Medea: Character and Plot

Some Plot Questions to Consider

What is Greek Tragedy?

Character Roles

Track the order in which events are related, noting coincidence, parallel and contrasting structures, and repeated challenges, crises, conciliations, episodes, symbols, motifs.

Why is the text structured in this way: to create significance, raise the level of generality, extend or complicate the meaning?

If events don’t seem to happen with any particular relation, is this a sign of bad writing, or a thematic choice, meant to represent the chaotic nature of human experience, a failure in a character's experience or personality, or the lack of meaningful order in the universe?

(Kirszner and Mandell and http://www.brocku.ca/english/jlye/criticalreading.html#pcharacterization)

Aristotle:

"Tragedy, then, is a process of imitating an action which has serious implications, is complete, and possesses magnitude; by means of language which has been made sensuously attractive, with each of its varieties found separately in the parts; enacted by the persons themselves and not presented through narrative; through a course of pity and fear completing the purification (catharsis[*], sometimes translated "purgation") of such emotions."

a) "imitation" (mimesis): Aristotle asserts that the artist does not just copy the shifting appearances of the world, but rather imitates or represents Reality itself, and gives form and meaning to that Reality. In so doing, the artist gives shape to the universal, not the accidental. Poetry, Aristotle says, is "a more philosophical and serious business than history; for poetry speaks more of universals, history of particulars."

b) "an action with serious implications": serious in the sense that it best raises and purifies pity and fear; serious in a moral, psychological, and social sense.

c) "complete and possesses magnitude": not just a series of episodes, but a whole with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The idea of imitation is important here; the artist does not just slavishly copy everything related to an action, but selects (represents) only those aspects which give form to universal truths.

d) "language sensuously attractive...in the parts": language must be appropriate for each part of the play: choruses are in a different meter and rhythm and more melodious than spoken parts.

e) tragedy (as opposed to epic) relies on an enactment (dramatic performance) not on "narrative" (the author telling a story).

f) "purification" (catharsis): tragedy first raises (it does not create) the emotions of pity and fear, then purifies or purges them. Whether Aristotle means to say that this purification takes place only within the action of the play, or whether he thinks that the audience also undergoes a cathartic experience, is still hotly debated. One scholar, Gerald Else, says that tragedy purifies "whatever is 'filthy' or 'polluted' in the pathos, the tragic act" (98). Others say that the play arouses emotions of pity and fear in the spectator and then purifies them (reduces them to beneficent order and proportion) or purges them (expels them from his/her emotional system).

As you think about character/characterization.....

• Is the character round or flat?
• Is the character static or dynamic?
• What is the orientation of the character -- how aware is s/he of her/his own and others' needs and environment?
• How much control over her or his emotions, thoughts and language does the speaker have?
• How does the narrator characterize the character through comment or through description?
• Who are the story’s protagonists, antagonists and minor characters? What roles do they play?
• Are there any stock, caricature or foil characters?
• What are the character’s physical, personal and emotional traits?
• What do we know of the character’s personal history?

(Kirszner and Mandell and http://www.brocku.ca/english/jlye/criticalreading.html#pcharacterization)

How does Euripides fulfill the rules of tragedy in terms of character? How does he break the rules? What is the effect of this rule break in terms of the impact and meaning of the play?

II. The Tragic Hero

The tragic hero is "a [great] man who is neither a paragon of virtue and justice nor undergoes the change to misfortune through any real badness or wickedness but because of some mistake."

a) a great man: "one of those who stand in great repute and prosperity, like Oedipus and Thyestes: conspicuous men from families of that kind." The hero is neither a villain nor a model of perfection but is basically good and decent.

b) "mistake" (hamartia): This Greek word, which Aristotle uses only once in the Poetics, has also been translated as "flaw" or as "error." The great man falls through--though not entirely because of--some weakness of character, some moral blindness, or error. We should note that the gods also are in some sense responsible for the hero's fall.

• The protagonist is the central character in the plot's conflict.
• The antagonist is the force in conflict with the protagonist. It may be society, nature, or fate, as well as another person. It can also be the protagonist's own self, if he or she has an internal conflict.
• The hero or heroine is the main character in a narrative or dramatic work. The more neutral term protagonist is often preferable, to avoid confusion with the usual sense of heroism .
• The anti-hero is a central character in a dramatic or narrative work who lacks the qualities of nobility and magnanimity expected of traditional heroes and heroines .

Medea: Character and Plot

Plot

• A character foil is a character whose traits are in direct contrast to those of the principal character. The foil therefore highlights the traits of the protagonist. The foil is usually a minor character, although if there are two protagonists, they may be foils of each other.
• A doppelganger is the (evil) twin, double, ghost, or mirror image of a character
• A stock character is a character who possesses expected traits of a group rather than an individual.
• A caricature is characterized by a single dominant physical or emotional trait.

II. The Tragic Hero

The tragic hero is "a [great] man who is neither a paragon of virtue and justice nor undergoes the change to misfortune through any real badness or wickedness but because of some mistake."

a) a great man: "one of those who stand in great repute and prosperity, like Oedipus and Thyestes: conspicuous men from families of that kind." The hero is neither a villain nor a model of perfection but is basically good and decent.

b) "mistake" (hamartia): This Greek word, which Aristotle uses only once in the Poetics, has also been translated as "flaw" or as "error." The great man falls through--though not entirely because of--some weakness of character, some moral blindness, or error. One the most common is hubris, or excessive pride. We should note that the gods also are in some sense responsible for the hero's fall.

III. Plot

Aristotle distinguished six elements of tragedy: "plot, characters, verbal expression, thought, visual adornment, and song-composition." Of these, PLOT is the most important. The best tragic plot is single and complex, rather than double ("with opposite endings for good and bad"--a characteristic of comedy in which the good are rewarded and the wicked punished). All plots have some pathos (suffering), but a complex plot includes reversal and recognition.

a) "reversal" (peripeteia): occurs when a situation seems to developing in one direction, then suddenly "reverses" to another. For example, when Oedipus first hears of the death of Polybus (his supposed father), the news at first seems good, but then is revealed to be disastrous.

b) "recognition" (anagnorisis or "knowing again" or "knowing back" or "knowing throughout" ): a change from ignorance to awareness of a bond of love or hate. For example, Oedipus kills his father in ignorance and then learns of his true relationship to the King of Thebes. Recognition scenes in tragedy are of some horrible event or secret, while those in comedy usually reunite long-lost relatives or friends. A plot with tragic reversals and recognitions best arouses pity and fear.

c) "suffering" (pathos)[: Also translated as "a calamity," the third element of plot is "a destructive or painful act." The English words "sympathy," "empathy," and "apathy" (literally, absence of suffering) all stem from this Greek word.

Narrative/ Plot: all the events of text in order they are related. Authors may choose not to use chronological order to build interest or make connections: instead, they employ flashbacks, time lapses, or flash forwards.

Story/ Narratology: sequence of events we reconstruct, ordering and dropping unimportant stuff

Exposition: an explanation of the situation and the condition of the characters

Rising Action: tension is built through a series of complications, incidents which either help or hinder the protagonist in finding a solution

Climax: the peak or turning point of the action

Denouement: the part after the climax. It gives any necessary explanation and ends with resolution, the sense of at the end of the story that it is complete

Resolutions may be:

Closed: readers feel that they know what will happen. The various parts of the plot are tied together satisfactorily, and the reader feels a sense of completion.

Open: readers must draw their own conclusions; they do not know what will happen.

Cliffhangers: an abrupt ending at an exciting and often dangerous time in the plot. Its purpose is to keep the reader reading. It is usually found at the end of a chapter, but occasionally a book will end this way.

Aristotle Again....

Know the Difference

Now, according to our definition, Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is complete, and whole, and of a certain magnitude[1] … As therefore, in the other imitative arts, the imitation is one when the object imitated is one, so the plot, being an imitation of an action, must imitate one action and that a whole, the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed. For a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible difference, is not an organic part of the whole.

unity of action: a play should have one action that it follows, with minimal subplots.

unity of time: the action in a play should occur over a period of no more than 24 hours.

unity of place: a play should exist in a single physical space and should not attempt to compress geography, nor should the stage represent more than one place.

Direct

Characterization:

Direct: methods like the attribution of qualities in description or commentary

Indirect (or ‘dramatic’) methods inviting readers to infer qualities from characters' actions, speech, or appearance

But....

reversal

recognition

suffering

who goes through each of these in the play? Does this play with the rules of the genre in some ways?

Indirect

Dear Carolyn:

When my grandson was born, I thought it was the greatest thing, and it probably is. However, he is 8, and his parents told him it is okay to call me by my first name. I do not agree. He has, but for a few times, not called me Grandma.

Also, they combined their two last names, my son and daughter-in-law, not hyphenated, as his last name.

I am a very warm person but so hurt that I have lost my closeness to my grandson. It is very hard, and I feel myself distancing my feelings toward him. My son does not feel their way is wrong.

What is in a name or a title that makes it so important?

A Lost Grandma

Character

A personage in a narrative work.

Characterization

  The representation of persons in a narrative work. Character can be revealed through the character's actions, speech, and appearance, the comments of other characters, and those of the author.

designed by Péter Puklus for Prezi