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14 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Describe the boundary between tragedy and history. What were some of the plays called? |
Blurry boundary. They were not always considered tragedies when first performed or published; some, instead, were called a 'tragical history'. |
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Why is tragedy considered a social Ritual? |
Probably because audience interaction makes tragedy powerful. |
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What did Aristotle say about tragedy? |
1. Representation of actions considered heroic 2. We know when it ends 3. It has a certain size 4. Uses rich language, used different in various parts of the play. 5. Uses action, not narrative. 6. Invokes relief (catharsis) to emotions such as pity and fear |
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Why is katharsis problematic? |
Unable to translate it in one singular way. |
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What does a tragedy need to work as a play, according to Aristotle? |
1. Only certain kinds of plot work to create a proper tragedy. 2. Must focus on trajectory of the main character. (Be wary about this) 3. We have to feel fear and pity. 4. Characters need to have a flaw (hamartia). |
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What is the place act 2 scene 2 in the play? |
1. It is after he has banished Cordelia for an unsatisfactory quantification of her live for him, and the banishment of his advisor for criticising Lear's actions. 2. After Lear realises his daughters, Goneril and Reagan, do not intend to support him he wanders the wilderness with his Fool. 3. With Lear gone, the sisters try to consolidate their power over his now divided kingdom, while fighting Cordelia's invading French army. |
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Nietzsche describes as fusion/conflict of Apollonian and Dionysiac tendencies. What do they represent? |
Apollonian: reason, philosophy, order, control and social. Dionysiac: ecstasy, mysticism, violence, instinct and pre-social. |
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Describe the ethical contradiction that Hegel believes tragedy should have. |
The tragic hero embodies an interest or principle that in itself has justification as a driver of human action. This hero clashes with an equally justified but opposite principle. |
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How is Hegel's ethical contradiction resolved? |
The hero must be destroyed. The resolution thus enacts divine justice, upholding an ethical order recognising all justifiable interests and principles. |
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According to McAlindon, what is important yo remember about Nietzsche and Hegel's theories? |
Both were fascinated by pre-Socratic cosmology: destruction and renewal. However, McAlindon believes that this may blinded them to the presence of a 'paradoxical view of nature fathered by the pre-Socratics was embedded in all Shakespeare's tragedies and was central to the intellectual inheritance of his contemporaries.' |
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What types of drama inspired Elizabethan theatre? |
Roman and late-medieval |
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Tragedies drew from the Romans. One model was invented by Seneca. What are the conventions of Senecan tragedy? |
- horror - abuse of power - impulsive characters; act out of emotion, slaves to emotion; consciously evil - selfhood: describe their actions as expressions of 'self' through monologues and soliloquies - hyperbolise their feelings; rail against the natural order |
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How was Shakespearean tragedy different? |
- moved away from classicist and Elizabethan theory - tragedy and comedy sometimes coexisted |
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What kind of characters did theatre focus on? |
Tragedies were mainly about aristocrats and monarchs |
