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A tragic hero (or tragic heroine if they are female) is the protagonist of a tragedy. In his Poetics, Aristotle records the descriptions of the tragic hero to the playwright and strictly defines the place that the tragic hero must play and the kind of man he must be. Aristotle based his observations on previous dramas. [1]
Aristotle finds that tragedy deals with serious, important, and virtuous people. Comedy, on the other hand, treats of less virtuous people and focuses on human "weaknesses and foibles". [ 15 ] Aristotle introduces here the influential tripartite division of characters : superior (βελτίονας) to the audience, inferior (χείρονας ...
In Lessing's view, Aristotle meant that it is simply always better for tragedy to end in misfortune. [ 55 ] [ 56 ] [ 57 ] Lessing's own solution is that in chapter 13 Aristotle establishes the best plot structure, and in 14 the best treatment of pathos, or scene of suffering.
Regarding his view that emphasizes plot above character, Aristotle notes, "Tragedy is imitation not of human beings, but of actions and of a life." [ 15 ] [ 16 ] To show the difference between plot and character, he uses a metaphor that compares a plot to a sketched outline, and character to the colors that flesh out the sketch.
The most fundamental change has been the rejection of Aristotle's dictum that true tragedy can only depict those with power and high status. Arthur Miller's essay "Tragedy and the Common Man" (1949) argues that tragedy may also depict ordinary people in domestic surroundings thus defining Domestic tragedies. [56]
While it is believed that Aristotle's Poetics originally comprised two books – one on comedy and one on tragedy – only the portion that focuses on tragedy has survived. Aristotle taught that tragedy is composed of six elements: plot-structure, character, style, thought, spectacle, and lyric poetry. [ 157 ]
Aristotelianism (/ ˌ ær ɪ s t ə ˈ t iː l i ə n ɪ z əm / ARR-i-stə-TEE-lee-ə-niz-əm) is a philosophical tradition inspired by the work of Aristotle, usually characterized by deductive logic and an analytic inductive method in the study of natural philosophy and metaphysics.
Aristotle says that peripeteia is the most powerful part of a plot in a tragedy along with discovery. A peripety is the change of the kind described from one state of things within the play to its opposite, and that too in the way we are saying, in the probable or necessary sequence of events.