The Politics and Poetics of Contemporary English Tragedy is a detailed study of the idea of the tragic in the political plays of David Hare, Howard Barker, Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill, Mark Ravenhill, Sarah Kane, and Jez Butterworth. Through an in-depth analysis of over sixty of their works, Sean Carney argues that their dramatic exploration of tragic experience is an integral part of their ongoing politics. This approach allows for a comprehensive rather than selective study of both the politics and poetics of their work. Carney's attention to the tragic enables him to find a common discourse among the canonical English playwrights of an older generation and representatives of the nineties generation, challenging the idea that there is a sharp generational break between these groups. Finally, Carney demonstrates that tragic experience is often denied by the social discourse of Englishness, and that these playwrights make a crucial critical intervention by dramatizing the tragic.

This book explores questions of gender, desire, embodiment, and language in Barker’s oeuvre. With The Castle as a focal point, the scope extends considerably beyond this play to incorporate analysis and exploration of the Theatre of Catastrophe; questions of gender, subjectivity and desire; God/religion; aesthetics of the self; autonomy-heteronomy; ethics; and the relation between political and libidinal economy, at stake in 20 other plays by Barker (including Rome, The Power of the Dog, The Bite of the Night, Judith, Possibilities, I Saw Myself, Fence in Its Thousandth Year, The Gaoler’s Ache for the Nearly Dead, The Brilliance of the Servant, Golgo, among others).

Fifteen essays on the style, language and vision of one of Britain’s most influential and controversial playwrights. Focusing on different aspects of what Barker has called the Theatre of Catastrophe, an international range of academics offer illuminating interpretations of his work. Includes analyses of the political, moral and historical aspects of his writing, its poetry and eroticism, its depiction of the figure of the artist, and Barker’s writing in performance. Includes contributions from Elisabeth Angel-Perez, Mary Karen Dahl, Helen Iball, Christine Kiehl, Charles Lamb, Chris Megson, Roger Owen, Dan Rebellato, James Reynolds, Elizabeth Sakellaridou, Andy Smith, Liz Tomlin, Heiner Zimmerman.