Black Banner

Tragic Form and Civil War
A political interpretation of tragedy.
Black Banner traces the evolution of tragedy from Antigone to Danton's Death, interpreting it as the symbolic form through which societies have confronted the extremities of civil war and the pathologies of despotic power. In tragedy, conflict reaches its utmost brutality, while paradoxically addressing us with some of the most beautiful words ever written.

The book unfolds across three historical scenarios. It begins in ancient Greece, where tragedy emerges in open civic spaces, in confrontation with that collective creature which is the chorus. It then moves to the enclosed and treacherous courts of early-modern Europe, dominated by the sombre shadow of the tyrant. Finally, with the great German dramatists from Lessing to Hebbel, and no longer confined to a single political setting, it creates the great modern figure of the ideologue. Alongside this historical arc, Moretti offers a morphological study of dramatic dialogue and the relationship between word and action, concluding with a meditation on tragedy's place in history.

Named after the black banner raised above Shakespeare's Globe to announce a tragedy, Black Banner is an epigrammatic, original account of one of culture's defining forms.

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