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Tragedy: Difference between revisions
→Some Views on Tragedy
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** <i>[[Julius Caesar]]</i> - | ** <i>[[Julius Caesar]]</i> - | ||
== | == Views on Tragedy == | ||
=== Aristotelian === | |||
* A tragedy must not be a spectacle of a perfectly good man brought from prosperity to adversity. For this merely shocks us. Nor, of course must it be that of a bad man passing from adversity to prosperity; for that is not tragedy at all, but the perversion of tragedy, and revolts the moral sense. Nor again, should it exhibit the downfall of an utter villain: since pity is aroused by undeserved misfortunes, terror by misfortunes befalling men like ourselves. There remains, then, as the only proper subject for tragedy, the spectacle of a man not absolutely or eminently good or wise, who is brought to disaster not by sheer depravity, but by some [[hamartia | error or frailty]]. Lastly, the man must be highly renowned and prosperous — an Oedipus, a Thyestes, or some other illustrious person. —[[Aristotle's Poetics|Aristotle, ''The Poetics'']]<ref>Aristotle, Stephen Halliwell, W. Hamilton Fyfe, D. A. Russell, Doreen Innes, Demetrius, Longinus, and Demetrius. Poetics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1995.</ref> | * A tragedy must not be a spectacle of a perfectly good man brought from prosperity to adversity. For this merely shocks us. Nor, of course must it be that of a bad man passing from adversity to prosperity; for that is not tragedy at all, but the perversion of tragedy, and revolts the moral sense. Nor again, should it exhibit the downfall of an utter villain: since pity is aroused by undeserved misfortunes, terror by misfortunes befalling men like ourselves. There remains, then, as the only proper subject for tragedy, the spectacle of a man not absolutely or eminently good or wise, who is brought to disaster not by sheer depravity, but by some [[hamartia | error or frailty]]. Lastly, the man must be highly renowned and prosperous — an Oedipus, a Thyestes, or some other illustrious person. —[[Aristotle's Poetics|Aristotle, ''The Poetics'']]<ref>Aristotle, Stephen Halliwell, W. Hamilton Fyfe, D. A. Russell, Doreen Innes, Demetrius, Longinus, and Demetrius. Poetics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1995.</ref> | ||
=== Shakespearean === | |||
* First, the hero. The Shakespearean tragic hero, as everyone knows, is an overstater. His individual accent will vary with his personality, but there is always a residue of hyperbole. This, it would seem, is for Shakespeare the authentic tragic music, mark of a world where a man’s reach must always exceed his grasp and everything costs not less than everything.<br />I think most of us believe that tragic drama is in one way or other a record of man’s affair with transcendence. —Maynard Mack, “Tragic Form and the Jacobean Tragedies” (1970)<ref>Heilman, Robert Bechtold. Tragedy and Melodrama: Versions of Experience. Seattle: U of Washington, 1968.</ref> | * First, the hero. The Shakespearean tragic hero, as everyone knows, is an overstater. His individual accent will vary with his personality, but there is always a residue of hyperbole. This, it would seem, is for Shakespeare the authentic tragic music, mark of a world where a man’s reach must always exceed his grasp and everything costs not less than everything.<br />I think most of us believe that tragic drama is in one way or other a record of man’s affair with transcendence. —Maynard Mack, “Tragic Form and the Jacobean Tragedies” (1970)<ref>Heilman, Robert Bechtold. Tragedy and Melodrama: Versions of Experience. Seattle: U of Washington, 1968.</ref> | ||
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* A tragedy is a story of human actions producing exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man of high estate.<br />In almost all [of Shakespeare’s] tragic heroes we observe a marked one-sidedness, a predisposition in some particular direction, a total incapacity, in certain circumstances, of resisting the force which draws in this direction; a fatal tendency to identify the whole being with one interest, object, passion, or habit of mind. This it would seem, is, for Shakespeare, the fundamental tragic trait. . . . It is a fatal gift, but it comes with it a touch of greatness, and when there is joined to it nobility of mind, or genius, or immense force, we realize the full power and reach of the soul and the conflict in which it engages acquires that magnitude which stirs not only sympathy and pity, but admiration, terror, and awe.<br />The central feeling [in a Shakespearean tragedy] is one of waste.<br />[At the end of a Shakespearean tragedy] we remain confronted with a world travailing for perfection, but bringing to birth, together with glorious good, evil which it is able to over-come or by self-torture and self-waste. And this fact or appearance is tragedy. —A.C. Bradley “The Substance of Shakespearean Tragedy” (1904)<ref>Bradley, A. C. Shakespearean Tragedy; Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth. London: Macmillan, 1929.</ref> | * A tragedy is a story of human actions producing exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man of high estate.<br />In almost all [of Shakespeare’s] tragic heroes we observe a marked one-sidedness, a predisposition in some particular direction, a total incapacity, in certain circumstances, of resisting the force which draws in this direction; a fatal tendency to identify the whole being with one interest, object, passion, or habit of mind. This it would seem, is, for Shakespeare, the fundamental tragic trait. . . . It is a fatal gift, but it comes with it a touch of greatness, and when there is joined to it nobility of mind, or genius, or immense force, we realize the full power and reach of the soul and the conflict in which it engages acquires that magnitude which stirs not only sympathy and pity, but admiration, terror, and awe.<br />The central feeling [in a Shakespearean tragedy] is one of waste.<br />[At the end of a Shakespearean tragedy] we remain confronted with a world travailing for perfection, but bringing to birth, together with glorious good, evil which it is able to over-come or by self-torture and self-waste. And this fact or appearance is tragedy. —A.C. Bradley “The Substance of Shakespearean Tragedy” (1904)<ref>Bradley, A. C. Shakespearean Tragedy; Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth. London: Macmillan, 1929.</ref> | ||
* Thus the equilibrium of tragedy consists in a balancing of Terror with Pride. On the one hand, we are impelled to withdraw from the spectacle, to try to forget the revelation of evil methodized; on the other, we are aroused to withstand destiny, to strive to meet it with the fortitude and the clear eyes of the tragic figure. This feeling of Pride comes into full existence when the hero knows his fate and contemplates it: it is essentially distinct from the [[hubris]] which he may display, but which we cannot share in, before his eyes are opened. —Clifford Leach, “The Implications of Tragedy” (1950)<ref>Leech, Clifford. Shakespeare: The Tragedies; a Collection of Critical Essays. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1965</ref> | * Thus the equilibrium of tragedy consists in a balancing of Terror with Pride. On the one hand, we are impelled to withdraw from the spectacle, to try to forget the revelation of evil methodized; on the other, we are aroused to withstand destiny, to strive to meet it with the fortitude and the clear eyes of the tragic figure. This feeling of Pride comes into full existence when the hero knows his fate and contemplates it: it is essentially distinct from the [[hubris]] which he may display, but which we cannot share in, before his eyes are opened. —Clifford Leach, “The Implications of Tragedy” (1950)<ref>Leech, Clifford. Shakespeare: The Tragedies; a Collection of Critical Essays. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1965</ref> | ||
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* On a level quite above the immediate values of the play [''Antony and Cleopatra''] feeling is the quality most affirmed by it, indeed by all the tragedies. For this reason, Aristotelian categories seem to me quite irrelevant to Shakespeare — and even to Greek tragedy. A [[peripeteia | fall]], a [[hamartia | flaw]], a [[anagnorisis | recognition]]: the pattern must be stretched into a one-size-fits-all dimension to fit the plays. —Marilyn French, ''Shakespeare’s Division of Experience'' (1981)<ref>French, Marilyn. Shakespeare's Division of Experience. New York: Summit, 1981.</ref> | * On a level quite above the immediate values of the play [''Antony and Cleopatra''] feeling is the quality most affirmed by it, indeed by all the tragedies. For this reason, Aristotelian categories seem to me quite irrelevant to Shakespeare — and even to Greek tragedy. A [[peripeteia | fall]], a [[hamartia | flaw]], a [[anagnorisis | recognition]]: the pattern must be stretched into a one-size-fits-all dimension to fit the plays. —Marilyn French, ''Shakespeare’s Division of Experience'' (1981)<ref>French, Marilyn. Shakespeare's Division of Experience. New York: Summit, 1981.</ref> | ||
=== Modern === | |||
* In the sense of having been initiated by the hero himself, the tale always reveals what has been called his “[[hamartia | tragic flaw]],” a failing that is not peculiar to grand or elevated characters. Nor is it necessarily a weakness. The flaw, or crack in the character, is really nothing — and need be nothing — but his inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status. Only the passive, only those who accept their lot without active retaliation, are “flawless.” Most of us are in that category. —Arthur Miller, “The Tragedy of the Common Man” (1941)<ref>Miller, Arthur, and Robert A. Martin. The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller. New York: Viking, 1941.</ref> | |||
* [[Anagnorisis]] is not simply an awareness by the hero of what has happened to him, but the recognition of the determined shape of the life he has created for himself, with an implicit comparison to the uncreated potential life he has forsaken. —Northrup Frye, ''Anatomy of Criticism''<ref>Parker, Hershel, and Harrison Hayford. Moby-Dick as Doubloon: Essays and Extracts, 1851-1970. New York: W.W. Norton, 1970.</ref> | * [[Anagnorisis]] is not simply an awareness by the hero of what has happened to him, but the recognition of the determined shape of the life he has created for himself, with an implicit comparison to the uncreated potential life he has forsaken. —Northrup Frye, ''Anatomy of Criticism''<ref>Parker, Hershel, and Harrison Hayford. Moby-Dick as Doubloon: Essays and Extracts, 1851-1970. New York: W.W. Norton, 1970.</ref> | ||