Tragedy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes in its audience an accompanying
catharsis or pleasure in the viewing. While many cultures have developed forms that provoke
this paradoxical response, tragedy often refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a
unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization. That tradition has
been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect
of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural
form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it.[4] From its
obscure origins in the theaters of Athens 2,500 years ago, from which there survives only a fraction of
the work of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, through its singular articulations in the works
ofShakespeare, Lope de Vega, Racine, and Schiller, to the more recent naturalistic tragedy
of Strindberg,Beckett's modernist meditations
on
death,
loss
and
suffering,
and Müller's postmodernist reworkings of the tragic canon, tragedy has remained an important site of
cultural experimentation, negotiation, struggle, and change. A long line of philosophers—which
includes Plato, Aristotle, Saint
Augustine,Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin,
Camus, Lacan, and Deleuze—have analysed, speculated upon, and criticised the tragic form. [6] In the
wake of Aristotle'sPoetics (335 BCE), tragedy has been used to make genre distinctions, whether at
the scale of poetry in general (where the tragic divides against epic and lyric) or at the scale of the
drama (where tragedy is opposed to comedy). In the modern era, tragedy has also been defined
against drama, melodrama, the tragicomic, and epic theatre.[7]
Contents
1 Origin
o
1.1 Performance of Greek tragedies

2 Roman tragedy

3 Renaissance tragedy
o
3.1 Influence of Greek and Roman tragedy
o
3.2 Britain
o
3.3 Opera as tragedy

4 Neo-classical tragedy

5 Bourgeois tragedy

6 Modern development

7 Theories of tragedy

o
7.1 Aristotle
o
7.2 Hegel
o
7.3 Nietzsche
8 Similar dramatic forms in world theatre
o
8.1 Ancient Indian drama

9 See also

10 Notes

11 Sources

12 External links
Origin
The word "tragedy" appears to have been used to describe different phenomena at different times. It
derives from (Classical Greek τραγῳδία),contracted from trag(o)-aoidiā = "goat song", which comes
from tragos = "he-goat" and aeidein = "to sing" (cf. "ode"). Scholars suspect this may be traced to a
time when a goat was either the prize in a competition of choral dancing or was that around which
a chorus danced prior to the animal's ritual sacrifice.[8] In another view on the etymology, Athenaeus
of Naucratis (2nd–3rd century CE) says that the original form of the word
was trygodia from trygos (grape harvest) and ode (song), because those events were first introduced
during grape harvest.[9]
Writing in 335 BCE (long after the Golden Age of 5th-century Athenian tragedy), Aristotle provides
the earliest-surviving explanation for the origin of the dramatic art-form in his Poetics, in which he
argues
that
tragedy
developed
from
the improvisations of
the
leader
of choraldithyrambs (hymns sung and danced in praise of Dionysos, the god of wine and fertility):[8]
Anyway, arising from an improvisatory beginning (both tragedy and comedy—tragedy from the
leaders of the dithyramb, and comedy from the leaders of the phallic processions which even now
continue as a custom in many of our cities), [tragedy] grew little by little, as [the poets] developed
whatever [new part] of it had appeared; and, passing through many changes, tragedy came to a halt,
since it had attained its own nature. Poetics IV, 1449a 10-15[10]
In the same work, Aristotle attempts to provide a scholastic definition of what tragedy is:
Tragedy is, then, an enactment of a deed that is important and complete, and of [a certain]
magnitude, by means of language enriched [with ornaments], each used separately in the different
parts [of the play]: it is enacted, not [merely] recited, and through pity and fear it effects relief
(catharsis) to such [and similar] emotions. Poetics, VI 1449b 2-3[11]
There is some dissent to the dithyrambic origins of tragedy, mostly based on the differences between
the shapes of their choruses and styles of dancing. A common descent from pre-Hellenic fertility and
burial rites has been suggested. Nietzsche discussed the origins of Greek tragedy in his early
book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872).
Performance of Greek tragedies
Mask of Dionysus. Greek, Myrina, 2nd century BCE.
Athenian tragedy—the oldest surviving form of tragedy—is a type of dance-drama that formed an
important part of the theatrical culture of the city-state.[12] Having emerged sometime during the 6th
century BCE, it flowered during the 5th century BCE (from the end of which it began to spread
throughout the Greek world), and continued to be popular until the beginning of the Hellenistic
period.[13] No tragedies from the 6th century and only 32 of the more than a thousand that were
performed in during the 5th century have survived.[14] We have complete
texts extant by Aeschylus,Sophocles, and Euripides.[15]
Athenian tragedies were performed in late March/early April at an annual state religious festival in
honor of Dionysos. The presentations took the form of a contest between three playwrights, who
presented their works on three successive days. Each playwright offered a tetralogy consisting of
three tragedies and a concluding comic piece called a satyr play. The four plays sometimes featured
linked stories. Only one complete trilogy of tragedies has survived, the Oresteia of Aeschylus. The
Greek theatre was in the open air, on the side of a hill, and performances of a trilogy and satyr play
probably lasted most of the day. Performances were apparently open to all citizens, including women,
but evidence is scant. The theatre of Dionysus at Athens probably held around 12,000 people. [16]
All of the choral parts were sung (to the accompaniment of an aulos) and some of the actors' answers
to the chorus were sung as well. The play as a whole was composed in various verse meters. All
actors were male and wore masks. A Greek chorus danced as well as sang, though no one knows
exactly what sorts of steps the chorus performed as it sang. Choral songs in tragedy are often divided
into three sections: strophe ("turning, circling"), antistrophe ("counter-turning, counter-circling") and
epode ("after-song").
Many ancient Greek tragedians employed the ekkyklêma as a theatrical device, which was a platform
hidden behind the scene that could be rolled out to display the aftermath of some event which had
happened out of sight of the audience. This event was frequently a brutal murder of some sort, an act
of violence which could not be effectively portrayed visually, but an action of which the other
characters must see the effects in order for it to have meaning and emotional resonance. A prime
example of the use of the ekkyklêma is after the murder ofAgamemnon in the first play of
Aeschylus' Oresteia, when the king's butchered body is wheeled out in a grand display for all to see.
Variations on the ekkyklêma are used in tragedies and other forms to this day, as writers still find it a
useful and often powerful device for showing the consequences of extreme human actions. Another
such device was a crane, the mechane, which served to hoist a god or goddess on stage when they
were supposed to arrive flying. This device gave origin to the phrase "deus ex machina" ("god out of
a machine"), that is, the surprise intervention of an unforeseen external factor that changes the
outcome of an event.[citation needed]
Roman tragedy
Scene from the tragedy Iphigenia in Tauris by Euripides. Roman fresco in Pompeii.
Following the expansion of the Roman Republic (509–27 BCE) into several Greek territories between
270–240 BCE, Rome encountered Greek tragedy.[17] From the later years of the republic and by
means of the Roman Empire (27 BCE-476 CE), theatre spread west across Europe, around the
Mediterranean and even reached England.[18] While Greek tragedy continued to be performed
throughout the Roman period, the year 240 BCE marks the beginning of regular Roman
drama.[19] Livius Andronicus began to write Roman tragedies, thus creating some of the first
important works of Roman literature.[20] Five years later, Gnaeus Naevius also began to write
tragedies (though he was more appreciated for his comedies). [20] No complete early Roman tragedy
survives, though it was highly regarded in its day; historians know of three other early tragic
playwrights—Quintus Ennius, Marcus Pacuvius and Lucius Accius.[21]
From the time of the empire, the tragedies of two playwrights survive—one is an unknown author,
while the other is the Stoic philosopher Seneca.[22] Nine of Seneca's tragedies survive, all of which
are fabula crepidata (tragedies adapted from Greek originals); his Phaedra, for example, was based
on Euripides'Hippolytus.[23] Historians do not know who wrote the only extant example of the fabula
praetexta(tragedies based on Roman subjects), Octavia, but in former times it was mistakenly
attributed to Seneca due to his appearance as a character in the tragedy.[22]
Seneca's tragedies rework those of all three of the Athenian tragic playwrights whose work has
survived. Probably meant to be recited at elite gatherings, they differ from the Greek versions in their
long declamatory, narrative accounts of action, their obtrusive moralizing, and their bombastic
rhetoric. They dwell on detailed accounts of horrible deeds and contain long reflective soliloquies.
Though the gods rarely appear in these plays, ghosts and witches abound. Senecan tragedies
explore ideas of revenge, the occult, the supernatural, suicide, blood and gore. The Renaissance
scholarJulius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558), who knew both Latin and Greek, preferred Seneca to
Euripides.
Renaissance tragedy
( The information of this is missing here)
Influence of Greek and Roman tragedy
The classical Greek and Roman tragedy was largely forgotten in Western Europe from the Middle
Ages to the beginning of 16th century, andtheatre in this period was dominated by mystery
plays, morality plays, farces and miracle plays. As early as 1503 however, original language versions
of Sophocles, Seneca,
and Euripides,
as
well
as
comedic
writers
such
as Aristophanes, Terence and Plautus were all available in Europe and the next forty years would
see humanists and poets translating and adapting their tragedies. In the 1540s, the European
university setting (and especially, from 1553 on, the Jesuit colleges) became host to a Neo-Latin
theatre (in Latin) written by scholars. The influence of Seneca was particularly strong in its humanist
tragedy. His plays—with their ghosts, lyrical passages and rhetorical oratory—brought a
concentration on rhetoric and language over dramatic action to many humanist tragedies.
The most important sources for French tragic theatre in the Renaissance were the example
of Seneca and the precepts of Horace andAristotle (and contemporary commentaries by Julius
Caesar Scaliger and Lodovico Castelvetro), although plots were taken from classical authors such
as Plutarch, Suetonius, etc., from the Bible, from contemporary events and from short story
collections (Italian, French and Spanish). The Greek tragic authors (Sophocles and Euripides) would
become increasingly important as models by the middle of the 17th century. Important models were
also supplied by the Spanish Golden Age playwrights Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Tirso de
Molina and Lope de Vega, many of whose works were translated and adapted for the French stage.
Britain
In the English language, the most famous and most successful tragedies are those of William
Shakespeare and his Elizabethan contemporaries. Shakespeare's tragedies include:

Antony and Cleopatra

Coriolanus

Hamlet

Julius Caesar

King Lear

Macbeth

Othello

Romeo and Juliet

Timon of Athens

Titus Andronicus
A contemporary of Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, also wrote examples of tragedy in English,
notably:

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

Tamburlaine
John Webster (1580?–1635?), also wrote famous plays of the genre:

The Duchess of Malfi

The White Devil
Opera as tragedy
Contemporary with Shakespeare, an entirely different approach to facilitating the rebirth of tragedy
was taken in Italy. Jacopo Peri, in the preface to his Euridice refers to "the ancient Greeks and
Romans (who in the opinion of many sang their staged tragedies throughout in representing them on
stage)."[24] In creating the new artistic genre of opera, he and his contemporaries were striving to
recreate ancient tragedy. Some later operatic composers have also shared this aim. Richard
Wagner's concept of Gesamtkunstwerk ("integrated work of art"), for example, was intended as a
return to the ideal of Greek tragedy in which all the arts were blended in service of the
drama.[25] Nietzsche, in his The Birth of Tragedy (1872) was to support Wagner in his claims to be a
successor of the ancient dramatists.
Neo-classical tragedy
French actor Talma as Nero in Racine's Britannicus.
For much of the 17th century, Pierre Corneille, who made his mark on the world of tragedy with plays
like Medée (1635) and Le Cid (1636), was the most successful writer of French tragedies. Corneille's
tragedies were strangely un-tragic (his first version of Le Cid was even listed as a tragicomedy), for
they had happy endings. In his theoretical works on theatre, Corneille redefined both comedy and
tragedy around the following suppositions:

The stage—in both comedy and tragedy—should feature noble characters (this would eliminate
many low-characters, typical of the farce, from Corneille's comedies). Noble characters should
not be depicted as vile (reprehensible actions are generally due to non-noble characters in
Corneille's plays).

Tragedy deals with affairs of the state (wars, dynastic marriages); comedy deals with love. For a
work to be tragic, it need not have a tragic ending.

Although Aristotle says that catharsis (purgation of emotion) should be the goal of tragedy, this is
only an ideal. In conformity with the moral codes of the period, plays should not show evil being
rewarded or nobility being degraded.
Corneille continued to write plays through 1674 (mainly tragedies, but also something he called
"heroic comedies") and many continued to be successes, although the "irregularities" of his theatrical
methods were increasingly criticized (notably by François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac) and the success
of Jean Racine from the late 1660s signaled the end of his preeminence.
Jean Racine's tragedies—inspired by Greek myths, Euripides, Sophocles and Seneca—condensed
their plot into a tight set of passionate and duty-bound conflicts between a small group of noble
characters, and concentrated on these characters' double-binds and the geometry of their unfulfilled
desires and hatreds. Racine's poetic skill was in the representation of pathos and amorous passion
(like Phèdre's love for her stepson) and his impact was such that emotional crisis would be the
dominant mode of tragedy to the end of the century. Racine's two late plays ("Esther" and "Athalie")
opened new doors to biblical subject matter and to the use of theatre in the education of young
women. Racine also faced criticism for his irregularities: when his play, Bérénice, was criticised for
not containing any deaths, Racine disputed the conventional view of tragedy.
For more on French tragedy of the 16th and 17th centuries, see French Renaissance
literature and French literature of the 17th century.
Bourgeois tragedy
Further information: Bourgeois tragedy and Augustan drama
Bourgeois tragedy (German: Bürgerliches Trauerspiel) is a form that developed in 18th-century
Europe. It was a fruit of the Enlightenment and the emergence of the bourgeois class and its ideals. It
is characterized by the fact that its protagonists are ordinary citizens. The first true bourgeois tragedy
was an English play, George Lillo's The London Merchant; or, the History of George Barnwell, which
was first performed in 1731. Usually, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's play Miss Sara Sampson, which
was first produced in 1755, is said to be the earliest Bürgerliches Trauerspiel in Germany.
Modern development
In modernist literature, the definition of tragedy has become less precise. The most fundamental
change has been the rejection of Aristotle's dictum that true tragedy can only depict those with power
and high status. Arthur Miller's essay "Tragedy and the Common Man" (1949) argues that tragedy
may also depict ordinary people in domestic surroundings.[26] British playwright Howard Barker has
argued strenuously for the rebirth of tragedy in the contemporary theatre, most notably in his
volume Arguments for a Theatre. "You emerge from tragedy equipped against lies. After the musical,
you're anybody's fool," he insists.[27]
Theories of tragedy
Aristotle
Further information: Poetics (Aristotle)
The philosopher Aristotle said in his work Poetics that tragedy is characterized by seriousness
and dignity and involving a great person who experiences a reversal of fortune (Peripeteia).
Aristotle's definition can include a change of fortune from bad to good as in the Eumenides, but he
says that the change from good to bad as in Oedipus Rex is preferable because this
effects pity and fear within the spectators. Tragedy results in a catharsis (emotional cleansing) or
healing for the audience through their experience of these emotions in response to the suffering of
the characters in the drama.
According to Aristotle, "the structure of the best tragedy should be not simple but complex and one
that represents incidents arousing fearand pity--for that is peculiar to this form of
art."[28] This reversal of fortune must be caused by the tragic hero's hamartia, which is often
mistranslated as a character flaw, but is more correctly translated as a mistake (since the original
Greek etymology traces back to hamartanein, a sporting term that refers to an archer or spearthrower missing his target).[29] According to Aristotle, "The change to badfortune which he undergoes
is not due to any moral defect or flaw, but a mistake of some kind."[30] The reversal is the inevitable
but unforeseen result of some action taken by the hero. It is also a misconception that this reversal
can be brought about by a higher power (e.g. the law, the gods, fate, or society), but if a character’s
downfall is brought about by an external cause, Aristotle describes this as amisadventure and not a
tragedy.[31]
In addition, the tragic hero may achieve some revelation or recognition (anagnorisis--"knowing again"
or "knowing back" or "knowing throughout") about human fate, destiny, and the will of the gods.
Aristotle terms this sort of recognition "a change from ignorance to awareness of a bond of love or
hate."
In Poetics, Aristotle gave the following definition in ancient Greek of the word "tragedy" (τραγωδία):
Ἐστὶν οὖν τραγωδία μίμησις πράξεως σπουδαίας καὶ τελείας, μέγεθος ἐχούσης, ἡδυσμένῳ λόγῳ,
χωρὶς ἑκάστῳ τῶν εἰδὼν ἐν τοῖς μορίοις, δρώντων καὶ οὐ δι'ἀπαγγελίας, δι' ἐλέου καὶ φόβου
περαίνουσα τὴν τῶν τοιούτων παθημάτων κάθαρσιν.
which means Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is admirable, complete (composed of an
introduction, a middle part and an ending), and possesses magnitude; in language made pleasurable,
each of its species separated in different parts; performed by actors, not through narration; effecting
through pity and fear the purification of such emotions.
Common usage of tragedy refers to any story with a sad ending, whereas to be
an Aristotelian tragedy the story must fit the set of requirements as laid out by Poetics. By this
definition social drama cannot be tragic because the hero in it is a victim of circumstance and
incidents which depend upon the society in which he lives and not upon the inner compulsions —
psychological or religious — which determine his progress towards self-knowledge and
death.[32] Exactly what constitutes a "tragedy", however, is a frequently debated matter.
Hegel
G.W.F. Hegel, the German philosopher most famous for his dialectical approach to epistemology and
history, also applied such a methodology to his theory of tragedy. In his essay "Hegel's Theory of
Tragedy," A.C. Bradley first introduced the English-speaking world to Hegel's theory, which Bradley
called the "tragic collision", and contrasted against the Aristotelian notions of the "tragic hero" and his
or her "hamartia" in subsequent analyses of the Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy and of Sophocles'
Antigone. (Bradley, 114–156). Hegel himself, however, in his seminal "The Phenomenology of Spirit"
argues for a more complicated theory of tragedy, with two complementary branches which, though
driven by a single dialectical principle, differentiate Greek tragedy from that which follows
Shakespeare. His later lectures formulate such a theory of tragedy as a conflict of ethical forces,
represented by characters, in ancient Greek tragedy, but in Shakespearean tragedy the conflict is
rendered as one of subject and object, of individual personality which must manifest self-destructive
passions because only such passions are strong enough to defend the individual from a hostile and
capricious external world:
"The heroes of ancient classical tragedy encounter situations in which, if they firmly decide in favor of
the one ethical pathos that alone suits their finished character, they must necessarily come into
conflict with the equally [gleichberechtigt] justified ethical power that confronts them. Modern
characters, on the other hand, stand in a wealth of more accidental circumstances, within which one
could act this way or that, so that the conflict which is, though occasioned by external preconditions,
still essentially grounded in the character. The new individuals, in their passions, obey their own
nature...simply because they are what they are. Greek heroes also act in accordance with
individuality, but in ancient tragedy such individuality is necessarily... a self-contained ethical
pathos...In modern tragedy, however, the character in its peculiarity decides in accordance with
subjective desires...such that congruity of character with outward ethical aim no longer constitutes an
essential basis of tragic beauty..." (Hegel, ed. Glockner, vol XIV pp567–8).
Hegel's comments on a particular play may better elucidate his theory: "Viewed externally, Hamlet's
death may be seen to have been brought about accidentally ... but in Hamlet's soul, we understand
that death has lurked from the beginning: the sandbank of finitude cannot suffice his sorrow and
tenderness, such grief and nausea at all conditions of life ... we feel he is a man whom inner disgust
has almost consumed well before death comes upon him from outside."(Hegel, ed.
Glockner,XIV,p572)
Nietzsche
See also: Apollonian and Dionysian
Nietzsche, another German philosopher, dedicated his first full-length book, The Birth of
Tragedy (1872), to a discussion of the origins of Greek tragedy. He traced the evolution of tragedy
from early rituals, through the joining of Apollonian and Dionysian forces, until its early "death" in the
hands of Socrates. In opposition to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche viewed tragedy as the art form of
sensual acceptance of the terrors of reality and rejoicing in these terrors in love of fate (amor fati),
and therefore as the antithesis to the Socratic Method, or the belief in the power of reason to unveil
any and all of the mysteries of existence. Ironically, Socrates was fond of quoting from tragedies.
Nietzsche in "What I Owe to the Ancients" in his Twilight of the Idols wrote: "The psychology of the
orgiastic as an overflowing feeling of life and strength, where even pain still has the effect of a
stimulus, gave me the key to the concept of tragic feeling, which had been misunderstood both
by Aristotle and even more by modern pessimists. Tragedy is so far from being a proof of
the pessimism (inSchopenhauer's sense) of the Greeks that it may, on the contrary, be considered a
decisive rebuttal and counterexample. Saying Yes to life even in its strangest and most painful
episodes, the will to life rejoicing in its own inexhaustible vitality even as it witnesses the destruction
of its greatest heroes — that is what I called Dionysian, that is what I guessed to be the bridge to the
psychology of the tragic poet. Not in order to be liberated from terror and pity, not in order to purge
oneself of a dangerous affect by its vehement discharge — which is how Aristotle understood tragedy
— but in order to celebrate oneself the eternal joy of becoming, beyond all terror and pity — that
tragic joy included even joy in destruction."
[edit]Similar dramatic forms in world theatre
[edit]Ancient Indian drama
The writer Bharata Muni, in his work on dramatic theory A Treatise on Theatre (Sanskrit: Nātyaśāstra,
नाट्य शास्त्र, c. 200 BCE – 200 CE),[33]identified several rasas (such as pity, anger, disgust and
terror) in the emotional responses of audiences for the Sanskrit drama of ancient India. The text also
suggests the notion of musical modes or jatis which are the origin of the notion of the modern melodic
structures known as ragas. Their role in invoking emotions are emphasized; thus compositions
emphasizing the notes gandhara or rishabha are said to provoke "sadness" or "pathos" (karuna rasa)
whereas rishabha evokes heroism (vira rasa). Jatis are elaborated in greater detail in the
text Dattilam, composed around the same time as the Treatise.
The celebrated ancient Indian epic, Mahabharata, can also be related to tragedy in some ways.
According to Hermann Oldenberg, the original epic once carried an immense "tragic force". [34] It was
common in Sanskrit drama to adapt episodes from the Mahabharata into dramatic form.
[edit]See also
Theatre portal

Classicism

Comedy

Domestic tragedy

Hamartia

Peripeteia

Shakespearean tragedy

She-tragedy

Tragic hero

Tragicomedy
[edit]Notes
1. ^ Middle
English tragedie < Middle
French tragedie < Latintragoedia < Greek: τραγῳδία, tragōidia; see "Tragedy", p. 1637 in E.
Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, Volume II L-Z,
Elsevier (1967).)
2. ^ Banham (1998, 1118). In his speculative work on the origins ofAthenean tragedy, The
Birth of Tragedy (1872), Nietzsche writes of this "two-fold mood": "the strange mixture and
duality in the affects of the Dionysiac enthusiasts, that phenomenon whereby pain awakens
pleasure while rejoicing wrings cries of agony from the breast. From highest joy there comes
a cry of horror or a yearning lament at some irredeemable loss. In those Greek festivals
there erupts what one might call a sentimental tendency in nature, as if it had cause to sigh
over its dismemberment into individuals" §2 (Speirs 1999, 21).
3. ^ Banham (1998, 1118) and Williams (1966, 14–16).
4. ^ Williams (1966, 16).
5. ^ Williams (1966, 13–84) and Taxidou (2004, 193–209).
6. ^ Felski (2008, 1). See Dukore (1974) for primary material on most of these philosophers'
writings on tragedy and Carlson (1993) for an analysis of them. Walter Benjamin's major
work on tragic form is The Origin of German Tragic Drama (1928). Gilles Deleuzedevelops
his theory of tragic representation in his collaboration with Félix Guattari, AntiOedipus (1972).
7. ^ See Carlson (1993), Pfister (1977), Elam (1980) and Taxidou (2004). Drama, in the narrow
sense, cuts across the traditional division between comedy and tragedy in an anti- or agenericdeterritorialization from
the mid-19th
century onwards.
Both Bertolt
Brecht and Augusto
Boal define
their epic
theatre projects
(Non-Aristotelian
drama and Theatre of the Oppressed respectively) against models of tragedy. Taxidou,
however, reads epic theatre as an incorporation of tragic functions and its treatments of
mourning and speculation (2004, 193–209).
8. ^ a b Brockett and Hildy (2003, 13).
9. ^ Athenaeus of Naucratis, The deipnosophists.
10. ^ Janko (1987, 6).
11. ^ http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0056%3Asec
tion%3D1449b
12. ^ Brown (1998, 441), Cartledge (1997, 3-5), Goldhill (1997, 54), Ley (2007, 206), and Styan
(2000, 140). Taxidou notes that "most scholars now call 'Greek' tragedy 'Athenian' tragedy,
which is historically correct" (2004, 104).
13. ^ Brockett and Hildy (2003, 32-33), Brown (1998, 444), and Cartledge (1997, 3-5). Cartledge
writes that although Athenians of the 4th century judged Aeschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides "as the nonpareils of the genre, and regularly honored their plays with
revivals, tragedy itself was not merely a 5th-century phenomenon, the product of a shortlived golden age. If not attaining the quality and stature of the fifth-century 'classics', original
tragedies nonetheless continued to be written and produced and competed with in large
numbers throughout the remaining life of thedemocracy—and beyond it" (1997, 33).
14. ^ Brockett and Hildy (2003, 15) and Kovacs (2005, 379). We have seven by Aeschylus,
seven by Sophocles, and eighteen by Euripides. In addition, we also have the Cyclops, a
satyr play by Euripides. Some critics since the 17th century have argued that one of the
tragedies that the classical tradition gives as Euripides'—Rhesus—is a 4th-century play by
an unknown author; modern scholarship agrees with the classical authorities and ascribes
the play to Euripides; see Walton (1997, viii, xix). (This uncertainty accounts for Brockett and
Hildy's figure of 31 tragedies.)
15. ^ Brockett and Hildy (2003, 15). The theory that Prometheus Boundwas not written
by Aeschylus adds a fourth, anonymous playwright to those whose work survives.
16. ^ Ley (33–34)
17. ^ Brockett and Hildy (2003, 43).
18. ^ Brockett and Hildy (2003, 36, 47).
19. ^ Brockett and Hildy (2003, 43). For more information on the ancient Roman dramatists,
see the articles categorised under "Ancient Roman dramatists and playwrights" in Wikipedia.
20. ^ a b Brockett and Hildy (2003, 47).
21. ^ Brockett and Hildy (2003, 49).
22. ^ a b Brockett and Hildy (2003, 50).
23. ^ Brockett and Hildy (2003, 49–50).
24. ^ quoted in Christopher Headington, Roy Westbrook and Terry Barfoot (1987) Opera: a
History p.22 of 1991 Arrow edition
25. ^ Headington et al. p.178
26. ^ Miller (1949, 894).
27. ^ Barker (1989, 13).
28. ^ Aristotle. Poetics, Trans. W.H. Fyfe. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1932. Section 1452b
29. ^ Rorty, Amelie Oksenberg. Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992.
Page 178
30. ^ Poetics, Aristotle
31. ^ Aristotle, Poetics. Section 1135b
32. ^ Chiari, J. Landmarks of Contemporary Drama. London: Jenkins, 1965. Page 41.
33. ^ Banham (1998, 517).
34. ^ Hermann Oldenberg (1922), Das Mahabharata, Göttingen
[edit]Sources

Aristotle. 1974. "Poetics". Trans. S.H. Butcher. In Dukore (1974, 31-55).

Banham, Martin, ed. 1998. The Cambridge Guide to Theatre.Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ISBN
0-521-43437-8.

Barker, Howard. 1989. Arguments for a Theatre. 3rd ed. London: John Calder, 1997. ISBN 07190-5249-1.

Benjamin, Walter. 1928. The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Trans. John Osborne. London and
New York: Verso, 1998. ISBN 1-85984-899-0.

Bradley, A. C.. 1909. Oxford Lectures on Poetry. Reprint ed. Atlantic, 2007. ISBN 81-7156-3791.

Carlson, Marvin. 1993. Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey from the Greeks
to the Present. Expanded ed. Ithaca and London: Cornell UP. ISBN 0-8014-8154-6.

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1972. Anti-Oedipus. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and
Helen R. Lane. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Vol. 1 . New Accents Ser. London and
New York: Methuen. ISBN 0-416-72060-9.

Felski, Rita, ed. 2008. Rethinking Tragedy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. ISBN 0-8018-8740-2.

Janko, Richard, trans. 1987. Poetics with Tractatus Coislinianus, Reconstruction of Poetics II and
the Fragments of the On Poets. ByAristotle. Cambridge: Hackett. ISBN 0-87220-033-7.

Hegel, G. W. F.. 1927. "Vorlesungen uber die Asthetik." In ''Samlichte Werke. Vol 14. Ed.
Hermann Glockner. Stuttgart: Fromann.

Miller, Arthur. 1949. "Tragedy and the Common Man." In Dukore (1974, 894-897). Originally
published in The New York Times February 27, 1949.

Pfister, Manfred. 1977. The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Trans. John Halliday. European
Studies in English Literature Ser. Cambridige: Cambridge UP, 1988. ISBN 0-521-42383-X.

Rabinowitz, Nancy Sorkin. 2008. Greek Tragedy. Blackwell Introductions to the Classical World
ser. Malden, MA: Blackwell. ISBN 1-4051-2161-0.

Rehm, Rush. 1992. Greek Tragic Theatre. Theatre Production Studies ser. London and New
York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-11894-8.

Schlegel, August Wilhelm. 1809. Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. Available online.

Speirs, Ronald, trans. 1999. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings.By Friedrich Nietzsche. Ed.
Raymond Geuss and Ronald Speirs. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy ser.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ISBN 0-521-63987-5.

Taxidou, Olga. 2004. Tragedy, Modernity and Mourning. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. ISBN 07486-1987-9.

Williams, Raymond. 1966. Modern Tragedy. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN 0-7011-1260-3.
[edit]External links

Tragedy on In Our Time at the BBC. (listen now)

Oliver Taplin and Joshua Billings, What is Tragedy? (Oxford University Podcast).

Online edition of Aristotle's Poetics.
Tragicomedy
Tragicomedy is a literary genre that blends aspects of both tragic and comic forms. Most often seen
indramatic literature, the term can variously describe either a tragic play which contains enough
comic elements to lighten the overall mood or, often, a serious play with a happy ending.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Tragicomedy in theatre
o
1.1 Classical precedent
o
1.2 Renaissance revival

1.2.1 Italy

1.2.2 England

1.2.3 Later developments

2 See also

3 References

4 External links
Tragicomedy in theatre
Classical precedent
Tragic Comic Masks of Ancient Greek Theatrerepresented in the Hadrian's Villa mosaic.
There is no complete formal definition of tragicomedy from the classical age. It appears that the
Greek Philosopher Aristotle had something like the Renaissance meaning of the term (that is, a
serious action with a happy ending) in mind when, in Poetics, he discusses tragedy with a dual
ending. In this respect, a number of Greek and Roman plays, for instance Alcestis, may be called
tragicomedies, though without any definite attributes outside of plot. The word itself originates with
the Roman comic playwright Plautus, who coined the term somewhat facetiously in the prologue to
his play Amphitryon. The character Mercury, sensing the indecorum of the inclusion of both kings and
gods alongside servants in a comedy, declares that the play had better be a "tragicomoedia:"[2]
“
I will make it a mixture: let it be a tragicomedy. I don't think it would be appropriate to make it
consistently a comedy, when there are kings and gods in it. What do you think? Since a
slave also has a part in the play, I'll make it a tragicomedy. . . — Plautus, Amphitryon[1]
”
Renaissance revival
Italy
Plautus's comment had an arguably excessive impact on Renaissance aesthetic theory, which had
largely transformed Aristotle's comments on drama into a rigid theory. For "rule mongers" (the term
is Giordano Bruno's), "mixed" works such as those mentioned above, more recent "romances" such
as Orlando Furioso, and even The Odyssey were at best puzzles; at worst, mistakes. Two figures
helped to elevate tragicomedy to the status of a regular genre, by which is meant one with its own set
of rigid rules. Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio, in the mid-sixteenth century, both argued that the
tragedy-with-comic-ending (tragedia de lieto fin) was most appropriate to modern times and produced
his own examples of such plays. Even more important was Giovanni Battista Guarini. Guarini's Il
Pastor Fido, published in 1590, provoked a fierce critical debate in which Guarini's spirited defense of
generic innovation eventually carried the day. Guarini's tragicomedy offered modulated action that
never drifted too far either to comedy or tragedy, mannered characters, and a pastoral setting. All
three became staples of continental tragicomedy for a century and more.
]England
In England, where practice ran ahead of theory, the situation was quite different. In the sixteenth
century, "tragicomedy" meant the native sort of romantic play that violated the unities of time, place,
and action, that glibly mixed high- and low-born characters, and that presented fantastic actions.
These were the features Philip Sidney deplored in his complaint against the "mungrell Tragycomedie" of the 1580s, and of which Shakespeare's Polonius offers famous testimony: "The best
actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral,
tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited: Seneca
cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men."
Some aspects of this romantic impulse remain even in the work of more sophisticated
playwrights: Shakespeare's last plays, which may well be called tragicomedies, have often been
called romances.
By the early Stuart period, some English playwrights had absorbed the lessons of the Guarini
controversy. John Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess, an adaptation of Guarini's play, was
produced in 1608. In the printed edition, Fletcher offered an interesting definition of the term, worth
quoting at length: "A tragi-comedie is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it
wants deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some neere it, which is inough to
make it no comedie." Fletcher's definition focuses primarily on events: a play's genre is determined
by whether or not people die in it, and in a secondary way on how close the action comes to a death.
But, as Eugene Waith showed, the tragicomedy Fletcher developed in the next decade also had
unifying stylistic features: sudden and unexpected revelations, outré plots, distant locales, and a
persistent focus on elaborate, artificial rhetoric.
Some of Fletcher's contemporaries, notably Philip Massinger and James Shirley, wrote successful
and popular tragicomedies. Richard Brome also essayed the form, but with less success. And many
of their contemporary writers, ranging from John Ford to Lodowick Carlell to Sir Aston Cockayne,
made attempts in the genre.
Tragicomedy remained fairly popular up to the closing of the theaters in 1642, and Fletcher's works
were popular in the Restoration as well. The old styles were of course cast aside as tastes changed
in the eighteenth century; the "tragedy with a happy ending" eventually developed into melodrama, in
which form it still flourishes.
Later developments
The more subtle criticism that developed after the Renaissance stressed the thematic and formal
aspects of tragicomedy, rather than plot.Gotthold Ephraim Lessing defined it as a mixture of emotions
in which "seriousness stimulates laughter, and pain pleasure." Even more commonly, tragicomedy's
affinity with satire and "dark" comedy have suggested a tragicomic impulse in
modern absurdist drama. Friedrich Dürrenmatt, the Swiss dramatist, suggested that tragicomedy was
the inevitable genre for the twentieth century; he describes his play The Visit (1956) as a
tragicomedy. Tragicomedy is a common genre in post-World War II British theatre, with authors as
varied as Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard, John Arden, Alan Ayckbourn and Harold Pinter writing in
this genre.
[edit]See also

Comedy-drama

Outrapo

Schadenfreude

Theatre of the Absurd
[edit]References
1. ^ a b Dewar-Watson, Sarah; Eds. Subha Mukherji and Raphael Lyne (2007). "Aristotle and
Tragicomedy." Early Modern Tragicomedy. Brewer. pp. 15–23. ISBN 978-1-84384-130-2.
Retrieved 26 January 2012.
2. ^ Foster, Verna A. (2004). The Name and Nature of Tragicomedy. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
pp. 16. ISBN 0-7546-3567-8.
[edit]External links

Tragicomedy from Ancient Greece to Shakespeare

Post-war British drama
Melodrama
El
cuadro Mélodrame,
por Honoré
Daumier(1856-1860),
representando
la
típica
cenaparisiense como ocurría en la Boulevard du Temple; óleo en tela, atualmente conservado en
laNueva Pinacoteca de Múnich, Alemania.
El término melodrama, similar al melólogo pero con varios personajes, es originario
delgriego μέλος = canto o música y δράμα = acción dramática. Tiene el significado literal deobra
teatral dramática en la que se resaltan los pasajes sentimentales mediante la incorporación
de música instrumental, es decir, se trata de un espectáculo en el que el texto hablado se integra
con la música.
Con el paso del tiempo su uso se ha extendido abarcando cualquier tipo de obra teatral,
cinematográfica o literaria cuyos aspectos sentimentales, patéticos o lacrimógenos estén
exagerados con la intención de provocar emociones en el público.
Se refiere, algunas veces, a un efecto utilizado en la obra, otras com o estilo dentro de la obra y
otras como género (teatro musical). Existe desde el siglo XVII principalmente en laópera, en
el teatro, en la literatura, en el circo-teatro, en el cine, en la radio y en la televisión.
Contenido
[ocultar]

1 Ópera

2 Teatro

3 Circo

4 Cine

5 Radio

6 Televisión
[editar]Ópera
El melodrama en la ópera surgió en 1774 es una obra de escaso interés literiario, en la que se
suele acentuar la división de los personajes en moralmente buenos y malvados, para satisfacer la
sensiblería vulgar. Ariadne auf Naxos (Ariadna en Naxos texto de Brandesy arreglos de Jiří Antonín
Benda, 1774) sería una de los primeros intentos de esta relación musical. El melodrama
operístico alemán tiene esta característica.
El primero en definir el melodrama fue el filósofo francés Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). En
un comentario sobre la ópera Alceste de Gluck, en 1777, Rousseau lo definió con las siguientes
palabras:
Un tipo de drama donde las palabras y la música, en vez de caminar juntas, se presentan
sucesivamente, y donde la frase hablada es de cierta manera anunciada y preparada por la frase
musical.
[editar]Teatro
Si en la ópera este término distingue una forma o estilo musical, el melodrama teatral surge
oficialmente como género en 1800 con la obraCoeline de René-Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt,
definiendo un tipo complejo de espectáculo escénico iniciado después de la Revolución francesa.
Con una fuerte influencia de la pantomima, utiliza máquinas, escenas de combate y bailes para la
construcción de sus escenas y cuenta, en su construcción dramática, con la alternancia de
elementos de la tragedia y de la comedia.
El melodrama teatral surgió con gran éxito de público en temporadas que, por primera vez en la
historia del teatro, rebasaron las mil representaciones, esto lo convirtió en el primer género teatral de
dimensiones internacionales. Su fundador fue el dramaturgo francés René-Charles Guilbert de
Pixérécourt (1773-1844) y sus principales representantes en otros países fueron: el inglés Thomas
Holcroft (1745-1809) su introductor en Gran Bretaña, el alemán August Friederich von
Kotzebue (1761-1819) y, en los Estados Unidos, Dion Boucicault(1822-1890).
Su sostenido éxito lo convirtió en el principal género teatral y literario del siglo XIX y, posteriormente,
provocó que el melodrama teatral fuese absorbiendo y exportando elementos a todos los estilos,
formas y géneros artísticos que surgieron durante este período, principalmente elfolletín.
A finales del siglo XIX, las nuevas propuestas estéticas que surgieron, entre ellas el naturalismo,
acabaron negando muchas de las formas utilizadas hasta entonces en el melodrama, que se
consideraron anti-naturales, lo que propagó un excesivo valor negativo a todo lo que se
considerara melodramático, que se convirtió en sinónimo de una interpretación exagerada, antinatural, así como un recurso fácil de reclamo de la platea. El inicio de la cultura de masas en el siglo
XX trajo más confusión si cabe a este género de éxito.
[editar]Circo
El melodrama representado en el circo brasileiro es una forma constante de manifestación teatral
circense que puede ocurrir entre las atracciones del circo. De cierta forma toma algo del estilo del
melodrama teatral de finales del siglo XIX, dibujado en acciones, con conflictos polarizados, a través
de una dramaturgia simple, basada en conflictos familiares, actuado de una manera grandiosa o
exagerada, teniendo en cuenta los patrones de interpretación actuales que subrayan lo natural.
[editar]Cine
Les Deux Orphelines (1921), de D. W. Griffith.
El melodrama en el cine aporta diferentes significados. Las películas de aventura y acción de las
dos primeras décadas del siglo XX eran llamadas melodramas en aquella época y fue un género de
gran éxito durante su fase muda, influenciada por el teatro popular y el vaudeville de donde
procedían la mayoría de sus artistas.
Por otro lado, en la segunda mitad del siglo XX, las películas dirigidas a un cierto público femenino,
de características totalmente distintas al género de acción, también fueron llamados melodramas.
El término melodrama también abarca películas que tienen una carga emocional o moral muy fuerte
o emotiva, atendiendo al gusto de cada persona. Son películas dramáticas que buscan ser lo más
realistas posibles dando un significado y connotación humana (algunos ejemplos sonRompiendo las
olas de Lars von trier, La pianista de Michael Haneke, Persona de Ingmar Bergman, El último tango
en París de Bernardo Bertolucci o Todo sobre mi madre de Pedro Almodóvar).
[editar]Radio
Con la aparición de las novelas de radio y posteriormente las de la televisión, el
términomelodrama se acabó generalizando como un sinónimo de cierto tipo de producción cultural
que busca situaciones fáciles y cotidianas, con la utilización de fondos musicales que procuran
inducir al público al llanto o al suspense, con un sentimentalismo exagerado.
[editar]Televisión
La influencia del premio Nobel Jacinto Benavente asentó las bases del melodrama actual. El
melodrama está presente en la televisión como telenovela.
En la actualidad el término melodrama se aplica a cualquier obra actoril en formato audiovisual
donde las emociones del espectador sean inducidas o favorecidas por la música, y que esto se haga
de una manera muy marcada. Cabe notar que el cine y las series de televisiónsuelen utilizar a
profusión la musicalización para transmitir o inducir las emociones, sin embargo, el
término melodrama no se les aplica por lo general, pues tal término se ha convertido en una
etiqueta despectiva, para las obras que intentan inducir más emoción con su musicalización y con el
sentimentalismo exagerado, que con su contenido.
Las telenovelas Hispanoaméricanas y
melodramas.
las soap
operas anglosajonas
son
en
su
mayoría
Comedy (drama)
.
Comedy is a word that Greeks and Romans confined to descriptions of stage-plays with happy
endings. In the Middle Ages, the term expanded to include narrative poems with happy endings and a
lighter tone. In this sense Dante used the term in the title of his poem, La Divina Commedia. As time
passed, the word came more and more to be associated with any sort of performance intended to
cause laughter.[1]
The phenomena connected with laughter and that which provokes it has been carefully investigated
by psychologists and agreed upon the predominating characteristics are incongruity or contrast in the
object, and shock or emotional seizure on the part of the subject. It has also been held that the
feeling of superiority is an essential factor: thus Thomas Hobbes speaks of laughter as a "sudden
glory." Modern investigators have paid much attention to the origin both of laughter and of smiling, as
well as the development of the "play instinct" and its emotional expression.
Much comedy contains variations on the elements of surprise, incongruity, conflict, repetitiveness,
and the effect of opposite expectations, but there are many recognized genres of
comedy. Satire and political satire use ironic comedy used to portray persons or social institutions as
ridiculous or corrupt, thus alienating their audience from the object of humor.[citation needed]
Parody borrows the form of some popular genre, artwork, or text but uses certain ironic changes to
critique that form from within (though not necessarily in a condemning way). Screwball
comedy derives its humor largely from bizarre, surprising (and improbable) situations or
characters. Black comedy is defined by dark humor that makes light of so called dark or evil elements
in human nature. Similarly scatological humor, sexual humor, and race humor create comedy by
violatingsocial conventions or taboos in comedic ways.
A comedy of manners typically takes as its subject a particular part of society (usually upper class
society) and uses humor to parody or satirize the behavior and mannerisms of its
members. Romantic comedy is a popular genre that depicts burgeoning romance in humorous terms,
and focuses on the foibles of those who are falling in love.
Contents
[hide]

1 Etymology

2 History

3 Types of comic drama

4 References
o
4.1 Notes
o
4.2 Bibliography
[edit]Etymology
The word "comedy" is derived from the Classical Greek κωμῳδία, which is a compound either
of κῶμος (revel) or κώμη (village) and ᾠδή(singing): it is possible that κῶμος itself is derived
from κώμη, and originally meant a village revel. The adjective "comic" (Greek κωμικός), which strictly
means that which relates to comedy is, in modern usage, generally confined to the sense of
"laughter-provoking".[2] The word came into modern usage through the Latin comoedia and
Italian commedia and has, over time, passed through various shades of meaning.[1]
[edit]History
In ancient Greece, comedy seems to have originated in bawdy and ribald songs or recitations
apropos of fertility festivals or gatherings, or also in making fun at other people or
stereotypes.[2] Aristotle, in the Poetics, states that comedy originated in Phallic songs and the light
treatment of the otherwise base and ugly. He also adds that the origins of comedy are obscure
because it was not treated seriously from its inception.[3]
Northrop Frye described the comic genre as a drama that pits two societies against each other in an
amusing agon or conflict. He depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a
"Society of the Old",[4] but this dichotomy is seldom described as an entirely satisfactory explanation.
A later view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a powerless youth
and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to his hopes; in this sense, the youth is understood
to be constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to take recourse to
ruses which engender very dramatic irony which provokes laughter.[5]
[edit]Types of comic drama
See also: History of theatre

Ancient Greek comedy, as practiced by Aristophanes and Menander

Ancient Roman comedy, as practiced by Plautus and Terence

Ancient Indian comedy, as practiced in Sanskrit drama

Burlesque, from Music hall and Vaudeville to Performance art

Citizen comedy, as practiced by Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton and Ben Jonson

Clowns such as Richard Tarlton, William Kempe and Robert Armin

Comedy of humours, as practiced by Ben Jonson and George Chapman

Comedy of intrigue, as practiced by Niccolò Machiavelli and Lope de Vega

Comedy of manners, as practiced by Molière, William Wycherley and William Congreve

Comedy of menace, as practiced by David Campton and Harold Pinter

comédie larmoyante or 'tearful comedy', as practiced by Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La
Chaussée and Louis-Sébastien Mercier

Commedia dell'arte, as practiced
Meyerhold and Jacques Copeau

Farce, from Georges Feydeau to Joe Orton and Alan Ayckbourn

Jester

Laughing comedy, as practiced by Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Restoration comedy, as practiced by George Etherege, Aphra Behn and John Vanbrugh

Sentimental comedy, as practiced by Colley Cibber and Richard Steele

Shakespearean comedy, as practiced by William Shakespeare

Dadaist and Surrealist performance, usually in cabaret form

Theatre of the Absurd, used by some to describe Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Jean
Genet and Eugène Ionesco[6]
[edit]References
[edit]Notes
1. ^ a b Oxford English Dictionary
in
the
twentieth-century
by Dario
Fo, Vsevolod
2. ^ a b Francis MacDonald Cornford, The Origin of Attic Comedy, 1934.
3. ^ Aristotle, Poetics, lines beginning at 1449a
4. ^ Frye, Northrop The Anatomy of Criticism. 1957
5. ^ Marteinson, 2006
6. ^ This list was compiled with reference to The Cambridge Guide to Theatre (1998).
[edit]Bibliography

Aristotle, Poetics.

Buckham, Philip Wentworth, Theatre of the Greeks, 1827.

Marteinson, Peter (2006). On the Problem of the Comic: A Philosophical Study on the Origins of
Laughter. Legas Press, Ottawa, 2006.

Pickard-Cambridge, Sir Arthur Wallace

Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy , 1927.

The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens, 1946.

The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 1953.

Raskin, Victor, The Semantic Mechanisms of Humor, 1985.

Riu, Xavier, Dionysism and Comedy, 1999. [1]

Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane, Tragedy and Athenian Religion, Oxford University Press, 2003.

Wiles, David, The Masked Menander: Sign and Meaning in Greek and Roman Performance,
1991.