The Transformations Of Tragedy

The Transformations of Tragedy explores different Christian influences, from the Early Modern to Modern periods, upon the development of post-classical Western tragedy.

Overcome by years of anxiety and depression on a fruitless journey to find himself, Casey Cease could not imagine his life getting any darker. On July 5th, 1995, at the age of 17, fueled by desperate anger and alcohol, Casey caused a horrific car accident that resulted in the death of his friend. Guilty and hopeless, Casey lay in a mental hospital on suicide watch, sure that his life was over. He would soon learn that God had a plan to rescue and redeem him through Jesus Christ. For over a decade, Casey has been traveling the country candidly sharing his testimony of God s power to save others to a life of hope and peace, even when it seems they will be lost forever. With a pastor s heart, he wrote Tragedy to Truth for the sole purpose of giving you the opportunity to marvel at the limitless love of God toward broken, sinful people. No matter how bad you think you are, you aren t beyond the reach of Christ. The first half of this book, Tragedy, is Casey s testimony, from his birth to the present. He shares details of his life that few others will in an effort to display God s grace in his life. The second half of this book, Truth, shares the hope that Casey has found in many areas of his life through this tragedy. Tragedy is a reality in this lifetime, but through God s grace it can lead to the truth. ENDORSEMENTS: Tragedy To Truth is a MUST read. It is a pure testimony of redemption and healing. Joel Engle Singer / Songwriter, Lead Pastor of The Exchange, Keller, TX Without a doubt the most convincing endorsement I can give to Casey s book comes from seeing the impact Casey s story has had on the students in our church, including my own daughter! Casey has been with us on several occasions, and is without a doubt, our students speaker of choice . Not only is Casey s story incredibly compelling, but also, as a preacher, father, and leader, he lives out the claims his transforming story makes! Victor Flores Pastor of Student Ministries, Bell Shoals Baptist Church, Brandon, FL By far, one of the most compelling redemption stories I have heard in 30 years of ministry. Casey Cease is the real deal, a young man who has been to hell and back with a testimony of God's grace, mercy and forgiveness that even the most cynical among us dare not ignore. Character, depth and genuine spirituality always come to mind when I think of this young pastor and the ministry God has given him over this past decade. How thankful and thrilled I am that his story will finally reach a larger audience. Bob Swan - Director of Student Ministries The Woodlands Methodist Church, The Woodlands, TX Casey is a brother-in-arms and dear friend. I've served in the same church with Casey for several years and had the joy of sending him out as the lead pastor of our first church plant. I love Casey and am very thankful for him. I am also thankful for this book. This is an honest story about the devastating power of sin and the much more remarkable power of grace. Casey's journey is tragic indeed, but truth prevails. There is brokenness here, but beauty too. Casey's story is well worth reading, and worth sharing too. Justin Hyde, Teaching Pastor, Redeemer Church, Brenham, TX Tragedy to Truth is a powerful story of lasting transformation. It does not simply recount the amazing story of Casey s life: it proclaims the remarkable love of his Christ. That is to say, this book is much more than an engaging narration or testimony. It is an invitation. J.R. Dodson, PhD - Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies, Ouachita Baptist University, Arkadelphia, AR

Ovid is today best known for his grand epic, Metamorphoses, and elegiac works like the Ars Amatoria and Heroides. Yet he also wrote a Medea, now unfortunately lost. This play kindled in him a lifelong interest in the genre of tragedy, which informed his later poetry and enabled him to continue his career as a tragedian – if only on the page instead of the stage. This book surveys tragic characters, motifs and modalities in the Heroides and the Metamorphoses. In writing love letters, Ovid's heroines and heroes display their suffering in an epistolary theater. In telling transformation stories, Ovid offers an exploded view of the traditional theater, although his characters never stray too far from their dramatic origins. Both works constitute an intratextual network of tragic stories that anticipate the theatrical excesses of Seneca and reflect the all-encompassing spirit of Roman imperium.

This comprehensive study establishes the importance of an unexpected genre, tragedy, in the career of the most mercurial Western poet.

Is "space" a thing, a container, an abstraction, a metaphor, or a social construct? This much is certain: space is part and parcel of the theater, of what it is and how it works. In The Play of Space, noted classicist-director Rush Rehm offers a strikingly original approach to the spatial parameters of Greek tragedy as performed in the open-air theater of Dionysus. Emphasizing the interplay between natural place and fictional setting, between the world visible to the audience and that evoked by individual tragedies, Rehm argues for an ecology of the ancient theater, one that "nests" fifth-century theatrical space within other significant social, political, and religious spaces of Athens. Drawing on the work of James J. Gibson, Kurt Lewin, and Michel Foucault, Rehm crosses a range of disciplines--classics, theater studies, cognitive psychology, archaeology and architectural history, cultural studies, and performance theory--to analyze the phenomenology of space and its transformations in the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. His discussion of Athenian theatrical and spatial practice challenges the contemporary view that space represents a "text" to be read, or constitutes a site of structural dualities (e.g., outside-inside, public-private, nature-culture). Chapters on specific tragedies explore the spatial dynamics of homecoming ("space for returns"); the opposed constraints of exile ("eremetic space" devoid of normal community); the power of bodies in extremis to transform their theatrical environment ("space and the body"); the portrayal of characters on the margin ("space and the other"); and the tragic interactions of space and temporality ("space, time, and memory"). An appendix surveys pre-Socratic thought on space and motion, related ideas of Plato and Aristotle, and, as pertinent, later views on space developed by Newton, Leibniz, Descartes, Kant, and Einstein. Eloquently written and with Greek texts deftly translated, this book yields rich new insights into our oldest surviving drama.

A unique look at the social and religious foundations of the tragic genre. Liebler asks whether it is possible to regard tragic heroes such as Lear and Coriolanus as `sacrificial victims of the prevailing social order'.

Professor Boitani's latest book explores the areas of the tragic and the sublime in medieval literature. Boitani studies tragic and sublime tensions in stories and scenes recounted by such major poets as Dante, Chaucer and Petrarch, as well as themes shared by writers and philosophers and traditional poetic images.

In this volume, tragedy in antiquity is examined synoptically, from its misty origins in archaic Greece, through its central position in the civic life of ancient Athens and its performances across the Greek-speaking world, to its new and very different instantiations in Republican and Imperial Roman contexts. Lively, original essays by eminent scholars trace the shifting dramatic forms, performance environments, and social meanings of tragedy as it was repeatedly reinvented. Tragedy was consistently seen as the most serious of all dramatic genres; these essays trace a sequence of different visions of what the most serious kind of dramatic story might be, and the most appropriate ways of telling those stories on stage. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual, and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.