For the purpose of judging and examining plays, understanding genre enables clarity. In the Poetics, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) defines tragedy as an imitation of a single, unified, action that is serious, complete, and has a certain magnitude. Tragedy deals with the fall of someone whose character is good, believable, and consistent; importantly, the fall is caused by an error or frailty (hamartia – tragic flaw) rather than a vice or depravity. Philosophies about fate, fortune, and circumstances may intersect with the misfortunes of the hero, but the ups and downs of life are related to the issue of free will (not destiny) in the settling of plot.  It is at the point of free will that revenge tragedy takes a distinct generic turn.

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The following are major ideas held by conservative writers and thinkers of Neoclassicism, e.g. Dryden, Pope, Swift, Johnson, Gay, Butler, Rochester, Gibbon, Mandeville, Burlte, Reynolds, and Smollet.

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This is the difference that marks tragedy from comedy: comedy is inclined to imitate persons below the level of our world, tragedy persons above it. . . . Comedy is, as I have said, an imitation of lower types; though it does not include the full range of badness, nevertheless to be ridiculous is a kind of deformity. The causes of laughter are errors and deformities that do not pain or injure us; the comic mask, for instance, is deformed and distorted but not painfully so. . . . The next best plot, which is said by some people to be the best, is the tragedy with a double plot like the Odyssey, ending in one way for the better people and in the opposite way for the worse. But it is the weakness of theatrical performances that gives priority to this kind, when poets write what the audience would like to happen, they are in leading strings. This is not the pleasure proper to tragedy, but rather to comedy, where the greatest enemies in the fable make friends and go off at the end, and nobody is killed by anyone. –Aristotle, The Poetics

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What was the purpose, children, for which I reared you? –Medea (l. 1003)

While I have always been aware of the iconoclasm of Euripides’ Medea, I was struck even more by it this read through and the moral implications of the play’s status as a tragedy. Is Medea a tragedy? While it does contain many aspects of an Aristotelean tragedy, it seems to lack — at least for me — any semblance of anagnorisis, the tragic hero’s understanding and acceptance of his/her tragic flaw and a greater wisdom that comes from that understanding. Medea does leave the audience with a sense of pity and terror, even perhaps more than Oedipus Rex in its unnaturalness, if that’s possible. Euripides’ play seems to suggest that in order for the patriarchy to understand its inherent double standards, one must strike it at its very center: those who would continue its tradition.

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Apollo, friends, Apollo–
He ordained my agonies–these my pains on pains!
But the hand that struck my eyes was mine,
mine alone–no one else–
I did it all myself!
What good were eyes to me?
Nothing I could see could bring me joy. –Oedipus

When Sophocles wrote Oedipus Rex, the cultural and intellectual zeitgeist of Athens was undergoing a paradigm shift, from the privileging of one cosmological view to that of another. The gods were dying and being replaced by Socrates and his ilk: those who wanted to eschew the days of superstition and prophecy in favor of a more secure faith in the educated man’s ability to figure the universe and his place in it out for himself without depending on the mystical prognostications from spastic oracles. While somewhat successful — we all know what happen to Socrates (“I drank what?”) — this trend nevertheless made its impact on the time and the future of Western thought.

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Goethe’s Faust is a complex work of literature that is concerned with the place of humanity in the cosmos, the striving of its protagonist beyond his human confines, the implications of his going too far, and the consequences that his quest have on his community.

Goethe wrote Faust in two parts (Part I in 1808, Part II in 1832), and together they revise the Faustus legend to fit with Romantic sensibilities and eighteenth-century attitudes toward earthly life and the beyond. The theme of a man selling his soul to the devil for earthly desires—fame, knowledge, wealth, power—developed from a profound Christian belief in life after death. Goethe updates the legend by adding a prolonged love story, making his devil an ironic and mocking figure, and allowing Faust’s soul to escape damnation.

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If you’re still troubled, think of things this way:
No one shall know our joys, save us alone,
And there’s no evil till the act is known;
It’s scandal, Madam, which makes it an offense,
And it’s no sin to sin in confidence. (Tartuffe, 4.5.116-120)

An overriding theme of Molière’s Tartuffe is not one of religion directly, but of that age-old concern of comme il faut, propriety, and appearance versus reality. The central problem that the play confronts is not with Tartuffe’s being a religious hypocrite (though, don’t we all just love those?), but with the fact that he uses his powers to manipulate others and — perhaps most importantly — the fact that his hypocrisy becomes known. Duping people is not evil; duping people to the point that it threatens their well-being may just be; duping them and having them find out definitely is.

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The following questions should help you begin thinking about the major themes, characters, and ideas in the primary text.

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The following questions should help you begin thinking about the major themes, characters, and ideas in the primary text.

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A tragedy must not be a spectacle of a perfectly good man brought from prosperity to adversity. For this merely shocks us. Nor, of course must it be that of a bad man passing from adversity to prosperity; for that is not tragedy at all, but the perversion of tragedy, and revolts the moral sense. Nor again, should it exhibit the downfall of an utter villain: since pity is aroused by undeserved misfortunes, terror by misfortunes befalling men like ourselves. There remains, then, as the only proper subject for tragedy, the spectacle of a man not absolutely or eminently good or wise, who is brought to disaster not by sheer depravity, but by some error or frailty. Lastly, the man must be highly renowned and prosperous — an Oedipus, a Thyestes, or some other illustrious person. –Aristotle, The Poetics

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