Workshop: “Decision, Possession: The Time of Law in The Winter’s Tale and the Sonnets”

Tuesday, December 6

12:00pm, McCosh B45

“Sonnet Being”

Monday, December 5

4:30pm, McCosh 26

This paper explores the strains endured by classical conceptions of tragedy when a protagonist who labors is forced upon it. Milton’s Samson, chained to his giant mill wheel, is trapped at a level below that of heroic action, history, and even genuine tragic suffering. At the same time, his labor adumbrates a universalism that, for later thinkers such as Hegel and Kierkegaard, characterizes all genuine tragic fictions.  The torsion exerted on tragic drama  by Milton’s laboring hero is symptomatic, I claim, of a dilemma afflicting tragedy more broadly in the modern era.

Richard Halpern (Sir William Osler Professor of English, Johns Hopkins University)