Understanding Tragedy: Historical Definition and Interpretations

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efining tragedy is not an easy task because it has meant different things at different times. Aristotle writes in the Poetics that tragedies must represent a complete, serious, and important action that rouses and then purges (by catharsis) fear and pity in the spectators, with a central character who moves from happiness to misery through some frailty or error (hamartia). There is still much debate regarding the precise translation and application of these terms. It is supposed that the word “tragedy” comes from the Greek tragoidia or goat-play, and it is based on the assumption that the tragic hero is essentially another version of the sacrifice offered throughout human history to indulge an angry god.
Hegel argues that tragedy is generated when a heroic individual becomes strapped between the conflicting demands of two godheads, between two groups of values that are each imperative and mutually exclusive. Thus, in Sophocles’ Antigone, the heroine’s familial and religious obligation to bury her brother collides with the laws and needs of the state. In the same way, …show more content…

The origin of the traditional terms ‘first person’ ‘second person’ and ‘third person’ is illuminating in this connexion. The Latin word ‘persona’ (meaning ‘mask’) was used to translate the Greek word for ‘dramatic character’ or ‘role’ and the use of this term by grammarians derives from their metaphorical conception of a language event as a drama in which the principal role is played by the first person, the role subsidiary to his, by the second person, and all other roles by the third person. It is important to note, however, that only the speaker and addressee are actually participating in the drama. The third person is negatively defined with respect to the first person and second person: it does not correlate with any positive participant

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