Tragedy: A02 Flashcards
“Tragedy is an imitation of…
an action that is admirable, complete and posses magnitude… in the form of action, not through narration; effecting through pity and fear the purification of such emotion” - Aristotle.
“A man doesn’t become a hero until…
he can see the root of his own downfall” - Aristotle
Aristotle claimed that the main character must not be perfect or vicious but…
“The man between these extremes” because.. “pity is induced by underserving misfortune, and fear by the misfortunes of normal people”
Thomas Hardy wrote in 1892 that tragic literature portrays…
“the worthy encompassed by the inevitable”
A tragic hero is “an ordinary…
person struggling to maintain human dignity.” - Arthur Miller’s (1949) essay ‘Tragedy & The common man’
Arnold Kettle on tragedy
“Shakespeare was a realistic writer who presents us with actual situations (…) based on particular observations and insight.”
Samuel Johnson on tragedy
‘a play in which the wicked prosper and the virtuous miscarry’ is a ‘just a representation of the common events of human life’.
George Brandes on Tragedy
thought Cordelia was ‘the living emblem of womanly dignity’ and that the play as a whole was ‘the titanic tragedy of human life.’
