Tragedy
The tragedy is a kind theatrical whose origin dates back to ancient Greek theater.
It is contrasted with the comedy instead of which she portrays the characters of higher ranks and often unravels with the death of one or more characters. Aristotle assigns to inspire "terror and pity."
Summary |
Origin
The tragedy appears to Athens in the fifth century BC. AD. It is represented as part of celebrations Dionysus (late January and late March).
The word / tragida comprises tragos, "goat" and / Oide, "song", he means the "song of the goat." But the reasons for such a term are not very clear. The tragedy could have been primarily linked to the satyr and companion of Dionysus, half-man half-goat. This hypothesis seems supported by Aristotle, who says in his Poetics that tragedy is the original satirical and light .
Some see the "song of the goat" the expression of the animal's complaint led to the sacrificial altar, placed in parallel with the confrontation of the tragic hero to his fate during a fight he knows to be lost advance. .
Greek tragedy
Institutional framework
The archons (governors of the city) hosts an annual contest between three playwrights each presenting three tragedies and a satyr. The best of them was subsequently rewarded, and retained his works, very few tragedies have survived unrewarded. The social function of these representations was important: indeed, the wealthiest citizens bore the cost of the show while the less fortunate receive compensation to attend.
History
Characters of noble rank are powerless against superior forces (the gods most often) who handle them. The sequence of events and the dramatic denouement necessarily belong to a relentless fate, which may seem unfair, unjust and far beyond human endurance.
The tragedy thus the public key through terror and pity (in the case of Oedipus , incest and patricide character) it creates. This makes it a kind scope edifying. For Aristotle the tragedy has a didactic, that is to say, it aims to teach a moral or metaphysical truth to the public. This is called catharsis through which the soul of the viewer would be purified of its excessive passions.
The tragedy begins with a prologue ( ) in which one or two players and explain the situation where the presentation of the characters is made.
The choir enters the stage and is the parodos ( ). It takes place in the orchestra he would never leave until the end.
It was then alternating dialogues between two or three actors: the episodes ( ) and choral parts sung, the stasima ( ). There were usually three or four episodes and stasima.
The last part is called the exodos ( ). The choir then left the scene.
The Greek literature has three great writers of tragedy : Aeschylus , Sophocles and Euripides. The Roman theater does not seem to have quite enjoyed the tragedy that is developing a literature major tragedy. Seneca , however, has adapted in Latin as in Greek tragedy Phaedra or Medea.
Humanist Tragedy
She is represented by Etienne Jodelle , Jean de La Peruse , Jacques Grevin , Robert Garnier.
Elizabethan Tragedy
Major English authors write tragedies in the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth : Christopher Marlowe , Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. They incorporate some features of ancient tragedy, but can be distinguished by the lack of unity and with a mixture of tones, including the insertion of passage comedy in the text.
The French classical tragedy
Abandoned in the Middle Ages , saw this type (rather late though), thanks to the Sophonisbe, the Italian Trissino , which is the first tragedy to respect the rule of the units.
In France and Spain, the classical period , the two most important playwrights Jean Racine and Pierre Corneille. When his play, Berenice , was criticized because it does not contain a fatal outcome, Racine responded by challenging the treatment "conventional" of the tragedy. Cornelius also practiced a tragedy nonfatal outcome, or tragi-comedy , genre appreciated previously released but the manners of the public since. At the same time, Jean-Baptiste Lully develops with Philippe Quinault a hybrid form of entertainment, the musical tragedy or tragic opera , which will create the kind of opera French. French classical tragedy had to respect the rule of three units : place, time and action. But also of decency (no fighting or blood on stage, no reconciliations intimate kissing ...), as that of the likelihood and magnitude: the characters are kings and queens.
This type was first codified by Aristotle and Horace , and then learned by the seventeenth century. Finally, we found all the rules in the art of poetry of Boileau.
Other authors, less well known today, had a great fortune in this genre, considered one of the noblest. As Thomas Crow and Robert Garnier. Others we are better known, but mostly by their lack of real talent Scuderi , Pradon ...
History
If the division into action itself is unknown in Greek tragedy, one that is imposed on the Renaissance is in three acts, extended to five in the next century:
- The first act is the situation display characters
- The second emerging disruptive element (split between Titus and Berenice Berenice , decision of the sacrifice of Iphigenia in Iphigenia ...)
- in the third act, the protagonists seek a solution to the drama, everything seems possible again
- in the fourth act, the action is definitely tied in Racine, at least, the characters have no chance to escape their fate
- the fifth act, the action finally unravels, causing the death of one or more characters.
Tragedy and Modernity
In more recent literature, tragedy declines as codified genre. The tragic yet seems to remain some important works: A Doll's House ( 1879 ) of the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen , The Bad Shepherds , proletarian tragedy of the French Octave Mirbeau (1897), or, by American Arthur Miller , The Crucible and Death of a Salesman ...
In The Death of Tragedy (1961), George Steiner argues that rationalism has changed the conception that men are the world to delete the tragedy and romance.
References
- "It was late enough that the tragedy, leaving the subjects are too short and pleasant style that were unique to the genre of satire as it went acquired all its grandeur and its pomp," Poetics, 1449a, translation Jules Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire.
- Jacqueline de Romilly , Greek tragedy, PUF, 1970, repr. al. Quadriga, P. 15-17.
- Reinach, Salomon (1858-1932). Cults, myths and religions ... http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Gallica&O=NUMM-75514
- Aristotle, Poetics, excerpts, Definition of Tragedy Chapter II. I. As those who imitate people who act and that they are necessarily good or bad (almost always the morals relate to these two qualities alone, and all men, in fact manners differ by the Vice and Virtue) It necessarily follows that we also imitate people or we do best is in the world, or worse or the same moral value. Chapter VI II. The tragedy is the imitation of a serious and complete action, having a certain extent, presented in a language made pleasant and so that each of its parts remain separate, growing with characters who act, not the through a narrative, and working through pity and terror the catharsis of the passions of the same nature. VI. Now, as imitation is to an action and that action was sponsored by people who act, which necessarily have a particular quality, as to moral character and as to thinking (because that's what makes us actions that have a particular character), it follows naturally that two causes determine the actions, namely: the moral character and thought, and it is from these actions that everyone reaches the proposed goal or does not reach it. Chapter IX. XI. But as imitation, in tragedy, is not only a perfect action, but on facts that excite terror and pity, and that these feelings arise especially when the facts come against all odds, and even better when 'they are brought to each other, because in this way, the surprise is stronger than if they occur unexpectedly and by chance, because, among things casual, this one seems most surprising that appear as intentionally produced, it necessarily follows that the fables designed with this in mind are the best.
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