2. 100 years after Sophocles wrote Oedipus: Aristotle wrote The Poetics, which deals with poetry in general. He wondered how the audience could derive pleasure from watching terrible, tragic events on stage. He described the effect on the audience as “katharsis,” or the purging of pity and fear.
3. The tragic hero: must undeservedly fall into misfortune through some miscalculation. must be a person of noble stature. must have a change of fortune from good to bad must suddenly recognize his own responsibility for that change of fortune, which signals a change from ignorance to knowledge has a fate which cannot be escaped
4. hamartia: the violation of the hero, often called the tragic flaw. It is a weakness in character or error in judgment which leads to the character’s downfall.
5. Hubris: arrogance or overbearing pride which causes the transgression against the gods. Hubris is often the tragic flaw.
6. Peripetia: the reversal of fortune or the plot twist which comes about as a result of that reversal
10. Aristotle wrote his definition of tragedy with Greek tragedy as his only model, long before Christianity changed the course of thinking in Western civilization. Christianity, with its teachings of sin and divine providence, changed the picture of tragedy.
11. After Greek tragedy was written in 5C BC, no great tragedies were written until the Renaissance. Medieval literature is filled with stories of the Bible and the saints, but none developed into dramatic tragedy. For the people in this period, the universe was ruled by an all-powerful God. Evil existed, but was not stronger than man assisted by God’s grace. The hero could eventually find his place with God, and this is not tragic.
12. Renaissance tragedy existed in a Christian world and used Christian theology in dealing with the presence of evil in the world. The 1st play of the Renaissance to deal with the influence of the classical age combined with the Middle Ages is Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus.
13. Difficulty of writing tragedy in a Christian world: how to deal with Heaven No matter how severe the hero’s suffering or how terrible his death, if he goes to Heaven, there is no tragedy. Marlowe’s character is tragic because he violates divine law and goes to hell.
14. Shakespeare: deals with the same tragic problems, but in a different way. Shakespeare analyzed human behavior and possessed a thorough and accurate analysis of it in terms of Elizabethan psychology. He deals with Christian ideas such as that of sin, which causes suffering before death as well as after.
15. English dramatists of the first ½ of the 17th century relied on the revenge tradition, in which the hero is mandated to correct a wrong done against him, yet still must suffer appropriate punishment for his act of revenge.
16. 1642: Puritans closed the theatres in England 1660: theatres were reopened, yet tragedy was no longer a popular art form
17. In the 18th century: tragedies were written, but eventually dies out because the times denied its existence.
18. 19th century: great actors, not great tragedies. The mores of the time caused writers to be careful when writing about profanity and sex. Also, intellectual attitudes which came about as a result of the scientific and industrial revolutions were not compatible with the tragic view of life.
19. Henrik Ibsen: critic of 19th century mores. wrote realistic plays critical of social issues of the time dealt with the same issues as Sophocles and Shakespeare, but in the setting of everyday life treated the problem of evil in the framework of a middle-class society
20. For the first time, the tragic hero could be a commoner, or Everyman to Ibsen, human society is the cause of the malignant forces which prey on individual men. The Greek supernatural world has disappeared, as have the necessities imposed by divine law in the Elizabethan world view
21. The tragic hero is against society. He has individual moral responsibilities and must not bow to current ideals and moral codes. One of the central aspects of his though is the questioning of moral codes.
22. More modern writers of tragedy: Tennessee Williams—The Glass Menagerie Arthur Miller—The Crucible Each author mirrors contemporary society in realistic terms, not in the way society would like to be seen. These authors question contemporary social values. They also use the common man for a hero.
23. Modern American tragedy: contains elements of the Greek vision Hero= Everyman The adversaries of the modern hero are no longer the devil of the Medieval period or the gods of the ancient Greeks: We ourselves are the enemy.
24. Tragedy, no matter what the era: attempts to answer this question : Why is there evil in the world?
