Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Oedipus the king by Sophocles analysis
Oedipus the king by Sophocles analysis
Characterization in oedipus rex by sophocles
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Oedipus the king by Sophocles analysis
When analyzing the use of tragedy-wisdom that stems from pain or sorrow- as a form of character development, one must mention Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex yet more iconically Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Although traditionally ignored, Isak Dinesen, whom Thomas R. Wissen regarded as an author who’s “tales will not disappoint” must be included among the elite of authors of tragic stories (“The Ring” 237). Many are familiar with her best known pieces such as Out of Africa or Babbete’s Feast; however her most very skillful use of tragedy is in the short story The Ring (230). Dinesen captures the essence of her own personal experiences and translated it seamlessly into a tragic short story.
The events in Isak Dinesen’s early life helped mold her writing career as well as give her a deeper understanding of how tragedy affects one’s life. Isak Dinesen, born Karen Christenze Blixen, in the small Danish town of Rungsted in 1885 was the daughter of a bourgeois aristocrat and a hardworking trader. (“Isak” 1). With her obsession of her father’s aristocracy after his death, she associated “resistance to convention and risk taking” with redefining nobility (Yiannopoulou 1). The tragedy of her father’s death made her take action against the social norms of the time aiding in her own growth. She entered the Royal Academie of the Arts in Copenhagen in 1903 to study painting, but left soon thereafter to begin writing (“The Ring” 230). It is important to understand that although Dinesen did not finish a traditional education, she was passionate about her art, a key element of tragic writing. Dinesen’s early life served as a small example of how tragedy transformed her character.
Dinesen was also shell-shocked by numerous instances of persona...
... middle of paper ...
... Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 20 Feb. 2012. .
“Søren Kierkegaard.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 19 Feb. 2012. .
“The Ring.” Short Stories for Students. Ed. Tim Akers. Vol. 6. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. 229-246. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 19 Feb. 2012.
Yiannopoulou, Effie. “Dinesen, Isak.” In Sollars, Michael D., ed. The Facts On File Companion to the World Novel, 1900 to the Present. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2008. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 19 Feb. 2012.
.
Kierkegaard, Søren, Howard V. Hong, Edna H. Hong, and Søren Kierkegaard. Philosophical Fragments, Johannes Climacus. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1985. Print.
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.
Murphy, B. & Shirley J. The Literary Encyclopedia. [nl], August 31, 2004. Available at: http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2326. Access on: 22 Aug 2010.
France, Marie De. Lanval. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H.Abrams. New York: W.W.Norton & Company, Inc., 2000. 127-140.
Bibliography:.. Works Cited Meyer, M., Ed., (1999). Bedford Introduction to Literature, 5th Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin.
Lawall, Sarah,et al. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 2nd ed. Volume A (slipcased). Norton, 2001. W.W. Norton and Company Inc. New York, NY.
The World Book Encyclopedia. 2000 ed. : p. 78. Griswold, Rufus Wilmot. The "Scarlet Letter" The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors. Ed.
How to live one’s life is a question faced by any human being with relatively normal cognitive functioning. Some find beauty in every day life, reveling in something as simple as the gentle shaking of leaves dancing to the whispered song of the wind, or waking up to someone they have decided to spend the rest of their lives with. Others only see the mundane and the tedious, growing bitter and resentful as a relentless existential crisis latches on to the deepest parts of their psyche, casting a grim and ominous shadow over every thought and action. This probing question of how to live is at the forefront of Soren Kierkegaard’s “Either/Or: A Fragment of Life.” The aforementioned views are, indeed, reflected in the fragmented perspectives provided by Kierkegaard’s fictional characters, “A” and “Judge Wilhelm,” who perhaps reflect Kierkegaard’s own divided views. Love and companionship are at the crux of how to live for both A and Wilhelm, despite the glaring contrast between A’s calls for a hedonistic,
The tradition of the tragedy, the renowned form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis, has principally become a discontinued art. Plays that evoke the sense of tragedy-the creations of Sophocles, Euripides, and William Shakespeare-have not been recreated often, nor recently due to its complex nature. The complexity of the tragedy is due to the plot being the soul of the play, while the character is only secondary. While the soul of the play is the plot, according to Aristotle, the tragic hero is still immensely important because of the need to have a medium of suffering, who tries to reverse his situation once he discovers an important fact, and the sudden downturn in the hero’s fortunes. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is the modern tragedy of a common man named Willy Loman, who, like Oedipus from Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, exhibits some qualities of a tragic hero. However, the character Willy Loman should not be considered a full-on tragic hero because, he although bears a comparable tragic flaw in his willingness to sacrifice everything to maintain his own personal dignity, he is unlike a true tragic hero, like Oedipus, because he was in full control of his fate where Oedipus was not.
The social evolution from the Enlightenment to the Romantic Age altered the usage of reason in literature by instituting elements of imagination and mysticism. Likewise, the usages of certain concepts in literature can reflect social attitudes of the author’s environment. One such concept that is common to both Ludwig Tieck’s “Fair-Haired Eckbert” and Wilhelm Wackenroder’s “A Wondrous Oriental Fairy Tale of a Naked Saint” is the isolation of characters. Isolation, as the cause, or simply as an indicator, of suffering in these two literary fairy tales is a notion that is successfully used to dictate the spiritual fates of the characters in each story.
Harmon, William, and C. Hugh Holman. A Handbook to Literature. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996.
2nd ed. of the book. New York: St. James Press, 1995. Literature Resource Center -. Web.
Harmon, William, and C. Hugh Holman. A Handbook to Literature. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999.
Elrod, John. Being and Existence in Kierkegaard’s Pseudonymous Works. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975.
Greenblatt, Stephen, eds. The Norton Anthology English Literature. 9th ed. Crawfordsville: R.R. Donnelley & Sons, 2012. Print.