Drama as a literary genre is meant to be enacted on stage by actors before an audience. Tracing back the genesis of western dramatic activity, one could plausibly argue that it had originated in the religious cults of the then Greek society. Spectacles and all forms of performance were introduced in many Greek cities, especially the city of Athens. Thus, the theatre of ancient Greece evolved out of religious rites, often to the accompaniment of uninhibited ritualized dancing and song. Musical performance and recitations formed an integral part to the religious festivals. Drama thus became a vehicle of religious expression. These festivals primarily honoured Dionysus, the god of wine and revelry. As the festivals associated with religious
Thus, one’s emotional situation is better off after proper exercise and tragedy felicitates in achieving the proper balance. This careful delineation of tragedy by Aristotle is followed by his enumeration of the six vital elements of tragedy: plot, character, thought, language, music and spectacle. In Aristotelian conception of tragedy, plot is considered to be the most vital element of tragedy, considering its wholeness (it should have a beginning, middle and an end); its unity and its materials (suffering, discovery, reversal of fortune) and its form (complication, climax ultimately leading to denouement [Fr.] meaning ‘unraveling’. The character of a tragedy, as Aristotle points out, passes from good fortune to suffering through some great tragic error
In all his plays, Aeschylus tended to depict a solitary hero pitted against cosmic forces that are beyond his control. Further, his plays are characterized by simple but powerful plots and lofty dictions. The root of evil and suffering in Aeschylian play springs out of human arrogance and this is dramatized in the familial space torn apart by patricide and matricide. His plays that have survived are The Suppliants, The Persians, The Seven against Thebes, Prometheus and the crowning Orestia trilogy (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides). In contrast, the tragedy of the heroes of Sophocles’ plays typically erupts from the decisions made and actions taken based on imperfect knowledge and conflicting claims. Although the role of the chorus remained important it was not central to Sophoclean scheme of tragic conception. Conversely, the individual characters in Sophocles’ tended to be more complex and, unlike the chorus in Aeschylus’s plays, control the rhythm of the plays. His Oedipus Rex is recognized by many as the finest tragedies ever written. For Aristotle, the play is a quintessential example of tragedy. Antigone dramatizes the conflict between the meaning and the limits of a citizen’s duty to law and authority and Antigone’s undying love for his brother. His
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.
All true Greek tragedies were written using the same basic set of characteristics. One such characteristic was that all the characters were of nobility. This was to ensure that their fall from grace would be greater to those watching the play in action. Another characteristic of all Greek tragedies is that they were written in poetic form, as this was the style of writing at the time. There were also always almost constant references to the gods and to matters of fate. And it was the ever-present chorus who made a great deal of these references. One of the most important characteristics of the Greek tragedy was that the hero of the play always had a fatal flaw which proved not only to be their downfall but the cause of destruction of all those around them. Sophocles play “Antigone” is a wonderful example of the Greek tragedy because it encompasses all these characteristics.
The great Sophoclean play, Oedipus Rex is an amazing play, and one of the first of its time to accurately portray the common tragic hero. Written in the time of ancient Greece, Sophocles perfected the use of character flaws in Greek drama with Oedipus Rex. Using Oedipus as his tragic hero, Sophocles’ plays forced the audience to experience a catharsis of emotions. Sophocles showed the play-watchers Oedipus’s life in the beginning as a “privileged, exalted [person] who [earned his] high repute and status by…intelligence.” Then, the great playwright reached in and violently pulled out the audience’s most sorrowful emotions, pity and fear, in showing Oedipus’s “crushing fall” from greatness.
...ods come for the free drugs that he offers. Johnny is a man for whom we feel pride, shame and pity all at once but such a contradictory character would be unstable and unpredictable. Aristotle defines tragedy according to seven characteristics. These are that it is characterized by mimicry, it is serious, it expresses a full story of a relevant length, it contains rhythm and harmony, the rhythm and harmony occur in different combinations in different parts of the tragedy, it is performed not narrated and that it provokes feelings of pity and fear then purges these feelings through catharsis the purging of the emotions and emotional tensions. The composition of a tragedy consists of six segments. In order of relevance, these are plot, character, thought, diction, melody, and performance. For a comedy the ending must be merry. Instead Jerusalem ends in death.
A Greek drama is a series of actions within a literary presentation in which the chief character has a disastrous fate. Many Greek dramas fall under the 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. The grand debate over which character can hold the title of the tragic hero has been discussed in the literary world for ages.
Oedipus' character is labyrinthine in the sense that it raises controversies; many readers and critics might look at Oedipus as a hero who is doomed to his tragic end by misfortune and fate rather than by his tragic flaws. At first blush, this looks like a drawback that is enough to render the play inappropriate for an original model of the theory of tragedy. However, as a matter of fact Sophocles' plays contribute much to the formation of the ground on which the theory of tragedy is based. Actually Aristotle lays the foundations for the critical study of drama in his Poetics by drawing on Sophocles' plays most of the time, especially on Oedipus Rex. It is a fact clearly evident from this contextual standpoint that Oedipus Rex and consequently Oedipus, the hero of the play, serve as the most original incarnation--typical example--of the theory of tragedy. So the point now is whether or not Oedipus' has a multi-dimensional and controversial character does not alter the validity of the aforementioned fact, that Oedipus Rex is a model tragedy, simply because of three reasons: First, Oedipus still retains much of the characteristics of tragic heroes, like his noble origin and also position, goodness especially as a king, tragic flaws and irreversible mistakes. Second, the issue of fate, on which the controversiality of Oedipus is based, is to be taken from a special perspective where the age of mythology is taken into consideration. Third, if we are to admit that Oedipus' tragic end is doomed by fate, then this will functionally enrich the play as a tragedy rather than devaluate it.
Aristotle’s tragic hero is made up of three requirements. The protagonist of the play must be a person of high estate. This allows the protagonist to fall from power or happiness to create a tragedy. The next requirement is the protagonist mus...
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.
Greek Tragedy Theater rose to its peak in Athens around the 5th century BCE. This history of the theater came from the citizens wanting to honor their gods with traditional stories, however, the tragedies were most often based off of early Greek mythology. These dramas were most likely written by one of the famous Greek authors, Aeschylus, Euripides, or Sophocles. According to The Ancient History Encyclopedia, tragedy plays were based on serious topics that taught a moral of right and wrong. An important part of every Greek tragedy was the incorporation of a tragic hero. In the famous play Oedipus the King, the writer, Sophocles, promotes added emphasis on this main character and their trials and hardships throughout the story.
Aristotle (384-322 B.C. believed that tragedy, as an imitation or mimesis of life as it could be, held more importance than history, which simply records the past. He considered that performance of a tragedy provided the perfect cathartic experience for an audience, leaving them spiritually purified and inspired. He felt spectators seeing and experiencing great hardship befall the play’s hero or heroine would achieve this emotional state and benefit from it.
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...
Throughout time, the tragedy has been seen as the most emotionally pleasing form of drama, because of its ability to bring the viewer into the drama and feel for the characters, especially the tragic hero. This analysis of tragedy was formed by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, and also noted in his Poetics (guidelines to drama). As a playwright, Shakespeare used Aristotle’s guidelines to tragedy when writing Othello. The play that was created revolved around the tragic hero, Othello, whose tragic flaw transformed him from a nobleman, into a destructive creature, which would inevitably bring him to his downfall. This transformation follows an organic movement of the complex plot from the beginning, middle, to the end of the drama while keeping the tragic hero consistent and also real. As the play moves on the audience feels pity for the tragic hero as well as fear for themselves as they watch the event taking place on stage. Othello can be seen as one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, because it follows the guidelines set up by Aristotle’s Poetics.
Oedipus the King by Sophocles has the ingredients necessary for a good Aristotelian tragedy. The play has the essential parts that form the plot, consisting of the peripeteia, anagnorisis and a catastrophe; which are all necessary for a good tragedy according to the Aristotelian notion. Oedipus is the perfect tragic protagonist, for his happiness changes to misery due to hamartia (an error). Oedipus also evokes both pity and fear in its audience, causing the audience to experience catharsis or a purging of emotion, which is the true test for any tragedy according to Aristotle.
In Poetics, Aristotle defines plot as “the arrangement of the incidents” (Aristotle 12). He indicates that there are six elements in every tragic play, which are plot, character, thought, diction, melody and spectacle, among these plot is placed in the foremost positi...
There is no doubt that tragedy has changed considerably since Aristotle first wrote the definition of tragedy in his Poetics in Ancient Greece, but these changes raise the question of whether modern tragedy still fits the classical definition of tragedy. Tragedy has evolved greatly since the times of the classical tragedies, including Oedipus Rex and Hamlet, to the more modern forms of tragedy, as seen in The Hairy Ape and Death of a Salesman. Despite its evolution and deviation from Aristotle’s definition, modern tragedy holds by the same principles, and retains the same power and message expressed by Aristotelian tragedy.