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Tragedy and Desire

This chapter addresses the question of normative invariance vis-à-vis the desires people have for fictions, particularly tragic dramas for which one’s desires are often mutually inconsistent. One wants, e.g., for the tragic heroine to thrive and yet also for the story to culminate in her narratively mandated fate. In probing the kinds of rational constraints that may apply to one’s desires, including the apparently contrary desires elicited by tragic drama, this chapter asks whether what we want to happen within a fiction is—or should be—consistent with what we want to happen outside of it.