Tragedy: Past, Present, and Meaning

1. Humanities 10126 October 2016 Tragedy, Past and Present Professor Matthew Gumpert

2. A Selection of Recent “Tragedies” “A Rare Night Out in Paris Ends in Tragedy” (New York Times, 17 November 2015) “Facing Europe’s Refugee Tragedy” (New York Times, 22 June 2015) “Tragedy in Nice” (CNN Breaking News, 14 July 2016) “The tragedy of Turkey’s attempted coup.” (CNN, 16 July 2016) “The storm may have passed, but the full scope of the tragedy is just starting to emerge” (Fox 31, 27 May 2015) Zika is “unprecedented and tragic” (Reuters TV, 26 May 2016)

3. “Tragedy at the Queen’s Salute” “Members of the public looked on in horror yesterday as an army horse died on parade during a freak accident in London’s Hyde Park. The animal, called Murphy, was taking part in the Royal Gun Salute which takes place on June 2 each year to mark the coronation of the Queen. Soldiers from the King’s Troop were lining up when the horse tripped while galloping and his legs became entangled in the wheels of a gun wagon, which then dragged him across the grass.” “It was a tragic accident, one of those split second things that happen and he went down straight away.”

4. Saint-Evremond, Of Tragedy, Ancient and Modern (1672) “[I]n our tragedies, we neither introduce any villain who is not detected, nor any hero who does not cause himself to be admired. With us, few crimes escape unpunished, and few virtues go off unrewarded.”

5. Aristotle, Poetics 1453a5-8 hamartia: a miscalculation or error committed by the hero out of ignorance; (archery, missing the mark)

6. Aristotle, Poetics 50a15 Tragedy is an imitation, not of people, but of actions carried out by people; “in the course of their actions they show what their characters are” (50a15).

7. Aristotle, Poetics • “So it is not in order to provide mimesis of character that the agents act; rather, their characters are included for the sake of their actions” (1450a20-25; trans. Halliwell) • “Plot, then, is the first principle and, as it were, soul of tragedy, while character is secondary” (50b1-2).

8. Ersu Ablak, “God vs. Technology” (Hürriyet Daily News, 26 October 2011) “In Turkey the belief that everything that happens to a person is God’s will is very important . . . When something bad happens it is God’s will, and we cannot go against it. There is only one way to have peace, and it is to accept that you cannot change fate . . . the municipality of Van does not feel responsible for the earthquake devastation.”

9. Aristotle, Poetics 49b20 The ideal plot, for Aristotle, is one which produces both “pity and fear” in the audience; it is “designed to bring about the catharsis of such emotions.”

10. Aristotle,Poetics The ideal plot: 1.Moves “from good fortune to bad fortune” (53a12), 2.Includes sudden moments of “reversal” (peripeteia) (52a22). 3.The hero’s catastrophic change in fortune is accompanied by a sudden change in knowledge = anagnorisis, or recognition (52a29)

11. Aristotle, Poetics The ideal tragic hero: “occupies the mean between saintliness and depravity”; “He is not extraordinary in virtue” yet “does not fall into bad fortune because of evil and wickedness” but “because of some error of the kind found in men of high reputation and good fortune, such as Oedipus and Thyestes and famous men of similar families” (53a5-8).

12. Georg Lukács, “The Metaphysics of Tragedy” “Life is an anarchy of light and dark; nothing is ever completely fulfilled, nothing ever quite ends . . . everything is destroyed, everything is smashed, nothing ever flowers into real life. To live is to live something through to the end: but life means nothing is ever fully and completely lived through to the end.” A world of “transcendental homelessness . . . a world that has been abandoned by God.”

13. Elements of Tragic Perfomance I dithyramb: a choralhymnorodesung in honor of thegodDionysus. City Dionysia: a municipal festival in honor of thegodDionysus hupokrites: actor (literally, interpreter) episode: spokendialoguebetweenchoralodes stichomythia: passageswherecharactersareeachgivenoneline in succession

14. Aristotle, Poetics “the best tragedies are written about a few houses, as on Alcmaeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes, Telephus, and others on whom it came to suffer or to do terrible things” (53a12).

15. Elements of Tragic Perfomance II satyr-play: a comic play with a chorus composed of satyrs (creatures half-human and half-animal, associated with Dionysus) choregoi: chorus-leaders, or producers, responsible for the funding and training of the choruses

16. PhysicalComponents of theAthenian Theater stage:surfaceforactorsslightlyraisedabovethe orchestra orchestra: dancing-floor, reservedforthechorus skene: backdropscenerywhichcouldservetorepresentdifferentlocations ekkyklema: a platform wheeledin andoutuponthestage mechane: cranedesignedtoraiseactorsthroughtheair (seedeusexmachina) theatron: seatingfortheaudience proedria: sests in thefrontrowreservedforpriestsand officials

17. Reconstruction of the Greek Theater

18. Judith Butler, Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death “ . . . Antigone comes to represent kinship and its dissolution, and Creon comes to represent an emergent ethical order and state authority based on principles of universality.” Kinship: “a relation of ‘blood’ rather than one of norms”; “removed from the domain of the social . . .”