Page 11 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

Unit 1: Literary Terms: Classical and Aristotle’s Concept of Tragedy and Tragic Hero

varieties found separately in the parts; enacted by the persons themselves and not presented through Notes
narrative; through a course of pity and fear completing the purification (catharsis, sometimes
translated “purgation”) of such emotions.”
(a) Imitation (mimesis): Contrary to Plato, Aristotle asserts that the artist does not just copy the
shifting appearances of the world, but rather imitates or represents Reality itself, and gives
form and meaning to that Reality. In so doing, the artist gives shape to the universal, not the
accidental. Poetry, Aristotle says, is “a more philosophical and serious business than history;
for poetry speaks more of universals, history of particulars.”
(b) An action with serious implications: serious in the sense that it best raises and purifies pity
and fear; serious in a moral, psychological, and social sense.
(c) Complete and possesses magnitude: not just a series of episodes, but a whole with a beginning,
a middle, and an end. The idea of imitation is important here; the artist does not just slavishly
copy everything related to an action, but selects (represents) only those aspects which give
form to universal truths.
(d) Language sensuously attractive...in the parts: language must be appropriate for each part of
the play: choruses are in a different meter and rhythm and more melodious than spoken
parts.
(e) Tragedy (as opposed to epic) relies on an enactment (dramatic performance) not on “narrative”
(the author telling a story).
(f) Purification (catharsis): tragedy first raises (it does not create) the emotions of pity and fear,
then purifies or purges them. Whether Aristotle means to say that this purification takes place
only within the action of the play, or whether he thinks that the audience also undergoes a
cathartic experience, is still hotly debated. One scholar, Gerald Else, says that tragedy purifies
“whatever is ‘filthy’ or ‘polluted’ in the pathos, the tragic act”. Others say that the play arouses
emotions of pity and fear in the spectator and then purifies them (reduces them to beneficent
order and proportion) or purges them (expels them from his/her emotional system).

“Tragedy first raises the emotions of pity and fear, then purifies or purges them.”
Illustrate this statement taking an example of Shakespearean tragedy.

1.1.3 Aristotle’s Definition of Classical Tragedy

In fourth century BC, Aristotle, in his work the Poetics, gave Western civilization a definition of
tragedy which has greatly influenced writers of tragedy and the form of tragedy over twenty-four
centuries.
Aristotle indicates that the medium of tragedy is drama, not narrative; tragedy “shows” rather than
“tells.” According to Aristotle, tragedy is higher and more philosophical than history because history
simply relates what has happened while tragedy dramatizes what may happen, “what is possible
according to the law of probability or necessity.” History thus deals with the particular, and tragedy
with the universal. Events that have happened may be due to accident or coincidence; they may be
particular to a specific situation and not be part of a clear cause-and-effect chain. Therefore they
have little relevance for others. Tragedy, however, is rooted in the fundamental order of the universe;
it creates a cause-and-effect chain that clearly reveals what may happen at any time or place because
that is the way the world operates. Tragedy therefore arouses not only pity but also fear, because
the audience can envision themselves within this cause-and-effect chain.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 5