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Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon. By JOHN KERRIGAN. OXford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Pp. xvi + 404. $75.00 cloth.
Reviewed by LINDA CHARNES
At a time when the distinction between criminal guilt and civil responsibility has been starkly foregrounded by the O.J. Simpson trials, the topic of revenge-or retributive justice-cannot be taken for granted. A hoary old theme it may be; but deciding its prerogatives, functions, and liabilities is no easier for us than it was for Medea. In the preface to this rich and quirky book, John Kerrigan notes that "revenge is a cultural practice which arouses intense emotion," not only because of its "destructive impulse" but because its compulsion to perform retributive damage is usually experienced-at least by the perpetrator-as righteous: as a drive for justice that exists independently of the sanctions of law. We are fascinated and repelled by revenge, for, at once puerile and complex, its affective logic always involves a moral paradox.
While Kerrigan's title is Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon, the book encompasses far more than just the term "given currency by A. H. Thorndike in about 1900, as a way of labelling a class of plays written by Shakespeare and his contemporaries" (viii). Kerrigan contends that revenge tragedy speaks to a "great deal of literature, opera, and film produced since Aeschylus," and he submits the term to "clarifying pressure, in order to disentangle its relations with sadistic violence" (viii), in order to see how the chthonic and psychosocial elements in classical and Western dramatic tradition have permeated a wide range of cultural texts, images, and narratives.
The table of contents reveals the scope of the book, which is divided into four sections: 1 ) an introduction titled "On Aristotle and Revenge Tragedy"; 2) "Exchanges with Antiquity"; 3) "Histories and Readings"; and 4) "Modernity and Post-Modernity." The chapters in each are presented as comparative essays, such as "Aeschylus and Dracula," "Sophocles in Baker Street," " Remember ME!': Horestes, Hieronimo, and Hamlet," "Shakespeare and the Comic Strain," "Killing Time: Nietzsche, Job, and Repetition," and "Medea Variations: Feminism and Revenge." This eclecticism is for the most part supported by the scholarship Kerrigan brings to bear on his topic: each chapter offers idiosyncratic readings and juxtapositions, while reflecting profitably on the larger issues...