A Study Of George Steiner’s Tragedy Theory

George Steiner was a leading 20th-century American literary critic,translation theorist,and a distinguished humanist intellectual.Steiner’s emphasis on the Western tradition was to draw on the past in order to respond to modern problems with ancient experience,and traditional tragedy was his point of entry.His original concepts of tragedy,such as “absolute tragedy ”and “near tragedy ”,offer new perspectives on classical tragedy.His approach to the critique of modernity through tragedy is similar to that of early 20 th century thinkers such as Lukács and Benjamin.After examining the phenomenon of tragedy in modern society,Steiner argued that the tragedy of the theatre genre,as a special“heritage”of Western culture,was facing a crisis of demise and proposed the“tragedy decline”.This led directly to a debate with scholars such as Raymond Williams and Terry Eagleton,driving Western scholarship to focus on the extension of the meaning of the term tragedy,the spiritual connotations of modern tragedy,and the relationship between novel and tragedy.Steiner established a system of tragedy theory with“absolute tragedy”as the core,“tragic conflict”and“tragic decline”as the main contents.This system has led to a number of important propositions in Western scholarship,such as the definition of tragedy and modern tragic literature,and has academic weight and influence.Based on Steiner’s theory of tragedy,this article focuses on“absolute tragedy”and“tragic decline”exploring the sources of the theory,analyzing its connotations,searching for theoretical debates,and then elucidating the unique value of Steiner’s theory of tragedy.The first chapter discusses the sources of Steiner’s theory,looking for the growth point of his tragedy theory from an occult perspective.The subjective impetus for the formation of his theory is analyzed through“survivor consciousness”and“wanderer consciousness ”,while the objective sources of his ideas are clarified through Nietzsche’s view of tragedy and Marxist tragic criticism.Chapter 2 analyzes the theoretical connotations of Steiner’s tragedy theory,and compares Steiner’s concept of tragedy,the definition of“absolute tragedy”and the model Antigone from the perspective of a close reading of the text,to explore the tragedy in Steiner’s sense and its meaning.Chapter 3 explores Steiner’s theory of“tragedy decline”,analyzing the historical context of the theory,the process of tragic decline and its causes,reflecting Steiner’s rejection of modern Enlightenment rationality and his deeper intention of using tragedy for cultural criticism.The fourth chapter focuses on the debate over Steiner’s theory of tragedy,using a comparative approach to explore the similarities and differences between his theory of tragedy and that of Raymond Williams and Terry Eagleton.The debate between the three is mainly over the definition of tragedy and the possibility of modern tragedy.The controversy is between the“tradition”and“modern”aspects of tragedy.The“tradition”of tragedy refers to traditional tragedy;the“modern”of tragedy refers to the“modern tragedy”after Ibsen.Williams and Eagleton fused British empiricism with Marxist theory in a bid to bridge and reconstruct the gap between traditional tragic theory and tragic experience.However,Williams and Eagleton fail to examine Steiner’s theory of tragedy from a cultural-critical perspective,and are therefore biased.