ABSTRACT

First published in 1985, The Subject of Tragedy takes the drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the starting point for an analysis of the differential identities of man and woman. Catherine Belsey charts, in a range of fictional and non-fictional texts, the production in the Renaissance of a meaning for subjectivity that is identifiably modern. The subject of liberal humanism – self-determining, free origin of language, choice and action – is highlighted as the product of a specific period in which man was the subject to which woman was related.

chapter |10 pages

Introduction

Reading the Past

part |115 pages

Man

chapter |42 pages

Unity

chapter |38 pages

Knowledge

chapter |33 pages

Autonomy

part |100 pages

Woman

chapter |20 pages

Alice Arden's Crime

chapter |43 pages

Silence and Speech

chapter |30 pages

Finding a Place

chapter |5 pages

Conclusion

Changing the Present