Background intro
Attributes of comedy and tragedy blend into a new form of drama – tragicomedy. Not to be confused with black comedy or dark humor, tragicomedy is not a “parody of tragedy”(Roche) Tragicomedy, according to Karl Guthke, is “an ambiguous work that integrates tragic and comic moments simultaneously and in tension with one another.” (Roche) While other sources consider tragicomedy as a “loose mix of succeeding moments of tragic and comedic moments.”(Roche) Nonetheless, the definition of what a tragicomedy is lies in the literary elements of tragedy and comedy elements and how both draw in complexity of human emotions and actions. When evaluating tragicomedy, it is important to note that tragicomedy is not juxtaposition to one another but are in a synthesis often using irony as key. (Roche)
Comparing the definition of tragedy from the times of Aristotle to the times of modern age, modern tragedy tends to be a drama with an unfortunate ending, whereas ancient tragedy was just a serious drama with no need to have an unhappy ending. (Roche). Tragedy brings insight into human irrationality. C.S. Lewis describes tragedy as a means of “bring[ing] people out of petty and into awareness” (Wheeler) Tragedy is depicted by the harshness in decisions and actions made by people. It is often related to suffering, severity, and fear. Works that use tragedy as a main device often develop characters that embody tragic elements. Typically, the tragic character develops hubris, which is the character’s “desire to reach beyond what is possible” (Wheeler). As a result, the tragic character ends up suffering due to misjudgments. Leading to describe tragedy as “a way to antidote human foolishness”. (Wheeler) As the character progresses, th...
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...ublishing, 1991.
Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. Ernst Klett Sprachen, 2008.
Works Cited:
• "Comedy and Tragedy." Comedy and Tragedy. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2014. .
• Cook, Christian. "What Is Comedy and What Makes Something Funny?" :: Language Foundry. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
• Wheeler, Kip, Dr. Some Thoughts About Tragedy. N.p.: Carson-Newman University, Mar. 2014. PDF.< http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/Tragedy.pdf>
• "Aristotle’s Concept of Tragedy." NeoEnglish. WordPress, n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2014. .
• Roche, Mark William. "Tragicomedy." Tragedy and Comedy: A Systematic Study and a Critique of Hegel. Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1998. 255-57. Print.
According to Aristotle, tragedy requires an admirable hero with power and in a high state, but more importantly, he or she possesses a tragic flaw that leads to their downfall. This tragic flaw most closely relates to a character’s hubris, excessive pride in themselves or their judgment. But sometimes a character cannot be categorized as tragic, and one can argue whether or not the tragic character violates the requirements. In Sophocles’ Antigone Creon and Antigone serve as tragic characters in the play; however, Creon’s character exemplifies Aristotle’s theory of tragedy.
A Greek drama is a serious of actions within a literary presentation in which the chief character has a disastrous fate. Many Greek dramas fall under theatrical category of a tragedy due to the tragic events and unhappy ending that cause the downfall of the main character. During the famous play “Antigone” the Greek author Sophocles incorporated several features of a tragedy. These features include a morally significant dilemma and the presence of a tragic hero. Grand debate over which character can hold the title of the tragic hero has discussed in the literally world for ages. A tragic hero can be defined as someone with a substantial personality flaw that causes them to endure great suffering with a reversal of character near the end. Antigone possesses certain traits that could potentially render her the tragic hero but Creon truly embodies all characteristics. Creon is the tragic hero in “Antigone” due to several qualities he displays throughout the play; he can’t accept a diminished view of himself, he endures great suffering and he is enlightened in the end.
The tradition of the tragedy, the renowned form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis, has principally become a discontinued art. Plays that evoke the sense of tragedy-the creations of Sophocles, Euripides, and William Shakespeare-have not been recreated often, nor recently due to its complex nature. The complexity of the tragedy is due to the plot being the soul of the play, while the character is only secondary. While the soul of the play is the plot, according to Aristotle, the tragic hero is still immensely important because of the need to have a medium of suffering, who tries to reverse his situation once he discovers an important fact, and the sudden downturn in the hero’s fortunes. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is the modern tragedy of a common man named Willy Loman, who, like Oedipus from Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, exhibits some qualities of a tragic hero. However, the character Willy Loman should not be considered a full-on tragic hero because, he although bears a comparable tragic flaw in his willingness to sacrifice everything to maintain his own personal dignity, he is unlike a true tragic hero, like Oedipus, because he was in full control of his fate where Oedipus was not.
In I Henry IV and II Henry IV, William Shakespeare brings together drama and comedy to create two of the most compelling history plays ever written. Many of Shakespeare's other works are nearly absolute in their adherence to either the comic or tragic traditions, but in the two Henry IV plays Shakespeare combines comedy and drama in ways that seem to bring a certain realism to his characters, and thus the plays. The present essay is an examination of the various and significant effects that Shakespeare's comedic scenes have on I Henry IV and II Henry IV. The Diversity of Society
The play “Antigone” by Sophocles displays many qualities that make it a great tragedy. A tragedy is defined as a dramatic or literary work in which the principal character engages in a morally significant struggle ending in ruin or profound disappointment. In creating his tragedy “Antigone”, Sophocles uses many techniques to create the feelings of fear and pity in his readers. This in turn creates an excellent tragedy.
On the other hand, another type of tragic hero exists, the modern tragic hero. This type of hero is a product of a clash between the individual and the social environment. Arthur Miller, the famous playwright said, “each person has a chosen image of self and position, tragedy results when the characters environment denies the fulfillment of this self concept.” (LATWP, 640). This is a contrast from Aristotle’s classic tragic hero because the hero is no longer born into nobility but gains stature in the action of pitting self against cosmos, and the tragedy becomes, “the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in this world.” (LATWP, 640).
A tragedy is defined as a dramatic composition, often in verse, dealing with a serious or somber theme, typically that of a great person destined through a flaw of character or conflict with some overpowering force, as fate or society, to downfall or destruction. The play Antigone by Sophocles displays many qualities that prove to form into the epitome of a tragedy. Tragedy is usually marked with a person of great standing—in this case, a King—who falls because of hubris, or extreme pride. Antigone proves to live up to both of these definitions which is proven through its themes. Sophocles uses many techniques in this tragedy to contribute to the overall theme. This theme is accomplished by creating emotions in the readers to evoke the understanding of the theme. In the play Antigone, Sophocles uses the themes of pride, power, and femininity to convey his overall theme of tragedy.
Most readers are aware of the many famous deaths or acts of death within the Shakespearean plays. And when the main characters die in Shakespeare’s plays, indeed, the readers would categorize the play as a tragedy. The problem with any tragedy definition is that most tragic plays do not define the tragedy conditions explained or outlined by Aristotle. According to Telford (1961), a tragedy is a literary work that describes the downfall of an honorable, main character who is involved on historically or socially significant events. The main character, or tragic hero, has a tragic fault, the quality that leads to his or her own destruction. In reading Aristotle’s point of view, a tragedy play is when the main character(s) are under enormous pressure and are incapable to see the dignities in human life, which Aristotle’s ideas of tragedy is based on Oedipus the King. Shakespeare had a different view of tragedy. In fact, Shakespeare believed tragedy is when the hero is simply and solely destroyed. Golden (1984) argued the structure of Shakespearean tragedy would be that individual characters revolved around some pain and misery.
Aristotle states that "For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a quality. Now character determines men's qualities, but it is by their actions that they are happy or the reverse. Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions. Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy; and the end is the chief thing of all.
In Arthur Miller’s essay, Tragedy and the Common Man, Miller creates a distinction from classical tragedies by creating a modern tragedy. Aristotle’s classic tragedy is, “an imitation of an action that is serious and complete in the mode of action and is not narrated. It effects pity and fear which is called catharsis. It has a beginning, middle, and end and its function is to tell of such things that might happen in the future- to express the universal” (Aristotle). To produce the feelings of either pity or fear, reversal, which is, “the change from one state of affairs to its exact opposite” (Aristotle), and recognition, which is, “the change from ignorance to knowledge, on the part of those who are marked for good fortune or bad” (Aristotle) must both ...
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, a play in three acts by Tom Stoppard, is a behind the scenes look at what happens in Shakespeare's Hamlet and how the events in the play may have seemed to other fringe characters. These characters are of very little relevance and even if they are removed from the scene of action, with the grotesque act of hanging by death, the impact on the actual play is minimal
In Aristotle’s book, Poetics, he defines tragedy as, “an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and possessing magnitude; in embellished language, each kind of which is used separately in the different parts; in the mode of action and not narrated; and effecting through pity and fear” (Aristotle 1149). Tragedy creates a cause and effect chain of actions that clearly gives the audience ideas of possible events. The six parts to Aristotle’s elements of tragedy are: Plot, character, language, thought, spectacle, and melody. According to Aristotle, the most important element is the plot. Aristotle writes in Poetics that, “It is not for the purpose of presenting their characters that the agents engage in action, but rather it is for the sake of their actions that they take on the characters they have” (Aristotle 1150). Plots should have a beginning, middle, and end that have a unity of actions throughout the play making it complete. In addition, the plot should be complex making it an effective tragedy. The second most important element is character. Characters...
A tragedy is defined as beginning with a problem that affects everyone, i.e. the whole town or all the characters involved, the tragic hero must solve this problem and this results in his banishment or death [run-on sentence]. A comedy is defined as also beginning with a problem, but one of less significant importance. The characters try to solve the problem and the story ends with all the characters uniting in either a marriage of a party. Although these two genres are seen as being complete opposites of each other, through further analysis one can gather that though they are different certain similarities can also be seen.
In 350 B.C.E., a great philosopher wrote out what he thought was the definition of a tragedy. As translated by S.H. Butcher, Aristotle wrote; “Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions. . . . Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality—namely, Plot, Characters, Thought, Diction, Spectacle, Melody. (http://www.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/poetics.html)” Later in history, William Shakespeare wrote tragedies that epitomized Aristotle’s outline of a tragedy. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is one such tragedy.
According to Aristotle, the importance of tragedy as a genre is to represent action. Thus unity of action purportedly has the strongest implications for the effectiveness of the work itself. Aristotle posits “a story, since it is the representation of action, should concern an action that is single and entire, with its several incidents so structured that the displacement or removal of any one of them would disturb and dislocate the whole.” (Aristotle 27) and deems this claim imperative. A good plot, and thereby an effective tragedy, does not include events, which are not connected to each other or specifically the main plot. In theory, these unconnected events are distracting from the main action and dissipate the tragic effect. With Aristotle’s definition, no sub-plot should exist in tragedy. For all events to be “necessary or [have] probable connection with each other.” (Aristotle 27) none should exist not directly related to the main action. Again, unity allows for the tragic effect to be concentrated, intending to allow for increased feelings of pity and