We explain what a tragedy is and what was the origin of this literary form. Also, some examples and what is the Greek tragedy.
What is tragedy?
Tragedy is a literary (dramatic) and theatrical form cultivated since ancient times, in which situations of conflict in which a character or a series of them, usually of the illustrious or heroic type, find themselves confronted because of a fatal error or the forms of their character to an irremediably sad fate, which usually ends in the death, craziness or exile of the protagonist.
The word tragedy comes from the Greek voicetragoedia, which literally means "song of the goat", a song that was sung in Athens during the festivals that honored the god Dionysus. The first to enact tragedies for the citizens of their cities were the ancient Greeks, who conferred on the theater and to lyrical representation an important role in the political, moral and ethical education of its citizens.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle, the first to formally study the tragic genre in hisPoetics (IV BC), defined it as the highest of the forms of artistic representation, since it showed the events directly to the viewer (without the mediation of narrators) and because it showed men higher than they really are, so that their fall unfortunately it had a cathartic effect on the audience.
Origin of the tragedy
The tragedy was first enacted in Ancient Greece (1200 - 146 BC), initially attributed to the poet Thespis (c. 550-500 BC), of whose works only fragments survive. However, his legacy allowed the later rise of the great Greek playwrights: Aeschylus (525-456 BC), Sophocles (496-406 BC) and Euripides (c. 484-406 BC),
After the conquest of Greece by the Roman Empire, the tragedy was inherited along with large segments of the Greek culture (for example, the Roman gods are the same, but with Latin names), which were incorporated into Roman practices.
The first Latin tragedy was composed by Livio Andrónico and represented in the year 514 of the foundation of Rome (240 a.C.). Later they would compose theirs Trasidas de Ennio, Marco Pacuvio and Seneca.
Examples of tragedy
Some well-known classical tragedies are:
- From Aeschylus. The Persians, The seven against Thebes, The supplicants, theOresteia (made ofAgamemnon, Thecoephoras YTheeumenides) YPrometheus in Chains.
- From Sophocles. Ajax, Philoctetes, Electra, Thetraquígirls, King Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone.
- From Euripides. Medea, Theheraclids, The Trojans, The bacchantes, Iphigenia betweenTauros, Iphigenia inÁulide, Orestes, Phoenician, Hippolytus, among other.
Instead, some modern tragedies:
- From William Shakespeare. Hamlet, Otello, TitusAndronicus, The Lear King, The Tempest, Macbeth, among many others.
- From Lope de Vega. Daughter of the air, The castle without revenge, The painter of his disgrace, among many others.
- By Federico García Lorca. Yerma, Bernarda Alba's house, Blood Wedding.
- By Georg Büchner. Woyzek.
- From Jean Racine. Iphigenia, Berenice, Athaliah, Alexander the Great, Phaedra, among other.
Greek tragedy
The great Greek playwrights: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, left skies of tragic works that inherited their episodes from the myths and religious songs of the time, in which the fortunes or misadventures of the great Greek heroes were related, within the framework of the great wars (as was the Trojan War).
These initial tragedies had a structure quite fixed, which according to Aristotle was divided into prologue, episode and exodus, together with two interventions by the chorus which are the parod and the stasis.
The Greek tragedy is considered the cradle of literature of the West, as well as Aristotle's text that describes it as the first text of literary theory to exist.