| This dissertation examines the arguments against tragedy offered by feminist playwrights in their "re-visions" of the plays of Euripides and Shakespeare.;In the first part, I maintain that feminist dramatic re-vision is one manifestation of an unrecognized tradition of women's writing in which criticism is expressed through fiction. I also argue that the project of feminist dramatic re-vision embodies a feminist "new poetics.";In the second part, I examine the aesthetics and politics of tragedy from a feminist perspective. Feminist arguments against tragedy are, in effect arguments against patriarchy. But it is the theorists and critics of tragedy---not the playwrights---who are unequivocally aligned with patriarchy. Playwrights like Euripides and Shakespeare can be seen to destabilize tragedy in their plays.;In the third part, I show how recent feminist playwrights (Jackie Crossland, Dario Fo and Franca Rame, Deborah Porter, Caryl Churchill and David Lan, Maureen Duffy, Alison Lyssa, The Women's Theatre Group and Elaine Feinstein, Joan Ure, Margaret Clarke, and Ann-Marie MacDonald) counter tragedy by extrapolating from the arguments presented by Euripides and Shakespeare in The Medea, The Bacchae, King Lear, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Othello , and by allocating voice and agency to their female protagonists. |
