Despite the pervasive early Christian repudiation of pagan theatrical art, especially prior to Constantine, this monograph demonstrates the increasing attention of late-ancient Christian authors to the genre of tragedy as a basis to explore the complexities of human finitude, suffering, and
mortality in relation to the wisdom, justice, and providence of God. The book argues that various Christian writers, particularly in the post-Constantinian era, were keenly devoted to the mimesis, or imaginative
re-presentation, of the tragic dimension of creaturely existence more than with simply
mimicking the poetics of the classical Greek and Roman tragedians. It analyses a whole array of hermeneutical, literary, and rhetorical manifestations of tragical mimesis in early Christian writing, which, capitalizing on the elements of tragedy already perceptible in biblical revelation, aspired
to deepen and edify Christian engagement with multiform evil and with the extreme vicissitudes of historical existence. Early Christian tragical mimetics included not only interpreting (and often amplifying) the Bible's own tragedies for contemporary audiences, but also developing models of the
Christian self as a tragic self, revamping the Christian moral conscience as a tragical conscience, and cultivating a distinctively Christian tragical pathos. The study culminates in an extended consideration of the theological intelligence and accountability of tragical vision and tragical
mimesis in early Christian literary culture, and the unique role of the theological virtue of hope in its repertoire of tragical emotions.
