Definition Of Tragedy Research Articles

Tragedy in Romanian Literature: Some Conceptual Delimitations

This article examines the presence and manifestation of tragedy as a literary genre in Romanian literature until the establishment of the communist regime. My analysis begins with an overview of the arguments that various critics, playwrights, and essayists have invoked in trying to explain the alleged absence of tragedy in Romanian culture and continues with a discussion about the errors and confusions inherent to such a position. Starting from these misconceptions, I propose a new definition of tragedy as a dramatic/theatrical genre and then employ that definition in identifying the most important tragedies in Romanian literature from the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The conclusion of my article, strongly contradicting the dominant idea in the history of Romanian drama studies, is that tragedy not only existed in Romanian literature, but that the genre represented a fundamental coordinate of the Romanian cultural tradition.

Tragic Workings in Sophocles’ Ajax: The Institution of the Warrior

Sophocles’ Ajax has been subject to intense scholarly debate. While widely admired, the tragedy has frustrated critics who have found its composition and character portrayal problematic. It is argued that this may be due to the limitations of the methods current in the “Humanities' Paradigm”. Instead, an approach based on the “Anthropological Paradigm” is proposed, viewing the drama within its social context of a communal celebration. The properties of these social events may give us a clue to understanding the nature of the genre. Instead of judging the protagonists as individuals, we should notice their status as a symbol, conveying an institutional value in society. Relying on Aristotle’s definition of tragedy, and his emphasis on the tragic reactions of “shock and horror” roused in the ancient audience, we may identify the “tragic workings” as the violation of a socially unquestionable value, in our drama the violation of the “Warrior institution”, which may give a more satisfying answer to the problems identified in Sophocles’ Ajax.

An Investigation of Tragedy Theory through Ingeborg Bachmann’s Play "The Good God of Manhattan"

Tragedyanın bir tiyatro biçimi olarak tespit edilişi Aristoteles’in Poetika’sıyla başlar, ancak trajedi teorisi Poetika’nın yazıldığı M.Ö. 4.yy’dan bugüne gelen süreçte büyük oranda değişmiş ve dönüşmüştür. Söz konusu dönüşüm, tragedyanın biçimsel özellikleri kadar trajik olanın kavramsal karşılığı ile de ilintilidir. Bu çalışmada, tragedyanın öz’sel nitelikleri ile bunların modern trajedi teorisindeki yeri, Ingeborg Bachmann’ın “Manhattan’ın İyi Tanrısı” adlı oyun metni üzerinden araştırılmıştır. Bunun için öncelikle, tragedyayı oluşturan temel öğeler, bu öğelerin kurgulanış biçimleri ve trajik olanın anlam bağlamı incelenmiştir. Ardından, trajedi teorisinin geçirdiği modernist evrim ve bunun sonucu olarak yaşanan anlam çoğullaşması mercek altına alınmıştır. Antik trajedi ile modern trajedi arasındaki belirgin farklılıkların bulgulanması ile trajik olanın trajedi teorisindeki karşılığının anlaşılmasına çalışılmıştır. Son olarak ise, Manhattan’ın İyi Tanrısı oyunu elde edilen bilgi ve bulgular doğrultusunda incelemeye alınmıştır. Böylelikle, metnin hem antik trajedi ile hem de modern trajedi ile ilintisi saptanabilmiştir. Metnin biçimsel öğeleri ile kavramsal katmanları trajedi teorisi üzerinden irdelenerek, oyunun tür bazındaki tespiti gerçekleştirilmiştir. Sonuç olarak; hem Manhattan’ın İyi Tanrısı oyununun trajedi teorisi içindeki yeri ve konumunu anlaşılır hale getirmek, hem de bir tiyatro biçimi olarak trajedinin belirleyici niteliklerini açığa çıkarmak amaçlanmıştır.

Aristotelesyen Tragedya Çerçevesinde David Mamet’in “Oleanna” Oyunun İncelenmesi

Oleanna, the controversial play by David Mamet, has generally been reviewed by the critics within the context of addressing the issues of sexual harassment, political correctness and academic education. Mamet’s plays have also been considered as a combination of absurd theatre and traditional realism. However, Mamet has dismissed all of these approaches and stated that Oleanna is an Aristotelian tragedy, depicting the unequal power relationship between a professor and his pupil against the institutional background of higher education. In this study, by pursuing this description of Mamet, Oleanna is reviewed based on the determining elements of the plot of Aristotelian tragedy. Within this context and as per Aristotle's definition of tragedy, the protagonist of the play, Professor John, and the plot are examined in terms of hubris, hamartia, peripeteia, anagnorisis and katharsis concepts; arguing the notion that John is a modern tragic hero and Oleanna is a modern Aristotelian tragedy.

Tragic Pleasure from Homer to Plato by Rana Saadi Liebert

Reviewed by: Tragic Pleasure from Homer to Plato by Rana Saadi Liebert Eirene Visvardi Rana Saadi Liebert. Tragic Pleasure from Homer to Plato. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. ix + 218 pp. Cloth, $99. Why is tragedy pleasurable? An answer to this long-standing paradox is still needed, Liebert posits in her introduction, especially because of the dominance of cognitivist solutions to it. Beginning with Aristotle, such solutions rely inordinately on the circumstances of representation (mimesis). Using the figure of Odysseus among the Phaeacians as a starting point, Liebert suggests that tragic pleasure does not require aesthetic distance, is compelling and potentially addictive, and has a disabling quality. To understand this appeal of painful emotions and their satisfactions, we should look to Plato’s Republic which offers what Liebert calls a “psychosomatic model of poetic engagement” (16). According to this model, it is a sub-rational human appetite for grief—the Platonic “hunger for tears”—which tragedy satisfies and which also poses ethical problems for aesthetic theorists. Liebert’s aim is twofold: to explicate the Platonic model after tracing its roots in the archaic poetic tradition; and to offer a new aesthetic theory. In the process, the capacious definition of “tragedy,” the elimination of the distinction between mimetic and real contexts of engaging with the tragic, and the somatic core of tragic pleasure will raise demanding questions for the readers of this book. The first chapter examines sweetness in archaic poetics. Passages well-known for attesting to poetry’s compelling yet often ambivalent power are analyzed to show the association of poetic pleasure with the sensations of taste, hunger, and sexual arousal. By establishing this somatic conception of poetic pleasure, the language of honey-like sweetness, Liebert argues, gives poetic experience the structure of an appetitive desire. Interestingly, Liebert does not deny the fundamental role of cognition in poetic creation and experience. Rather she argues that since it is cognitive processes that induce affective sensations, the body itself does not pose the usual restrictions of bodily experience. Because the absence of physiological restrictions “maximiz[es] the pleasures of the body with the power of the mind” (37), such sensations are all the more addictive. Poetic pleasure, in this reading, puts cognition in the service of an appetite for sweetness that profoundly affects the body but cannot be limited by it. Pindar, however, complicates the picture by introducing the very danger of poetic satiety (koros) and disgust. Through what Liebert calls “an apian poetic program,” Pindar points to cognitive means—poetic (“bee-like”) craftsmanship and poikilia—as the guard against satiety. Liebert elaborates extensively on the concrete (visual, artisanal) and abstract (varietal) meanings of poikilia, as the concept will be recast by Plato. Despite this Pindaric [End Page 167] shift, however, Liebert argues, the pleasures to be attained and sustained through poetry remain somatically conceived. It seems that so long as sweetness is the goal, the somatic core of poetic desire and pleasure remains unchallenged. Painful emotions as a source of pleasure are the focus of the second chapter. The Homeric Achilles provides insights to real emotions, while Gorgias illuminates the similarities between real life and the mimetic context. By looking at Achilles’ “attachment” to anger and grief and the terminology of consumption—how, for instance, the hero abstains from food to indulge in his painful emotions which in turn “feed” on him—Liebert suggests that emotions in the archaic period are conceived as psychosomatic addictions. As parasitical forces, they jeopardize the self because their satisfactions are physical while their limits are not. How are we to understand such addictive satisfactions? Pleasure stems from an intensity that offers the subject a heightened self-perception that would not be accessible outside the affective experience, that is, through reason. Such self-perception, however, does not constitute self-knowledge but “a narrowing as well as a sharpening of focus” (92–3), which can be self-destructive, as in Achilles’ case. We observe here the capaciousness of Liebert’s definition of tragedy. Not only a dramatic genre, tragedy is “an account that elicits grief and anguish” (9) and also refers to emotional experiences that are self-destructive and, therefore, “tragic.” The risk of...

Window into chaos

This is the first English translation of a remarkable two-part lecture given by Cornelius Castoriadis at the École des hautes etudes en sciences sociales in January 1992. The lecture features within a series on social transformation and the task of creative forms of labour. In this installment Castoriadis explores the significance of art through a creative reading of Aristotle's famous definition of tragedy in the Poetics. He rejects Aristotle's dependence on the mimetic tradition in search for a vision of art as the unveiling of the creative resources that lie within the human being. Yet he retains Aristotle's vivid depiction of art as a form of production that is at once cognitive, emotive and social. Art, for Castoriadis, affects a transformation on the level of imagination that opens us anew to the fundamental questions of human being and doing. Through his extensive knowledge of western forms of artistic production Castoriadis draws lucid connections between Aristotle, Shakespeare, Kant, Hegel, Greek sculpture, renaissance painting, modern literature and folk music to explore the work of art as a ‘window into chaos’, a creative production that gives form to what cannot be formed: the ground of creativity at the heart of the imagination.

Tragedy in Ian McEwan’s The Children Act

This essay reads Ian McEwan’s Children Act (2014) as a literary tragedy that is in dialogue with the classical form and the philosophical discourse that surrounds it. Of particular relevance is George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s definition of tragedy as a collision between two valid but limited articulations of justice. The essay argues that McEwan’s contemporary tragedy enacts such a collision by intensifying the polarization between two competing systems of values: modern reason and religious faith. The novel depicts a complex entanglement between the two paradigms while exploring the limitations of modern reason and its unresolved tensions with faith. Moreover, in highlighting where the clash between reason and faith turns destructive, McEwan also implicitly points to other possibilities, to paths not taken. The Children Act indicates that conflict turns to tragedy when the two sides attempt to disentangle from what seems like threatening “otherness.” Throughout there are hints that if the adversaries could instead endorse their essential interlinkage, could admit to the irresolvable contradictions of each position, then the tragic denouement could be avoided. The novel thus calls for a more holistic response to cultural conflicts while inviting readers to reflect on the contradictions and repressions of modern reason.

Ipotesi sulla catarsi nella Poetica e nella Politica di Aristotele

In Aristotle’s Politics VIII 7, 1341b 38–40, there is a reference to some books peri poietikes in which katharsis will be explained more clearly. The future tense of the verb is important and may be the sign of the aristotelian origin of the reference; it would prove in an indisputable way that, when writing Pol. VII – VIII , Aristotle thought of a Poetics as the obvious sequel for the discussion about educational problems. So, the logical connection of the argument in Politics and Poetics is in agreement with (and is confirmed by) the famous definition of tragedy in Poet . 6, 1449b 24–28: here Aristotle says that the various items of the definition must be obtained from “the things already said”, but the reference is not fully satisfied by Poetics 1–5: in these chapters no mention is made of katharsis , pity and fear. For these items the reference is satisfied only by the text of Politics VIII 7, and the two references, Pol. VIII 7 to a Poetics, Poet. 6 (by implication) to Pol. VIII 7, agree about the sequel of the books and strengthen each other. But the topics of katharsis and education never are fully clarified, neither in the Politics , nor in the Poetics .

“Death Drive, Martyrdom, and Deathbed Scenes. The Narration of Death in Harriet Wilson’s Autobiographical Novel”

This paper examines the autothanatographical occasion(s) in Harriet Wilson’s autobiographical novel. Published without anyone noticing in 1859 and resuscitated in 1981, Our Nig; or, Sketches in the Life of a Free Black, North first appears as a commercial failure but most importantly as a voice coming from the vault. From a narratological point of view, the plot hinges on characters’ deathbed scenes and premature deaths or death wishes, culminating in a performance of death. In light of Aristotle’s definition of tragedy, this article proposes to read Our Nig as a profound meditation on death, race and God. Wilson as an autothanatographer, genuinely enacts her own death through her writing project. Against all odds, her project will go beyond its object in an ultimate “death-defying act” (Thomas Couser).

The Tragedy in the Story of Rostam and Sohrab in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh

Tragedy is a stunning example of confrontation between man and nature along with sadness and consequently fate and life. In tragedy, usually one person (hero) is in the center of the story and all of the stories come together to make the inevitable fate happen for that hero. This inevitable fate is usually along with death or a tragic end which occurs for the hero. The purpose of poet in tragedy is illustration of an advice for readers after death of the hero. In this article, we have tried to review various aspects of tragic story of Rostam and Sohrab and the way the Master of Tous makes his audience and fans aware of passage of time and the eternal destiny using analytical descriptive method. Undoubtedly, what the ancient Greeks, especially Aristotle have proposed as a definition for tragedy as, is in some cases different from Ferdowsi's view but there is a close consistency between the nature of tragedy and the base of tragedy of Rostam and Sohrab and definition of tragedy.

Psychagogy and quantum theory as conceptualizations for serious entertainment and its narrative

We refer to serious entertainment using the hellenic term psychagogy which literally means ‘education of the soul’. Based on Aristotle’s definition of tragedy we define psychagogy as the enactment in a complete form of events that are inherently significant and their consequences are perceived in a deep and profound way. We then turn our attention to narration as one of the main forms of psychagogy. In order to capture subjective elements in the structure and dynamics of narratives we use concepts from quantum theory. We describe how the notions of superposition, entanglement, interference and measurement can be applied to represent beliefs, decisions and actions of the protagonists in a computational narrative event and pinpoint potential synergies between these two fields. We apply these ideas to alternative kinds of narratives such as aristotelic or metaleptic forms exploring issues related to plot interactivity and provide examples for each one of them. Finally, we describe the implementation of these ideas in a novel special-purpose language called QuNL for embedding quantum computational concepts in digital narratives.

Dance and Drama in Aristotle'sDramatics(akaPoetics): New Principles from an Ancient Treatise

In previous publications I demonstrated that dance and music are essential conditions in the definition of tragedy for Aristotle. This opens the door for a re-examination of the place of theatrical dance in the work usually considered to be the most influential treatise on drama in Western culture. Here I begin to explore how the principles of dance criticism might therefore now be developed, and I also discuss whether Aristotle modifies Plato's own critical principles pertaining to choral art (including dance) fromLawsII.

The Open Wounds of Being:

Abstract The poet Patricia Jabbeh Wesley acknowledged in an interview that her primary goal in poetry is to immortalize the suffering of her people. What exactly does she mean by that? What are the implications of remembering suffering, of keeping sorrows alive, especially in narratives? This article explores these questions in light of Primo Levi's envisaged moral obligation to bear testimony to the victims of the Jewish holocaust, as well as Giorgio Agamben's thoughts on that episode. I argue that ethics is central to Jabbeh Wesley's poetics. The poet has a calling: the moral responsibility to bear testimony to the dead and the dispossessed. I will discuss Jabbeh Wesley's poems as both a tribute to the dead and as an appeal to the living to change their lives. To situate my discussions of Jabbeh Wesley and Levi, I will revisit the ethical implications of Aristotle's definition of tragedy.

Herodotus and the Vulnerability Ethic in Ancient Greece

Herodotus was a narrative pioneer, and his literary trek begins with the story of Croesus. More legend than history, the Croesus Logos, as it’s sometimes called in the literature, draws the reader in with its concentrated drama of family ambition, riddling oracles, prophetic irony, and the fated tumble of its hero. The aim of my essay is to explore some important dimensions of this story that have been overlooked in Herodotean scholarship and in prevailing accounts of Greek ethical thought. First, the story of Croesus gives shape and dramatic form to an ethic of vulnerability occupying an important place in Greek thought. A chief point of reference in this consideration of the vulnerability ethic will be, in a rather full discussion, Aristotle’s own reaction to the Croesus story in the Nichomachean Ethics. Aristotle’s complex, perhaps inconsistent, discussion of a core maxim from the story reveals a real ambivalence about its ethical message. Since this message from the Croesus story has much in common with the message of tragedy, Aristotle’s ambivalence also has relevance for his famous definition of tragedy in the Poetics, and in general expresses more resistance towards the message of tragic vulnerability than Martha Nussbaum allows in her portrayal of an Aristotle who recognizes the fragility of goodness. There is also an important dimension to Solon’s (or rather Herodotus’) vulnerability ethic that Aristotle does not consider, since it lies outside the scope of the ethical life as he conceives it. Lastly, I will argue that Homer’s Odyssey presents an earlier version of a vulnerability ethic similar to that in

Who Is Not Sylvia?

Edward Albee’s tri-titled play the Goat, or, Who Is Sylvia? (Notes toward a Definition of Tragedy), winner of the 2002 Tony Award for Best Play, is a theatrical gem packed with the birthday motif, the theme of arrival (in this case represented by a denouncing letter), the challenging of the great ‘old times” motif with their great “old promises of happiness and fulfilment.” In this play the author questions the “old” fundamentals of civilization, according to which people could coexist with one another, provided they knew how to masterfully hide their ugly deeds. In return, although in a very shocking manner, the American playwright recommends we start reconsidering or rewriting the way we conceive of our lives so that it may be more flexible to our inflexible human nature. Therefore, Sylvia is everybody’s goat, a metaphorical gate which our wildest desires may penetrate, potentially dissolving, or at least diminishing, the ravaging effects of our gregarious, unhealthy regimented selves.

Grasping the “Raw I”: Race and Tragedy in Philip Roth’s <i>The Human Stain</i>

Philip Roth’s novel The Human Stain recounts an instance of racial passing: its protagonist, Coleman Silk, is African-American but light-skinned enough to pass as white. Coleman’s decision to pass and his subsequent violent death, I argue, confront us with complex ethical questions regarding unjust social roles, loyalty, and moral luck. I also argue, building on Hegel’s definition of tragedy, that The Human Stain is a particularly modern tragedy. The novel highlights conflicting role obligations, inadequate conceptions of freedom, and the tensions of cultural paradigm shifts—all characteristics typical of modern tragedy. I claim that parsing The Human Stain as a tragedy deepens our understanding of the novel as well as drawing our attention to its philosophical significance.

Tragedy and Timon of Athens

One of the most vexed terms in literary criticism is tragedy. As critics we often denounce the popular use of the term when the death of the family pet is called a terrible yet we would be hard put to give a precise explanation of a more exact sense that would cover all the uses in our critical writing. The model of Greek tragedy, the ideas in Aristotle's treatise, the examples of Early Modern English and seventeenth-century French plays, the theories of Hegel and Nietzsche, and countless modern texts and critical analyses: all these come together to offer a wide span of mutually contradictory senses. Is tragedy a subgenre of drama, defined by a set of formal elements? Is it a vision of the world that is represented in different genres? Does it entail a philosophical or theological stance? Is it dependent on a specific set of social conditions? Has it died, or is it always with us? Is the term neutrally descriptive or honorific, so that to be a tragedy is to be great literature? One might well argue that there is no essential definition of the term, that a critic's only task is to make clear what he or she means when using it and then to adhere to that definition. There is much to be said for that view, but there are perils in a laissez-faire approach to terminology. First, it is easy for both reader and writer to slide between different senses, generating confusion and false arguments. Thus, because a play incorporates a set of formal criteria that constitute tragedy, it may be assumed to embody a distinctive tragic vision. Second, some definitions of tragedy incorporate dubious assumptions: since Christian tragedy is defined (by some) as impossible, no play written by a presumed Christian can be a tragedy. Third, finding one's way among writings with a wide spread of contradictory meanings of tragedy is confusing; broad agreement on the general sense of key terms is important for a critical conversation to ensue. I should like to offer some principles for regulating the free market in definitions of tragedy, not quite a definition proposal for one preferred sense, since I believe in the value of critics' experimenting with the term, but some guides that should help to clarify the conversation. I shall use Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, that most problematic of plays, as a test of the principles offered. It is a play that pushes the limits of tragedy, that may even have got into the section of the First Folio as an afterthought, (1) and that has inspired much controversy about its generic location. (2) In what ways is it sensible and useful to talk about Timon as a tragedy? My governing assumption is that the most valuable function of the generic term tragedy is clarification of the individual play, not the other way around. Timon offers a good test of how the principles I offer can make the idea of tragedy helpful in understanding a difficult play. Perhaps the main peril in critical ideas of tragedy is what might be called generic enthusiasm. Because many great works of literature from Aeschylus to Racine and beyond are tragedies, the genre itself is often sanctified: to be a tragedy is to earn a place in the pantheon, and not to be a tragedy is to fail of deification. Tragedy and epic are especially subject to this attitude, unlike the sonnet, for example. No one thinks that writing a sonnet is equivalent to writing a great poem. At most doing so demonstrates a certain technical competence. But in the same way, if one's definition of tragedy is formal, there seems to be no justification for making it also honorific: there can be and are many bad, boring, and insipid tragedies. Judgments of quality do not follow necessarily from the fact that a text matches a set of formal criteria. Rather it is tragedy defined as a distinctive vision that is the usual source of the honorific weight: tragedy is great because it asserts the truth of a profound view of the world or portrays the world as embodying that truth. …

Tragedy after Nietzsche: rapturous superabundance

In Tragedy after Nietzsche, Paul Gordon sets out to rescue the notion of tragedy for the modern world: a world that has lived through the Holocaust and the death of God. In settings as far-reaching as Kant, Yeats, Freud, and the American blues, Gordon argues for the continued importance of tragedy as a genre of superabundance. In defining rapturous superabundance, Gordon explicates the tension between Apollonian principles of preservation and orderly boundaries, exemplified in Aristotle's theory of tragedy, and an ecstatic Dionysian energy - essentially a manifestation of will - that ruptures boundaries. Aristotle denied this disruptive element by focusing on tragedy as a rational framework for redefining moral boundaries. seized on it as the core of his theory of tragedy. Gordon expands on Nietzsche's definition of tragedy as the rapturous confrontation between the human and those forces that exceed it. Tapping Freud's theories about repressing forbidden desire, Gordon follows in identifying the Dionysian/Apollonian tension as the creative source of tragedy - indeed, of all great art - and also the source of the audience's pleasure at witnessing tragedy's spectacles of destruction and despair. In this context, tragic rapture becomes the pleasure beyond boundaries, and superabundance is established as a general aesthetic principle. Gordon applies Nietzsche's theory of tragedy to a variety of works that raise the question of tragic rapture in compelling ways. Why do we experience pleasure in identifying with the sadness of a blues singer? Should the Holocaust be considered tragedy? By understanding tragedy as a rapturous confrontation with the abyss of meaninglessness, Tragedy after Nietzsche affirms the eternal rebirth of a tragic spirit that unites passion and beauty with destruction.

Tel arbre, tel fruit: the Tristan as 'tragodía'

It would seem that at the very core of tragedy one finds the fatal twins of death and resurrection. We suggest that any definition of tragedy that does not take this 'sine qua non' into account is missing the mark. And that includes Aristotle's definition which, like others after him, tends to describe the outer trappings of tragedy, although the purgation of pity and fear implies a type of metaphorical death out of which the spectator arises anew.The concerns, albeit legitimate, with 'peripetia', 'anagnorisis', and 'hamartia' really do not go to the heart of the matter, it seems to us.

Tel arbre, tel fruit: the Tristan as 'tragodía'

It would seem that at the very core of tragedy one finds the fatal twins of death and resurrection. We suggest that any definition of tragedy that does not take this 'sine qua non' into account is missing the mark. And that includes Aristotle's definition which, like others after him, tends to describe the outer trappings of tragedy, although the purgation of pity and fear implies a type of metaphorical death out of which the spectator arises anew.The concerns, albeit legitimate, with 'peripetia', 'anagnorisis', and 'hamartia' really do not go to the heart of the matter, it seems to us.