Poetic Edda

Antigone, written by Sophocles, is a tragic play that deals with three main ideas which are: whether Polyneices ought to be given burial rituals, whether someone who buried him in defiance of state ought to be punished and whether Creon’s actions are just or thoughtless. Written around 441 BC, the play is known to have been very controversial at the time, not only because of the plot it presented but rather because the themes it dealt with challenged Ancient Greek ideals. However, not all themes…

Blame defines when someone or something holds the responsibility of a wrong committed by another person. People assign blame to feel better about themselves and the mistake they made, using it as an excuse. As shown in the play, Romeo and Juliet, a series of faults are executed by multiple people unwilling to accept responsibility, causing a chain of events that conclude in the total death of six Capulets and Montagues. Two factors to blame for the untimely death of Romeo and Juliet are…

the next phase, distillation, is when the emotions of pity and fear are strengthened. Finally, the last phase of the catharsis process is purging, when the emotions of pity and fear are forcefully removed. According to Aristotle, as he wrote in the Poetics, the purpose of a catharsis is to purge people of their emotions. The first vision that Cassandra sees is that of Agamemnon’s death. Cassandra says, “You…

There is a very fine line between good and evil, between pain and pleasure or sorrow and happiness. In fact, the lines are not only thin but blurred. All of humanity becomes who they are in that mess of lines, life is an undefined thing. It is wild, messy. It is utterly and completely unpredictable, but out of all of this, what defines people? It is not happiness that will become the most important aspect of growing up, instead, it is pain. Trauma, because if happiness is a wisp of summer breeze…

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s masterful romance The Scarlet Letter, Arthur Dimmesdale alone stands out as a tragic hero, who struggles for freedom over his guilt for committing lechery. Throughout the novel, Dimmesdale’s stages leading to his public atonement aligns with Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero. Arthur Dimmesdale was given three courses of action: to stay silent and suffer as urged by Chillingworth, to attempt to escape responsibility as pleaded by Hester, or to stand up and face his…

In Antony and Cleopatra, displayed was a powerful love between two people at the climax of their trials and tribulations. Plutarch ‘Life of Antonius’ is the primary source, and Shakespeare has combined this factual evidence together along with fiction and drama to formulate a play that is different in terms of proposition, structure and notability. In the first century AD, less than one hundred years after Antony’s death ; but just in time to hear his grandfather’s personal experiences…

Good morning and welcome to this year’s Brisbane Writers festival, where the time has come to delve into and examine hero narratives. In particular we will contemplate cultural contexts, with consideration to culture evolving through time to developing and changing ideas, attitudes and values. The transition from ancient Greece in the 8th to 6th centuries before the Common Era, to two and a half thousand years later, where civilisation is today, has been extensive. The Oedipus plays by Sophocles…

VII. Topic Sentence: Tragedy, an element missing from modern society, it is misunderstood and misused. Tragedy does not have to be bad, nor does the tragic flaw have to be a flaw. Rather, tragedy should make us feel sympathy towards the character, and make us afraid to suffer the same fate. In order to provoke sympathy, the character must suffer an undeserved punishment, earned by their response to a problem. In the piece, Miller uses strong diction, allegory to convey his intended message to…

The use of hamartia is a key component to a tragedy in Greek times. In the festival of Dionysus, the use of hamartia played a key role in the production of tragic plays that enhances the audience experience in establishing morals and ideals in many different ways. Sophocles’ Oedipus the King is a key example of this, a play about the unfortunate destiny bestowed upon Oedipus. During the play, Oedipus attempts to flee from his destiny that he will marry his mother and kill his father. The…

A tragic hero is defined as a literary character who makes an error of judgment or has a fatal flaw that, combined with fate and external forces, brings on a tragedy. In Yukio Mishima’s The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea, the main protagonist, Ryuji Tsukazaki, proves to be a tragic hero as his internal confliction and the ambiguity of his character served as his fatal flaw which ultimately led him to his death. Ryuji believes that he is destined for glory, even though he does not know…