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    The Nature of Tragedy

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    Lukania Boaz
    Aristotle defined tragedy as an imitation of a serious action that elicits emotions of fear and pity in the audience. For Aristotle, the tragic hero falls due to a hamartia or character flaw, such as hubris. The audience feels fear in recognizing their own humanity in the tragic figure, and pity for the unmerited misfortune befalling the hero. Through catharsis, the release of these emotions, the audience experiences humility and compassion.

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    The Nature of Tragedy

    Uploaded by

    Lukania Boaz
    61 views2 pages
    Aristotle defined tragedy as an imitation of a serious action that elicits emotions of fear and pity in the audience. For Aristotle, the tragic hero falls due to a hamartia or character flaw, such as hubris. The audience feels fear in recognizing their own humanity in the tragic figure, and pity for the unmerited misfortune befalling the hero. Through catharsis, the release of these emotions, the audience experiences humility and compassion.

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    Aristotle defined tragedy as an imitation of a serious action that elicits emotions of fear and pity in the audience. For Aristotle, the tragic hero falls due to a hamartia or character flaw, such as hubris. The audience feels fear in recognizing their own humanity in the tragic figure, and pity for the unmerited misfortune befalling the hero. Through catharsis, the release of these emotions, the audience experiences humility and compassion.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    61 views2 pages

    The Nature of Tragedy

    Uploaded by

    Lukania Boaz
    Aristotle defined tragedy as an imitation of a serious action that elicits emotions of fear and pity in the audience. For Aristotle, the tragic hero falls due to a hamartia or character flaw, such as hubris. The audience feels fear in recognizing their own humanity in the tragic figure, and pity for the unmerited misfortune befalling the hero. Through catharsis, the release of these emotions, the audience experiences humility and compassion.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Aristotle and the Nature of Tragedy

    The Greek tragedies mark some of the best literature to survive from ancient Greek culture. The
    foremost critic of Greek tragedy is the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle defined tragedy as "an
    imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished
    with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the
    form of action, not of narrative; with incidents arousing fear and pity effecting the proper purgation of
    these emotions (the Poetics qtd. in Weitz 155; Roberts and Jacobs 937).
    For Aristotle, the tragedy should be a form of mimesis, or imitation, of an action; that is, the story
    should mimic reality. What Aristotle appears to mean is that the play should present a unity of action
    through a series of representative events ranging from happiness to misery that are a consequence of
    the main character's own nature and habit of thought. These actions create the plot of the story (Weitz
    155).

    Electra and Orestes


    from Stories from the Greek Tragedians by Alfred Church the characters in these plays were typically
    members of the ruling class so that the consequences of their actions extended beyond themselves to
    the society of which they were a part. In this way, the play evoked the emotion of fear in the audience,
    as they recognized in the tragic figure their own humanity and the danger of their own fall (Kirszner
    and Mandell 1129). After all, if this great person could fall, how much more likely the average citizen?
    This sense, then, of fear as "the misfortune of one like ourselves" (Weitz 155) called forth from the
    audience a feeling of humility, as if each viewer were to think, "There, but for the grace of God, go I."
    In addition to fear, a well written tragedy evoked in its viewers a sense of pity at the "unmerited
    misfortune" befalling the tragic hero (Weitz 155). Rather than calling forth censure or criticism of the
    main character, the viewer was expected to feel compassion. The purging of these emotions of fear
    and pity, humility and compassion, result in catharsis, or a release from negative emotions as the
    audience empathizes with the hero.
    The tragic hero falls as a consequence of hamartia, some weakness of character or excess of virtue.
    Frequently, this tragic flaw is a consequence of the hero's own hubris or excessive pride (Kirszner and
    Mandell 1130).
    Irony, where reality is different than it is portrayed, often plays a role in the development of a tragedy.
    Sometimes the audience is aware of things about which the character is oblivious (dramatic irony).
    Sometimes the character suffers at the hands of fate or the gods, where all attempts to escape one's fate
    inevitably result in its fulfillment (cosmic irony) (Kirszner and Mandell 1130). Irony often supports
    the feelings of fear and pity the audience feels, as they recognize the limits of their own knowledge
    and control of their lives.
    (Following, under Works Cited, is a list of credits for the source materials documented on this page.
    Students do not need to read these credits. They are provided for documentation purposes only.)
    Works Cited
    Church, Alfred. Electra_Orestes.jpg. Image. Stories from the Greek Tragedians New York: Dodd,
    Mead, 1879. Produced by David Kline, Josephine Paolucci, Joshua Hutchinson and the Project
    Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team. Project Gutenberg 7 Mar. 2017 Web.
    [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14994/14994-h/14994-h.htm]
    Kirszner, Laurie G. and Stephen R. Mandell. Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. 4th ed. Fort
    Worth: Harcourt, 2001. Print.
    Roberts, Edgar V. and Henry E. Jacobs. Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. 3rd
    compact ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2006. Print.
    Weitz, Morris. "Tragedy." The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Vol. 8. Ed. Paul Edwards. New York:
    Macmillan, 1972. Print.

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