Tragic Method and Tragic Theology

Can a play think about evil as rigorously as a theologian? Larry D. Bouchard argues that it can, and that tragic drama works as a form of inquiry, rendering dimensions of evil that resist tidy explanation. Moving between literary and theological criticism, he starts with readings of Greek tragedy, giving close attention to Paul Ricoeur on the wicked god and to Sophocles as a dramatist of interpretation itself. He then tests Augustine on sin, Reinhold Niebuhr on the ironies of history and Paul Tillich on the demonic, showing where each resists the harder conclusions his own thought points towards.

The second half offers fresh readings of Rolf Hochhuth's The Deputy, Robert Lowell's trilogy The Old Glory, and Peter Shaffer's Equus and Amadeus. It is a serious, searching study for anyone drawn to where theology, drama and the problem of evil meet.