What is Tragedy?

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What is Tragedy?
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Origins of Tragedy

• The Greek philosopher Aristotle first defined
  tragedy in his book Poetics written in about 330
  BCE

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Shakespearean Tragedy

• A Tragic Hero
• The Tragic Flaw-Hamartia
• Reversal of Fortune
• Anagnorisis
• Catharsis
• Restoration of Social Order Denouement

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The Tragic Hero

• The tragic hero is someone we, as an audience,
  look up tosomeone superior.
• A promising protagonist

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Tragic Flaw

• The hero is nearly perfect-
• The hero has one flaw or weakness
• We call this the tragic flaw, fatal flaw, or
  hamartia.

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Reversal of Fortune

• The fatal flaw brings the hero down from
  his/her elevated state.
• Renaissance audiences were familiar with the
  wheel of fortune or fickle fate.
• What goes up, must come down.

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anagnorisis

• Anagnorisis (recognition," "knowing again,"
  "knowing back," or "knowing throughout)
• A change from ignorance to awareness.
• Recognition scenes in tragedy are of some
  horrible event or secret, such as a true motive
  or acknowledgement of fault.
• A plot with tragic reversals and recognitions
  best arouses pity and fear.

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Catharsis

• Catharsis is the audiences purging of emotions
  through pity (for the characters tragedy) and
  fear (that it could happen to us or anyone).
• The spectator is purged as a result of watching
  the hero fall, and, hopefully, learns a vicarious
  lesson.

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• This is why we cry during movies!

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Restoration of Social Order

• Tragedies include a private and a public element
• The play cannot end until society is, once again,
  at peace.

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The End

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