Introduction to Tragedy & Tragic Language

We started by considering the function of tragedy; looking at a brief summary of key events in Hamlet we discussed why plays which have such awful events might be so popular. We decided that tragedy could be a genre in which people find solace and empathy for their own personal struggles; that many of the most dramatic events in storylines have naturally tragic outcomes (eg. murder); that a writer can use tragic occurrences to teach a moral lesson; that life is marked with unfairness and suffering and so as a genre it may have a close affinity to life as we live it; that as an audience we feel a greater emotional connection to characters who suffer in a play.

Focussing on AO3, we looked at a range of quotations on tragedy from different sources, and from them identified some of our key expectations in terms of Plot, Character, Attitudes and Themes. Some of the key points were that tragic events are often highlighted by the increasing isolation of a central character, the breakdown of their relationships, and an "emotional death" within them; we saw that tragedy can involve a small trigger which sets of a story which seems inevitable, and becomes increasingly chaotic; we agreed that tragedy is mostly focussed on the individual rather than the masses, because it enables a deeper emotional connection with the audience; that tragedy may explore a lack of purpose in life, and expose the fragile nature of what seems strong - such as morality and relationships.

We then focused on AO2 and looked at examples of literature from different times, places and contexts to explore tragic experience, and the main features we find in writing about tragedy. We analysed texts from Ancient Greece, The Bible, Victorian England, and post-Holocaust. Among the key points we found were ideas of things which had once been a protecting force disappearing; powerlessness to control the circumstances of your own life; being engulfed by hostility. We found heavy use of metaphor, imagery and symbolism, often using an image which seems out of place to highlight the unnaturalness of a situation, or taking a positive image and using language to invert it to a negative. Rhythm can often be repetitive and flowing, highlighting the way tragedy can seem inevitable and a constant cycle.

Comments could perhaps focus on how these introductions to Tragedy inform your understanding of the first scene from Othello.


Mr. Nussbaum