DRAMA 201: World Drama I (2008)

When you are trying to articulate how your example is tragic, and you are trying to draw comparisons with the plays, do not try to twist your articulation of tragedy to fit the plays, or vice versa. If indeed you find that our contemporary idea of tragedy is different than the one Aristotle championed, or different than what we find in The Oresteia, Everyman, or Matsukaze, then it’s your job to articulate those differences, and try to account for them. There must be some similarity to traditional dramatic definitions of tragedy, of course, for the term ‘tragedy’ to mean anything stable at all, but you can trace the variations in your Think Tank.