REVIEW
McAlindon, T. Shakespeare's Tragic Cosmos.
Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1991.

Thesis: A synopsis is provided on the very first (unnumbered) page of the book. Here it is:

     Dr. McAlindon argues that there were two models of nature in Renaissance culture, one hierarchical, in which everything has an appointed place, the other contrarious, showing nature as a tense system of interacting opposites, liable to sudden collapse and transformation. This latter model informs Shakespeare's tragedy throughout his career. It can be seen in his broad conception of tragic action as a reflection of 'Chaos . . . come again'; in the characterisation of the hero as a man who becomes his own opposite; in symbolically polarised settings; and in the web of elemental imagery which roots the action in the dynamics of universal nature.
     A preliminary chapter on Chaucer's Knight's Tale explains the literary antecedents of Shakespeare's model and its manifestation in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The following chapters take the tragedies one by one. This approach to the tragedies shows that Shakespeare at his most characteristic was profoundly indebted to the cultural inheritance of his own time.
In the chapter entitled "Macbeth" (197-219), what all of this boils down to is analyses of some of the play's themes: the "struggle between the forces of unity and disunity" (198), number symbolism, "the great cosmological theme of love and strife" (209), the theme of "deed" (in the double sense of something done and a covenant), and the theme of time.

Evaluation: Except for the section on number symbolism, which seems somewhat strained, everything that McAlindon writes is reasonable, but familiar. Here, for example, is a paragraph from the section on time:

A striking peculiarity of the play is the emphatic manner in which Macbeth's appropriation of time and place is reflected in nature at large and represented as a violation of Nature's organic unity and creative cycle. When Duncan is murdered the darkness and tempest associated initially with the witches take control of all nature, so that the perception of chaos is intense. Most notably, the moon and stars are invisible during the night (an answer to the Macbeths' demonic prayers) and the sun fails to rise when 'by th' clock 'tis day' (II.i.115; II.iv.6). As a creature of the night who uses the midnight bell to signal violence rather than 'good repose', Macbeth attacks sleep, which is 'the season of all natures': not just a restful division between one day and the next, but a form of re-creation in the diurnal cycle. Macbeth also seeks to destroy 'the seeds of time' (I.iii.58) in the reproductive cycle, attempting to ensure that Banquo's 'seed' (III.i.69) will not produce its line of kings, and successfully obliterating Macduff's procreant nest.   (217).
Bottom Line: An OK academic piece.