Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World by Russ Leo (review)

That the Reformation altered theology and the political landscape of Europe is well known. Its impact on literature and the arts less so. This book belongs among the increasing number of volumes describing how the Reformation altered culture, in this case, poetics. Princeton English professor Leo shows how various reformers and early modern Protestant thinkers, in their reflection on literary criticism from the 1550s to the 1630s, turned to tragedy in order to understand providence as well as human and divine agencies. In this endeavor, they appropriated not only various Reformation themes of providence, predestination, faith, and devotion, but also interfaced with Aristotle’s classical view of tragedy as cathartically evoking fear and pity. Some, but not all, of these thinkers affirmed Aristotle’s preference for appreciating the philosophy of tragedy rather than seeing it enacted in a drama. These thinkers found tragedy to be a helpful way to bring coherence to the various seemingly disparate threads of life and so provide meaning to life. Leo notes that after 1550 the literary critics surveyed tended to advance deliberate sectarian ends, intertwined with their own confessional stances (38).

In De Regno Christi Martin Bucer showed that while both comedy and tragedy depict the crimes of the reprobate, the latter especially shows Christians the appropriate terror of divine judgment and the horror of sin. In this regard, he advances a “rational awe proper to tragedy and Scripture alike” while “duly critical of excessive spectacle and histrionics” (12). Likewise, Wittenberg reformer Philipp Melanchthon, who valued Euripides and other classical tragedians, and speaking as a Humanist, charged that we should learn from tragedy to know justice and not to scorn the gods (23). For Melanchthon, God speaks not only through scripture but also through classical tragedians who inspire fear and compassion (26). The Reformed professor at Heidelberg David Pareus interpreted the book of Revelation as a tragic text, seeing in the pope as the antichrist a catastrophic, tragic figure (65, 71).

Turning from Germany to Italy, Lodovico Castelvetro, advancing the thinking of Juan de Valdés who argued for justification by faith, challenged the Aristotelian prejudice against theater. Interpreting Christ’s passion through the lens of tragedy, he noted that it is impossible for any Christian to imitate Christ fully (111). In contrast, the English Puritan John Rainolds affirmed the dialectical and rhetorical dimension of tragic literature but ceded no turf to stagecraft (119). Tragedy is not to be played but instead recited (124). It appears that Shakespeare in Hamlet spoofed him as the character Reynaldo (154ff.) and thereby found a place for tragedy to be enacted on the stage. Delightfully, Leo goes so far as to wonder whether for Shakespeare the character Hamlet would have heard Melanchthon lecture on Euripides in Wittenberg (159)!

Anti-Arminian Dutch scholar Daniel Heinsius highlighted the purgative aspects of tragedy (pity and horror):

A tragedy is not merely a theatrical presentation of things doleful or grave. It must of course be serious enough to induce pity [misericordia] and horror [horror], the proper tragic affects, but this famed purgation depends much more on the tragic poet’s ability to approximate nature through imitation, to depict conditions and relations as they exist

(171).

Hence, tragedy needs verisimilitude (187). Thereby, it can bring together causes and effects, as well as agents and affects, and mores into a complete narrative. Leo ends with how these views are in effect in John Milton’s Samson Agonistes which as a tragedy involving God allows Milton to highlight God’s apparent affectus or passion even though God is of “absolute power and authority.”

This book is a remarkable achievement of scholarship. That said, it has a much harder time indicating its value for liberal studies or the spiritual life. It is highly technical, suitable for experts in early modern European thought.