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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's work on aesthetics consists of the Poetics, Politics (Bk VIII), and Rhetoric. [8] The Poetics was lost to the Western world for a long time. The text was restored to the West in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance only through a Latin translation of an Arabic version written by Averroes. [9]
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 ]
Poetic justice describes an obligation of the dramatic poet, along with philosophers and priests, to see that their work promotes moral behavior. [10] 18th-century French dramatic style honored that obligation with the use of hamartia as a vice to be punished [10] [11] Phèdre, Racine's adaptation of Euripides' Hippolytus, is an example of French Neoclassical use of hamartia as a means of ...
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.