Full Description
A fascinating intertextual study of the classic biblical tragedy of Saul, the first king of Israel, as first narrated in biblical narrative and later reworked in Lamartine's drama Saul: Trag+--die and Thomas Hardy's novel The Mayor of Casterbridge. Plot and characterization are each explored in detail in this study, and in each of the narrations the hero's tragic fate emerges both as the result of a character flaw and also as a consequence of the ambivalent role of the deity, showing a double theme underlying not only the biblical vision but also its two very different retellings nearer to our own times.
Contents
Introduction: The story of Saul as history and as literature; Literary theory and methodology; The intertextual perspective The story of Saul as tragedy; Technical matters Part I Chapter one: Overview of the tragic vision; The father - son collision; Tragic mechanics Chapter two: Introduction; Overview of divine ambivalence; Divine agency Part II Chapter three: Introduction; Plot 82 - characterization - conclusions Chapter four: Introduction; Thematic schemes and stylistic devices: The role of god; Conclusions Part III Chapter five: Introduction; The present state of scholarship; Voltaire; Character; Conclusions; Chapter six: Introduction; Social history; Fate and chance; Conclusions: Conclusion; Bibliography
