In this provocative book, first published in 1983, Stephen Booth speculates on the essence of tragedy. He argues that the literary works we call tragedies have their value as enabling dramatic tragedies can render us capable, temporarily, of enduring practical, personal experience of the fact of infinity.
Stephen Booth was Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the editor of 'Shakespeare's Sonnets' (New Haven, 1977), and the author of 'An Essay on Shakespeare's Sonnets' (New Haven, 1969) and 'King Lear, Macbeth, Indefinition, and Tragedy' (New Haven, 1983).