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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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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An allegory is a narrative in which the agents and action, and sometimes the setting as well, are contrived not only to make sense in themselves, but also to signify a second, correlated order of persons, things, concepts, or events.

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“Gothic signifies a writing of excess. It appears in the awful obscurity that haunted eighteenth-century rationality and morality. It shadows the despairing ecstasies of Romantic idealism and individualism and the uncanny dualities of Victorian realism and decadence. Gothic atmospheres—gloomy and mysterious—have repeatedly signaled the disturbing return of pasts upon presents and evoked emotions of terror and laughter.” (Fred Botting 1) from Gothic (1996)

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Satire is an ironic literary creation detailing the defeat of decency and virtue and the triumph of folly or vice. The work may utilize any literary form — either fictional or nonfictional — relying heavily upon parody, paradox, and anti-climax, and is usually infused with wit and high spirits. Because of its mix of jaunty vigor and bad news, there is no evident catharsis, the works being open-ended and disjunct. The implication at the close is that things will continue to get worse.

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Today’s visitors to Greece are often struck by the generous hospitality of the people. An ancient tradition lies behind the traveler’s welcome in Greece — and it is a tradition that was fundamentally religious before it became a part of social custom.

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In its strict use by literary critics, the term epic or heroic poem is applied to a work that meets at least the following criteria: it is a long narrative poem an a great and serious subject, related in an elevated style, and centered on a heroic or quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, a nation, or the human race. The “traditional epics” (also called “primary epics” or “folk epics”) were shaped by a literary artist from historical and legendary materials which had developed in the oral traditions of his nation during a period of expansion and warfare. To this group are ascribed the Iliad and Odyssey of the Greek Homer, and the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf.

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Determined by the culture that produced the literature, especially the epic, the heroic ideal represents the aspects of a hero that the culture upholds as representing its cultural ideal. Thus, while the hero represents a particular culture’s ideal located in place and time, much of how we currently observe as heroic is born of characteristics that many of these ancient heroes exemplify.

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Archetypes reflect universal, primitive, and elemental patterns whose effective embodiment in a literary work evokes a profound response from the reader. They manifest as narrative designs, character types, images identifiable in a wide variety of works of literature, myths, dreams, and ritualized modes of social behavior. Anthropologist J. G. Frazer, in his work The Golden Bough, suggests that an archetype represents elemental patterns of myth and ritual recurring in legends and ceremonies of diverse cultures. Carl Jung sees archetypes as “primordial images” or “psychic residue” of repeated types of experiences in the lives of our ancient ancestors that present themselves in the “collective unconscious” of the human race and give rise to myth, religion, dream, fantasy, and literature.

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Mythos — a story or plot, either true or false. Myths involve rituals (prescribed forms of sacred ceremony), and each myth represents one story in a mythology. A mythology is a system of hereditary stories once believed as true, but which we no longer believe. Poets use myths and mythology as literary conventions and devices because they appeal to a common knowledge and emotional response. Often myths operate as metaphors. In most cases, poets choose their myths carefully and use them symbolically as archetypes for certain traits. Poets often use myths to synthesize the insights of the western culture and past with the new discoveries of philosophy and physical science.

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