The Tragic Imagination in Shakespeare and Emerson

<p><b>What is the “tragic imagination”? And what role does it play in the works of William Shakespeare and Ralph Waldo Emerson?</b> Explaining the tragic imagination as a creative faculty employed to answer the perennial <i>Riddle of the Sphinx</i> – a theory of the world that advances human freedom and dignity in the face of historical injustice, cruelty and violence – Andy Amato seeks to recover and rehabilitate this concept by revealing its significance to both key works of philosophy and literature and our contemporary world. <br><br>This book begins with a close and careful reading of Emerson’s first major work, <i>Nature, </i>in conversation with nineteenth and 20thcentury continental philosophy, critical theory and post-structuralism. Uncovering neglected elements of Emerson’s philosophy, beyond his reputation as the philosopher of ‘cheer’, this book explores how Emersonian transcendentalism affirms rather than denies the tragic sense of life – “tragic idealism” – and makes a substantial contribution to philosophy’s perpetual endeavour to solve the <i>Riddle. </i><br><br>In the second part of the book, Amato then employs Emerson’s theoretical lens to interpret Shakespeare’s tragedy, <i>King Lear. </i>In doing so, he innovatively reframes the central themes of suffering, vision, nature, nothing, foolishness and silence toward achieving liberation.<br><br>By pairing these two giants of literature and philosophy, <i>The Tragic Imagination in Shakespeare and Emerson </i>not only offers fresh interpretations of <i>Nature </i>and <i>King Lear</i>, but also makes the case for the renewed deployment of tragic imagination, in creative redress, to our current social-political situation.</p>