classical tragedy definition/What is classical tragedy in literature/greek tragedy definition world history/Classical tragedy

 classical tragedy definition/greek tragedy definition world history/classical tragedy definition literature/What is classical tragedy in literature

What is classical tragedy in literature ?

classical tragedy definition:

    Tragedy a species of literature developed in the ancient ages in Greek and Rome as a ritualistic celebration of the God of fertility production and fruitfulness, Dionysus. But within a relatively short period of time became a representation of human life, the life of the kings and princess in confrontation the mighty power of Greek Gods. Though the ritualistic celebration included the performance of comic scenes , recitation of lyrics and singing of songs the performance of tragic scenes attracted much more interest of the audience than other performances. According to the stage of development the classical drama is divided into the groups - The old drama and new drama. Aristotle in his poetics summarizes the basic features of the classical drama - both comedies and tragedies. It is agreed by all scholars that all forms of modern drama had derives from the classical originals.

    Though hundreds of tragedies were writer in the ancient times, only a number of theme are still extant. If we go through them, certain basic features present themselves before us -

What is the features of classical tragedy ?

    i) All the heroes of classical tragedies belongs to the highest rank of society king, princess or generals. They are found unwittingly challenging the power and authority of God in the courses of their action.

ii) All heroes though extraordinary personalities must have a tragic flow in most cases 'pride' in their own abilities.

iii) The essential part of the plot include the four different stages - the introductory part, the choral part, the episode part and the exodus part. Thematically, a tragic play depicts a journey from ignorance 'to' recognition and then the final tragic down fall.

iv) The classical tragedy is fatalistic as fate appears to be omnipotent force, controlling the destiny of all human affairs and punishing the puny mortals at will.

v) The chorus plays a very important function as it is a sharer of the action directly influencing or being influenced by human action.

vi) Structurally, there is no act-division but it has a clear beginning a middle and an end. The classical tragedy strictly  observes three unities of time , place and action.

vii) The important at such tragic performance is both 'pity' and 'fear'. The pity is the result of disproportionate suffering of the tragic. The 'fear' is the result of our awe at the down fall of such gigantic personality like a king .

viii) The classic tragedy strictly prohibits the inclusion of comic elements and murderous sense that violate the  sense of aesthetics. 

    The classical tragedy reached its (high point) zenith at glory in the hands of Sophocles , Euripides and other Greek writer.

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