The Net of Nemesis: Studies in Tragic Bond/age

Front Cover
Susquehanna University Press, 2000 - 194 pages
The Net of Nemesis examines the trope of tragic bond/age, in which humanity is the beneficiary of bonds that nurture and unite and the victim of bondage that confines and restrains. Manifestations of the trope in Greek and Shakespearean tragedy, Miltonic epic, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction repeat and vary the trope's central symbol of the net and other, related leitmotifs and demonstrate that such orchestration resolves the conflict between bonds and bond/age and informs the catharsis and transcendence essential to tragedy.

From inside the book

Contents

The Nature of Tragic Bondage
11
In Greek Tragedy
25
In Hamlet
42
In King Lear
55
In Macbeth
64
In Paradise Lost
73
In The Scarlet Letter
83
In Moby Dick
91
In Tess of the dUrbervilles
111
In The Portrait of a Lady
121
In Heart of Darkness
132
In Absalom Absalom
141
The Tragedy of Bondage
154
Notes
173
Bibliography
180
Index
185

In The Mayor of Casterbridge
101

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 43 - In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets...
Page 62 - And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never!
Page 88 - My old faith, long forgotten, comes back to me, and explains all that we do, and all we suffer. By thy first step awry thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that moment, it has all been a dark necessity. Ye that have wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illusion; neither am I fiend-like, who have snatched a fiend's office from his hands. It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it may! Now go thy ways, and deal as thou wilt with yonder man.
Page 64 - If you can look into the seeds of time, And say, which grain will grow, and which will not, Speak then to me, who neither beg, nor fear, Your favours, nor your hate.
Page 77 - Return, fair Eve, Whom fliest thou ? whom thou fliest, of him thou art, His flesh, his bone; to give thee being I lent Out of my side to thee, nearest my heart, Substantial life, to have thee by my side Henceforth an individual solace dear: Part of my soul, I seek thee, and thee claim, My other half.
Page 66 - Come, seeling night, Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day, And with thy bloody and invisible hand, Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale.
Page 65 - Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding.
Page 46 - The cease of majesty Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw What's near it with it...
Page 79 - In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, Till thou return unto the ground...
Page 74 - Whose fault ? Whose but his own ? ingrate, he had of me All he could have : I made him just and right, Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. Such I created all th...

Bibliographic information