The Tragic Imagination
The Literary Agenda
Rowan Williams
Reviews and Awards
"There are insights and humane wisdom to be found on every page of Williams's study ... As Williams's incisive readings suggest, great tragedies can yield crucial moral knowledge. Preparing oneself to receive this knowledge, though, likely requires an imagination formed by other liturgies. Even then, perhaps, to watch a tragedy is to undertake a risk that promises no certain insight." --Steven Knepper, Commonweal Magazine
"The Tragic Imagination proves rewarding. Williams offers intelligent - and not straighforwardly theological - readings of Madea, Antigone, King Lear, Othello, and modern plays by Sarah Kane and Edward Bond." --Clare Carlisle, Times Literary Supplement
"Why is it that life can be represented in tragic stories? It's not that life is essentially tragic, argues Rowan Williams. But the ability to tell tragic stories is foundational to our culture and our capacity to imagine a shared world. This book is about language and the way meaning is created with others. A small volume that punches above its weight, it reads like a sequel to Williams's Gifford Lectures, The Edge of Words." --Christian Century