreciate their permission to incorporate that material here. Craig Hoyt at the University of California, San Francisco, has been my lifelong proponent. I am indebted to Jeff Deutsch and David Lewis for their friendship and collaboration. Charlotte Goodwin, Maria Robinson, and Miriam Rosenfeld have buoyed me up since childhood. From college to Cal to the desert, Peter Nilson has been my sine qua non. He is the sustaining force behind this work. To Ray Ryan, who endorsed and welcomed me at Cambridge Univer- sity Press, and who saw this book to completion, I owe every thanks.
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