Contents:Conté: Introduction: The theory of tragedy and theatrical experience; Tragic experience and aesthetic experience; Tragedy after drama; "Dramatic tragedy" and the core tragic motif; Overview; Contemporary tragedy -- PART I Theory/theatre/the tragic: 1. Palaia diaphora -- an "old quarrel" between philosophical theory and tragedy: Aristotelian themes: "mythos", logos, catharsis, anagnorisis; Chorus, text, performance; Philosophy and tragedy: a rivalry; Plato, mimesis, the state; The anti-tragic theatre of philosophy; Phantasia and "seeing"; The ghostly, terror, death. Tragic experienceDistance and dis-dance, beyond form; Shape, artist, do not speak!; The "vegetal" hero, experience, concept; "Stammerings in a foreign language"; Thinking on the stage; 2. Approaches to the tragic: The tragic mode; The tragic in everyday language and in the study of literature and theatre; Aspects of the tragic; Two models: conflict and transgression; Versions of transgression -- 3. Casus Seneca: Tragedy and the hyperbole of revenge: Hyperbole, nefas, furor; Revenge and the tragic theatre; "Medea fiam"; The subject as hyperbole -- 4. Theatre/experience and the tragic: On the concept of experience; Aspects of tragic experience; Playacting and watching: homo spectator; Catharsis and anagnorisis -- 5. The model of Antigone: Shaky order; Heidegger; Kinship and "prepolitical opposition" -- PART II Drama and tragedy: 6. The dramatization of tragedy: On predramatic tragedy in antiquity; Dramatization and representation; The characteristics of dramatic theatre; The theatre of terror; The production of Othello; Dramatic tragedy and the tragic subject -- 7. Pure dramatic tragedy: Racine: Neoclassical theory and practice; Racine, Lacan and the Imaginary -- 8. Tragoedia and Trauerspiel: Tragedy and mourning: Play, tragedy, Trauerspiel; Mourning in antiquity and modernity; Baroque politics and theatre; Trauerspiel and dramatic tragedy -- 9. Crises of dramatic tragedy: Schiller, Hölderlin, Kleist: Enlightenment and the tragic motif; Schiller; Hölderlin; Kleist -- PART III Dramatic and postdramatic tragedy: 10. The dissolution of the dramatic: Lyric tragedy: Maurice Maeterlinck; Turning away from dramatic dialogue; The tragic of the everyday; Hugo von Hofmannsthal; William Butler Yeats -- 11. Tragedy and postdramatic theatre: Historical avant-gardes:Artaud, Reinhardt, Brecht"The death of tragedy"; Insistence on the tragic; Death of tragedy?; The subject and the tragic; Tragic theatre today; "Tragedy of play", caesura and ritual