The Tragedy Genre

The Tragedy Genre

Organizational Structure, Plot Tropes, and Character Archetypes

Greek Tragedy

Tragedy genre is a type of story of human suffering. It has roots in ancient Greek theater and is still associated with drama. Traditional tragedy portrays the protagonist's fall from high authority or renown to ruin, often predetermined by fate or driven by a tragic flaw.

Examples: Romeo and Juliet, Oedipus, and Antigone

Character Archetypes

Organizational Structure

Plot Tropes

An archetype is a typical character, an action or a situation that seems to represent such universal patterns of human patterns.

“An archetype, also known as universal symbol, may be a character, a theme, a symbol or even a setting. Many literary critics are of the opinion that archetypes, which have a common and recurring representation in a particular human culture or entire human race, shape the structure and function of a literary work” – Literary Devices. Web.

A plot trope is someone characteristics and how they affect the plot of the story. They have a fatal flaw in this case and leads to there tragic end.

-Plot is the most important feature of tragedy. The parts it has to have is, the beginning, middle and an end. The plot must be complete and have unity of action, and Aristotle said that the worst kinds if plot are the ones that takes parts in episodes. Also the plot can be either or complex.

-Character is the second most importance in the tragedy structure. This is how you will see the character motivations. Characters have different personalities like: good or fine, fitness of character, true to life, consistency, necessary or probable, and true to life and yet more beautiful.

-Thought is third in importance in structure, it is found “ where something is proved to be or not to be, or a general maxim is enunciated”.

-Diction is the fourth and it is the expression of words, which go with the character and the setting

-The fifth things is song or melody, and is the musical in a chorus,” Aristotle argues that the Chorus should be fully integrated into the play like an actor; choral odes should not be “mere interludes,” but should contribute to the unity of the plot”.

- The end of a tragedy is called Katharsis

Examples

Death of a Salesmen is a tragedy genre plot trope because Willy Loman has a fatal flaw and that is him not seeing the world the way it is but, but how he wants to perceive it. So, every time he makes a choice, he just makes it worse. So then that leads him dying at the end.

Tragedy has a characteristic structure in which scenes have a chorus. (allows the chorus to comment in its song in a general way on what has been said in the preceding scene.)

Here is the structure of a typical tragedy (some tragedies have one more or one less episode and stasimon)3:

Prologue

Parodos

First Episode

First Stasimon

Second Episode

Second Stasimon

Third Episode

Third Stasimon

Fourth Episode

Fourth Stasimon

Exodos

Example 1: The Hero He or she is a character who has good qualities and struggles for harmony and peace in the society. (Hercules, Mr.Incredible)

Example 2: The Villain He or she has bad motivations and tries to oppose the character(s) and/or tries to gain control of something (The Joker and Scar in the Lion King)

Example 3: The Scapegoat A character that gets blamed for everything that happens.

Example 4: The Mentor The one that is suppose to protect a main character a story.

Example 5: The Ruler The King/Queen rules everything and its there way or no way.

The Tragedy Genre

Resources

QUIZ

http://literarydevices.net/archetype/

http://www2.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/poetics.html

http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/netshots/tragedy.htm

http://www.soulcraft.co/essays/the_12_common_archetypes.html

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSevenBasicPlots

The Tragedy has specific characteristics it need to have:

1. A male/female that has a significant role in there society

2. Has to have a fatal flaw

3. Has to have a downfall due to that fatal flaw

Now were going to play a game on Kahoot.it

1. type ( Kahoot.it on a phone )