Wednesday, October 12, 2011
First thoughts on tragedy
Tragedy started out as a kind of play in ancient Greece. According to Aristotle, tragedy is defined as a story that deals with an important deed and purges the audience of emotion. Over the next two thousand years or so tragedy evolved, but stayed basically sad. In the 1600s a French playwright said that tragedy deals with "matters of state" and comedy deals with love. This seems like a pretty good basic definition. In earlier times, tragedy revolved around upper-class characters, but in the last century or two everybody has been seen fit to be in a tragedy. A tragedy doesn't have to have a sad ending, but it helps.
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Conner,
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you could select a larger or different font - this is hard to read.
It's interesting to me how you briefly describe how tragedy evolved over time.
Looking forward to reading other posts.
Mr. S