The Humanities Index

Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus is a confusing play, but one lesson that it seems to impart is that sometimes idealistic value systems do not work when put into practice. Titus Andronicus goes to great — almost hyperbolic — lengths to make this clear, though it is often overlooked trying to make ethical sense out of a [...]

Revenge tragedy depicts a son’s revenge for a father’s murder (or vice versa). The murder is revealed and directed to the protagonist by the murdered man’s ghost. Revenge results from conscious and focused action.

Comedy is poetry that transmutes a sad beginning into a happy ending.

Somewhere between the merry sensuality of Ovid and the ecstatic spirituality of Platonism is the tradition of Courtly Love. Courtly love resembles the Ovidian convention in that it is not supersensous: its aim is physical consummation, its object of love physical beauty. It differs from the Ovidian tradition in its interpretation of the nature of [...]