Notes on Tragedy – Medea/Gender Unit
Mod. Humanities / Graduation Project
Two sections of DRAMA:
- Tragedy
- Comedy
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COMEDY TRAGEDY
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Funny Sad
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Has happy ending Has unhappy ending
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Typical ending = Marriage Typical ending = Death
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ARISTOTLE – 384 – 322 B.C.
1st great theorist of dramatic art
Defined tragedy in his work Poetics
Concepts form the basis of the archetypal notion of TRAGEDY
According to Aristotle, TRAGEDY is defined as – the imitation in dramatic form of an action that is serious and complete with incidents arousing pity and fear such as to cause a catharsis of such emotions.
TRAGEDY – CENTRAL FEATURES:
- Language used is pleasurable and appropriate throughout to the situation in which it is used
- Chief characters are noble persons (‘better than ourselves’)
- Actions the characters perform are noble actions
- Plot involves a change in the protagonist’s fortune, in which he usually but not always, falls from happiness to misery
- Protagonist, though not perfect, is hardly a bad person; his misfortunes result not from a character deficiency but from what Aristotle called hamartia (a criminal act committed in ignorance of some material fact or even for the sake of a greater good)
- Tragic Plot has organic unity – events follow not just after one another but because of one another
- Best Tragic Plots – involve a reversal (change from one state of things within the play to its opposite) or a discovery (a change from ignorance to knowledge) or both
KEY Characteristics of a Tragic Hero:
Hero is a man of noble stature
-is good, though not perfect, and his fall results from committing ‘hamartia’
-Some critical tradition attributes the fall of the hero to some tragic flaw – some fault of character such as inordinate ambition, quickness to anger, tendency to jealousy, overweening pride; or to some excess of virtue – a nobility of character that makes him unfit for life among ordinary mortals
Hero is personally responsible for his fall – it’s his own fault, a result of his free choice/will; not the result of pure accident or someone else’s villainy or some malignant fate
Hero’s misfortune – not wholly deserved (KEY)
Tragic fall is NOT pure loss – tragic hero gains some self-knowledge before his downfall/death – a change from ignorance to knowledge, for which the hero can acknowledge the justness of it (‘LIGHTBULB MOMENT’)
Tragedies – arouse solemn emotions, but do not leave the audience in a state of
depression (catharsis – purging/release of these emotions through the act of
watching/reading the play – a common, shared experience) – LEARN BY
WATCHING, and APPLY AS NEEDED…
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TRAGEDY COMEDY
Emphasizes human greatnessHighlights human weakness
Celebrates human freedomEmphasizes human limitations
Challenges us w/ vision of human Exposes human folly
possibility
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