Modern Tragedy Research Articles

THE ROLE OF THE ARTS IN THE FORMATION OF LANDSCAPE PLANNING ORGANIZATION OF ARCHITECTURAL SPACE RURAL SETTLEMENTS OF UKRAINE

A historical and cultural descriptive overview of the artistic experience and landscape planning organization of organizing the architectural space of rural settlements of Ukraine with an emphasis on the current stage of development is presented. It is emphasized that the academic discourse is dominated by studies devoted to the study of this issue for urban space. While rural settlements in the corpus of auk studies are presented much more modestly, which once again actualizes the chosen topic. After all, the rural settlements of Ukraine, despite the urbanization processes, remain an important component of the architectural space of Ukraine, and also manifest long-standing artistic folk traditions that give rural landscapes a unique and unique architectural face and create a harmonious combination of the natural environment and anthropogenic influence. The importance of preserving the traditions of the landscape and planning organization of the architectural space of the village, taking into account the long-standing traditions of construction and the artistic expression of aesthetic preferences and worldview beliefs formed in Ukrainian culture, is emphasized. Historical and cultural heritage, its preservation and popularization, is one of the strategic tasks of the state and an example of Ukraine's European integration aspirations. Careful nurturing of one's own traditions, including artistic, landscape planning, and architectural ones, is a demonstration of the maturity of society and awareness of the importance of cultural identity. The village itself, despite the Soviet policy of standardization and unification, was able to preserve unique artistic traditions that complement the socio-humanitarian space and emphasize the regional and local features of one or another settlement. Research attention is focused on such examples as wells, which are an important part of rural communication and village landmarks. The importance of plastic arts in the architectural space of the village is also emphasized. With the help of sculpture, historical memory, commemoration is formed, and society gathers around significant and symbolic events, symbols and meanings for the community. In the conditions of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the problem of destroyed villages became particularly acute, because it is necessary not only to restore the housing stock, socially significant objects, establish communications and restore the infrastructure, but also to preserve the history of the village, its socio-cultural accents. That is, the role of art in these processes is extremely important. Artistic means can embody both the historical and cultural aspects of the development of the village, as well as immortalize the modern tragedy of the war.

Geschlechterpoetik

Abstract ‚Geschlechterpoetik‘ as a methodological approach examines the mutual interferences between gender and genre in classicist drama around 1700. It outlines in which way the development of literary genres, especially tragedies, can be described in relation to historically variable and culture-specific gender performativity in dramatic texts. Obviously classicist drama of the early Enlightenment gradually transforms the virile ethics of the ‚Staats- and Heldentragödie‘ established by ancient poetics into a ‚zivile Tragödie‘. The ‚zivile Tragödie‘ is constituted by moral values that can be considered as genuinely human and universal. In the context of 18th-century moral philosophy, the rising influence of empiricism and the polarisation of gender roles morality is increasingly associated with ideals of womanhood. The gender-based transformation of early modern tragedy can be exemplified in selected texts of Johann Christoph Gottsched, Luise Gottsched and Johann Elias Schlegel which visualize the described transformation of ancient heroic tragedy into a so-called ‚zivile Tragödie‘ by using and gradually naturalizing female allegories for pitiful female protagonists who ideally incorporate genuine human ethics.

Fatih Akin’s Modern Tragedy of Deprivation: Aus Dem Nichts (In The Fade)

Fatih Akin's cinema takes a clear political stance on the experience of being the other, especially since the director himself, as an immigrant, has experienced it first-hand. Aus Dem Nichts (In The Fade), which is the subject of this article, stands out as a production with a sober discourse on the view of the other. The film's story draws heavily on real events and opens up Germany's long criminal file on xenophobia for discussion. However, Akin also emphasizes that xenophobia is fundamentally about the absence of empathy. In other words, the director goes beyond making a stereotypical movie by considering this absence as not only political but also anthropological. Violence against foreigners, far from being a political choice, is about an indifference to the presence of another, and is much more widespread than we realize. In this article, Aus Dem Nichts is analyzed in the context of mise-en-scene criticism. A philosophical deconstruction of the film's narrative and style reveals that Akin has successfully presented a modern tragedy of deprivation.

현대 비극의 ‘사라지는 하마르티아’와 ‘투쟁의 운명’

This paper analyzes the specific characteristics of classical tragedies and the essence of tragedy in modern drama, mainly focusing on John Millington Synge’s Riders to the Sea. Arthur Miller defined the possibility of modern tragedy as the tragic experience of the common man in relationship to the environment. However, in the modern era, the environment is often represented or segmented by capitalism, leading to the misconception that modern tragedy may be succinctly defined by the struggles of ordinary people facing continuous situational hardships in pursuit of their dreams. In contrast, Synge’s tragic drama Riders to the Sea (first performed in 1904), which this paper observes, is grounded in an isolated natural setting while still remaining connected with the realm of the divine or the universe. Focusing on the phase of vanishing hamartia, the escape from guilt of the subjects, and the expansion of the concept of necessity from outer to their inner sphere, this paper argues how classic tragic essence is also manifested in modern plays, provoking profound thoughts among the audience and elevating their souls through elegant suffering and intellectual clarification in its own way. In its characteristic of stillness, where the conclusion is drawn out over an entire lifetime of struggle and disguised to obscure emotional suffering beneath a veneer of pessimism or idealism, the modern tragic drama establishes its own tragic genre with catharsis and magnitude. This contributes to a deeper level of meaningful understanding in the lives of all ordinary people in the contemporary world.

Bombast Circumstance: Linguistic Creativity and Aesthetic Judgment in Early Modern Tragedy

Bombast Circumstance: Linguistic Creativity and Aesthetic Judgment in Early Modern Tragedy

아서 밀러 극의 인물, 주제, 문체에 나타난 유대인 특성

This study aims to identify Jewish characteristics in Arthur Miller's eight major plays, focusing on their characters, themes, and writing styles. As a Jewish American immigrant, Miller has been praised for portraying the American ego or culture. Until now, criticism of Miller's plays has taken his imperfect American self for granted as the standard of universality. Critics analyzed only the form and content revealed on the surface of the plays, which have become ambiguous due to the author's double identities. Miller presents a typical American middle-class character on the surface of his works but, in deep structure, projects the collective Jewish ideology and prophetic discourses oriented toward the Old Testament. This study redefines the propositions of 'Modern Tragedy,' 'Common Man,' and 'Whole Social Drama' that Miller claimed to emphasize the universality of his works. The analysis of Miller's plays' characters, themes, and writing styles reveals that he reflects his Jewish identity more strongly than his American ego.

Once Upon a Time in Iraq: History of a Modern Tragedy, James Bluemel and Renad Mansour (2021)

Review of: Once Upon a Time in Iraq: History of a Modern Tragedy, James Bluemel and Renad Mansour (2021) London: BBC Books, 390 pp., ISBN 978-1-78594-457-4, p/bk, £12.99

Исповедь белого дрозда. Эстетические взгляды Альфреда де Мюссе и его поэтика

The article reconstructs the aesthetics of Alfred de Musset, a thinker and artist of late romanticism, who revised the aesthetic views of the early romanticists, as well as their modern successors, and thus made a significant contribution to the self-reflection of French romanticism. He saw the prospects for the evolution of romanticism in the development not of the medieval, but of the national French classicist tradition with its clarity of style, purity of language, enriched with the sensitivity and melancholy inherent in the romantic mood. Unlike his romantic predecessors, Musset preferred tragedy over drama, reflected on the rules for constructing classical and modern tragedies, advocated the revival of the principles of the Aristotelian Poetics and the reformation of the French theatre on this basis. In the centre of his aesthetic interests were the problems of the beautiful, the sublime, the tragic, the comic, artistic creativity, inspiration, taste, and the relationship between art and life. The article traces the evolution of Musset’s poetics in his drama, prose, and poetry. It is concluded that the ironic distancing from the heritage of both the initiators of romanticism and its current state contrasts paradoxically with the literary work of Musset, imbued with many of the moods that he criticized as a theorist, rejecting some of the conventions of the romantic school and making a significant contribution to the renewal of the aesthetics and poetics of romanticism. In his work, he stood apart, went his own way, often against the current, trying to give the verbal expression of romantic moods purity, transparency, rigor and structure of classical French literature. Musset’s best poetry cycles are distinguished by refined symbolism and deep metaphysical reflections that give the poet’s innermost experiences a generalized philosophical meaning.

CYBERDESPAIR: A Screenplay Raising Awareness of Social Media Addiction

This thesis is created with the purpose to raise awareness in social media addiction and how it affects the people we are close with. Social media is commonly used by everyone in this modern era, but not a lot of users are aware of the danger and risk it can bring to us and social media addiction is an unhealthy reliance on online platforms. By using Erik Erikson’s psychological development theory, this thesis will explore the reasons, causes and effects on why an individual is addicted to social media. It will emphasize using the fourth, fifth, sixth as well as the final stage of Erikson’s psychological development stages to support the story building. Using modern tragedy as its genre, this thesis will show the story of Nathan and Sydney's social media addiction and how eventually the two characters end up crossing paths in the real world.

“Jake Leg” and a Modern Tragedy of the Marketplace

Well-intentioned but ultimately misguided actions over recent decades have contributed to today’s opioid epidemic. Pain was promoted as the “fifth vital sign” as pharmaceutical manufacturers encouraged more liberal prescriptions of new and supposedly safer formulations. When addiction issues became apparent, the pendulum swung toward restricting prescriptions, constraining “street” supply of pharmaceutical opioids. The unintended consequence was creation of new and highly efficient drug distribution pipelines with synthetic opioids to fill market demand. The result has been an epidemic of opioid fatalities, which worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article draws parallels between the current opioid epidemic and a previous tragedy of the marketplace created by Prohibition in the 1920s.

Reading O’Neill Creatively: Perspectives and Offerings

Reading O’Neill Creatively: Perspectives and Offerings

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.

A Comparative Analysis of Classical, Shakespearean and Modern Tragedies

Tragic drama since the Classical Greece has had some distinct changes in the course of its development. Since the time of Sophocles, tragedy has been shaped by different theatrical conventions and philosophies. It has experienced different kinds of change under various kinds of situations, pressures etc., which obviously came from the changing world about it. Each period sees the development of a special orientation and emphasis, a characteristic style of theatre. The framework of this paper falls on its search to draw a comparative analysis of the Classical, Renaissance and Modern tragedies. The tragic conception from the time of the Greeks to the present has undergone a metamorphosis in definitions and experience This paper therefore highlights the fundamental similarities and differences between the tragedies of the Classical, the Renaissance and the Modern ages. It discusses the overall significance of changes in convention which tragedy like every other genre has undergone from the ancient period. The paper concludes that it is obvious from the consideration of the three great periods of tragedy that no theatrical period ever repeats itself as there are differences among them as there must be since the theatre of any given period reflects the world in which it exists.

The Great Man Theory of History and the Paleolithic Curse of Humankind

Abstract This study is motivated by the plea of a renowned philosopher who urged humankind to break the habit of reverencing and submitting to seemingly great human beings, whose great mistakes issue in tragic historical events that threaten the survival of civilization. Conceiving World War Two as a modern tragedy, and using instructive elements of this era to identify an enraptured nation’s worship of a seemingly great leader, the author sources evolutionary biology to evidence the thesis that hereditary human nature, now conceived as a maladaptive Paleolithic Curse, is the origin of humankind’s emotional instability, ruinous aggression, enduring worship of fallible alphas, divisive tribalism, and mastery of artful deceptions. While challenging the facile claim of epigenetic science that education will produce a worldwide enlightenment enabling humankind to defeat the Paleolithic Curse, the forced choice of retrofitting the human genotype by advocates of volitional selection underlies this analysis of humankind’s lesser greatness.

The Concept and Characteristics of Classical, Renaissance and Modern Tragedies

Greek tragedy developed from rituals associated with the god Dionysus and remained religiously oriented throughout history. The tragedies were therefore, dramatic recreations of myths about conflict between generations as represented by gods and heroes. The characters of tragedy wore their mythical and legendary origins- except when Euripides stripped them of their glory and they retained the stature of historical figures from the heroic age. Thus, the tragic ideas of the playwrights include a conception of tragedy based on the religious views of the time period. Renaissance brought a secularization of the arts, literature and theatre. There was absolutely no connection between theatre and religion. It also brought the individualization of the human being as distinct from society in general. In Renaissance tragedy therefore, the entire emphasis is laid upon human action independent of destiny and the responsibility of the individual in bringing about his ruin. In keeping with Renaissance emphasis upon the infinite capacities of the individual, the Elizabethan tragedies particularly Shakespeare’s explore the limits of man’s action in this universe. Modern implies more than that which is current. It suggests a disinterest in the past and in the values and forms of that past. With the emergence of Ibsen in the late Nineteenth Century came the concept of middle class tragedy growing out of social problems and issues. The little man has gradually taken the place that the illustrious man presided over for many centuries. This paper examines the relationship between the concept and the characteristics of tragedy in the classical, Renaissance and the modern periods. The historical research methodology is employed to dissect the diversity of the tragic conception and characteristics of tragedy in the periods under study. It is established that the tragic conception and characteristics from the time of the Greeks to the present has undergone a metamorphosis in definitions and experience.

„Only the Past When You Were Happy Is Real”: Feminine and Masculine Mourning in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night

"The present article conveys a psychoanalytic Freudian and Lacanian examination of the feminine and masculine mourning in Eugene O’Neill’s 1940 modern tragedy Long Day’s Journey into Night. I will show that the work of mourning in this play is both feminine and masculine, but with a particular emphasis on the feminine mourning and, secondly, on the autobiographical aspect of the Tyrone/ O’Neill family. Whereas for the feminine character Mary Tyrone the darkness of her psyche appears within the sickness of the body and her mourning is repeated in a history of histerisation, Edmund Tyrone, the playwright’s alter ego and a seagull figure in the modern theatre, longs for death and he mourns nothing else but his own self."

The Justice's Absence in Modern World: Galsworthy's Depiction in Justice

Justice is like a machine that rolls on itself when someone has once given it the starting. In the discussion of justice, the term social problem has been used many times in modern social tragedy, known as problem plays for their concerns with social problems. These plays reveal the awful forces of society against a man that caused his suffering and death. They overemphasize the social dilemma and social consequences. The absence of justice leads to the failure of the legal system that gives severe punishments to the poor without taking into consideration the circumstances behind their crimes. The unfair practices of the judicial system never punish the upper class for their crimes in time and put wretched poor people in prison for committing unimportant or trivial acts. In the modern world, a man, especially the poor, is crushed under the wheel of justice. The hypocrisy, intolerance, ignorance, tyranny, and the false values of the world heap injustice on man and make him find peace only in death. Man is inherently good, but the social institutions have often victimized him and hindered his subsistence and development. The absence of justice is the main reason that causes all man's depression, out of which is born disappointment, disillusionment, and death.

Batman as Modern Revenge Tragedy: The Shakespearean Dark Knight

Batman as Modern Revenge Tragedy: The Shakespearean Dark Knight Both Bob Kane’s Batman and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, lose parents, dress in black, put on antic dispositions, and go on personally motivated, violent missions for justice and revenge. The characters enter what seems to be an infinite mourning, where their innately flawed visions of obtaining justice are paired with unstoppable determinations. With my presentation, I intend on using video to demonstrate the historical trends of the revenge tragedy genre, and analyze their potential connection to the comic book medium, especially Batman. Using video, I can explore “adaptation” and all its nuances by implementing costume and visuals that mirror both the bard and the bat. Comics like The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and feature films like Batman V Superman, The Dark Knight Trilogy, and other Batman films act, in my view, as modern revenge tragedies; perhaps “Batman” becoming the entity that it is today has something to do with a legendary play, Hamlet, or at the very least, the legendary renaissance drama theatrics that might be hidden within it. Additionally, in light of Coen’s latest film, The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021), and Reeves’s The Batman (2022) release around the corner, themes of darkness, “dark knights,” and revenge continue to rivet contemporary consumers of the theatric and the cinematic.

Love Notes and Sonnets in Early Modern Tragedy

ABSTRACT This essay engages a previously underexplored motif in a handful of early modern and Shakespearean tragedies that, other than the Inns of Court play, Tancred and Gismund (1567), are fairly well studied. It explores the conjunction of secretly exchanged verses (often sonnets, or almost) and material love tokens in Shakespeare's love tragedies Romeo and Juliet and Troilus and Cressida after first observing the trope in the more familiar Seneca-influenced tragedies, The Spanish Tragedy and Hamlet. In each instance the sonnet fails to find completion and the token is lost, misplaced, or re-gifted signalling that the love of the play cannot be perfected or sustained. This exchange, and loss of physical love token conjoined or connected to failed or incomplete text acts in concert with the failed love that is the essence of love tragedy in the period.

Shakespeare’s Art of Entanglement: The Tempest’s Tragicomic Dramaturgy of Knotting and Untying

ABSTRACT This article proposes that via its dense knot imagery and actions of (un)tying knots on stage, The Tempest offers metadramaturgic commentary on the playwright's task of (dis)entanglement, the skill of creating and resolving a complex dramatic action. Early modern tragedy and comedy theory derived from Aristotle's Poetics helps to understand how Prospero's magically devised play, to a degree congruous with The Tempest itself, in its tragicomic mode creates and partly unties an exquisitely tied knot. Rather than pursuing a purely formalist concern, my new formalist reading of The Tempest examines how the knot as an image-cluster itself ties together various early modern concerns, such as the knot knowledge of seafaring, the Tudor and Stuart predilection for knot gardens, bondage in the contexts of colonialism and European courts, mutual binding in the imagery of romance and marriage, and the practice of delivery as an untying of the child and its sublimation in discourses of science and magic.