Page 56 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories

Notes Self-Assessment
1. Choose the correct option:
(i) On which three grounds did Plato objected to poetry?
(a) Educational, philosophical and moral (b) Sexuality, morality and philosophical
(c) Educational, obscenity and sexuality
(ii) According to Plato, poets are breeders of ............... and poetry is ............... of lies.
(a) Falsehood and mother (b) Truth and mother
(c) Falsehood and sister.
(iii) Aristotle’s well-known treatises are:
(a) Dialogues (b) Poetics and Rhetoric
(c) Poetry and drama (d) Tragedy and epic
(iv) Plato wrote his treatise in form of:
(a) dialogues (b) pauaguaphs
(c) Poetry (d) story telling
(v) According to Plato, poetry is better than philosophy:
(a) True (b) False
(c) Cannot say

4.4 Summary

• In essence, tragedy is the mirror image or negative of comedy. For instead of depicting the
rise in circumstances of a dejected or outcast underdog, tragedy shows us the downfall of a
once prominent and powerful hero. Like comedy, tragedy also supposedly originated as part
of a religious ritual--in this case a Dionysian ceremony with dancers dressed as goats or
animals (hence tragoedia, literally a "goat-song) pantomiming the suffering or death-rebirth
of a god or hero.
• Once again, the most influential theorist of the genre is Aristotle, whose Poetics has guided
the composition and critical interpretation of tragedy for more than two millenia. Distilling
the many penetrating remarks contained in this commentary, we can derive the following
general definition: Tragedy depicts the downfall of a basically good person through some
fatal error or misjudgment, producing suffering and insight on the part of the protagonist
and arrousing pity and fear on the part of the audience.
• To explain this definition further, we can state the following principles or general requirements
for Aristotelian tragedy:
(i) A true tragedy should evoke pity and fear on the part of the audience. According to
Aristotle, pity and fear are the natural human response to spectacles of pain and suffering-
especially to the sort of suffering that can strike anybody at any time. Aristotle goes on
to say that tragedy effects "the catharsis of these emotions"--in effect arrousing pity and
fear only to purge them, as when we exit a scary movie feeling relieved or exhilarated.
(ii) The tragic hero must be essentially admirable and good. As Aristotle points out, the fall
of a scoundrel or villain evokes applause rather than pity. Audiences cheer when the
bad guy goes down. On the other hand, the downfall of an essentially good person
disturbs us and stirs our compassion. As a rule, the nobler and more truly admirable a
person is, the greater will be our anxiety or grief at his or her downfall.
(iii) In a true tragedy, the hero's demise must come as a result of some personal error or
decision. In other words, in Aristotle's view there is no such thing as an innocent victim
of tragedy, nor can a genuinely tragic downfall ever be purely a matter of blind accident
or bad luck. Instead, authentic tragedy must always be the product of some fatal choice or
action, for the tragic hero must always bear at least some responsibility for his own doom.

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