Tragedy presents a wide-ranging and unique collection of documents on one of the most enduring of literary genres and offers a radical evaluation of its significance in the light of the critical attention that it has received during the past 150 years. It looks at the foundation of much contemporary thinking about tragedy found in Hegel, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, considers how Marxism and the psycho-analytical writings of Freud have extended the horizons of the subject and reflects the explosion of interest in the areas of post-structuralism, sociology of culture, social anthropology, feminism, and deconstruction.