released 6/18/2026
In this November 2025 lecture, Glenn Arbery explores what the genre of tragedy reveals about human experience and how it does this work of revelation. Arbery describes how tragedy first resists the “saturated phenomenon” — the sense of being overwhelmed by a metaphysical fear or dread — and then channels it into an art form that can help us process it individually and communally. He focuses on examples of the “tragic self” that is constructed via tragedy in order to be destroyed. Through the story of the tragic self, the reader or audience is opened to a recognition of their own self-fictions and condition. Arbery uses examples from Homer’s The Iliad, Shakespeare’s Othello, and Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy to show how each tragic hero is brought to a point of unmasking and a shattering of pride. He concludes by suggesting that the work of tragedy points to the confrontation at the heart of the Christian story.
This lecture is provided courtesy of the Center for Beauty and Culture at Benedictine College. It is the second of two lectures; the first, “Lyric as Disclosure,” may be found here.
63 minutes
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duration 1:02:57
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