The Tragedy Of King Lear, And The Sorrows Of Young Werther

Tragedy is an element of literature. It is rooted in Greek mythology and ancient Greek society. Its definition is “A literary piece that consists of a courageous noble character who must confront powerful obstacles, either external or from within”, and “the protagonist usually has a tragic

In the play King Lear, the two characters Gloucester and King Lear, both run on very parallel paths. the turning point in the play where the reader starts to feel sorry for them is as soon as things start to go bad for them. Early in the play, Lear makes bad decisions on which daughters to give his land and power to, while Gloucester is making Edmund feel bad for being a bastard. Their decisions blow up in their faces and the reader starts to feel bad for them. King Lear is driven to madness and Gloucester has his eyes gouged out and want to kill himself. The impressions on both of these characters change throughout the course of the play in the same way.

His two older daughters, Goneril and Regan, passionately profess their love for Lear, and the youngest, Cordelia, bluntly states that her words would fail to reflect her love for Lear. Cordelia’s response causes a series of events and encounters to take place. The use of syntax within the play shows the inner workings and the effects of deception in the play. In Act

In working so hard to project this persona, Lear is untrue to himself, and loses sight of who he is. Even the scheming Goneril and Regan notice that their father “hath ever but/ slenderly known himself.” (I, i, 282-283) This makes Lear a very insecure person, which explains in part why he insists that his daughters stroke his ego before receiving any of his kingdom. His identity crisis is highlighted when he asks who can verify who he is, and the response by the Fool is: “Lear’s shadow.” (I, iv, 251) At this point in the play, Lear is sane and is still the monarch of the kingdom. Nevertheless, the Fool’s insightful comment insists that Lear is nothing more than a shadow of his true self. Plato would say that he is trapped in the shadow world of the cave, unable to grasp the true forms.[5] This self-imposed persona estranges Lear from his audience; his vulnerability as a human is masked by his rash behavior and unjust decisions. Bloom says that “before he goes mad, Lear’s consciousness is beyond ready understanding; his lack of self-knowledge, blended with his awesome authority, makes him unknowable by us.”[6] Without understanding a character, an audience is most definitely unable to sympathize with him, and here we run into a potentially problematic issue. Aristotle believes that

Aristotle’s “The Poetics” describes the process of a tragedy. It is not the guide per se of writing a tragedy but is the idea’s Aristotle collected while studying tragedies. A tragedy, according to Aristotle, consists of six major points. The first and most important is the plot, which is what all the other points are based on. Such points are: character, language, thought, melody, and spectacle (Aristotle). A prime example of the usage of these parts in a tragic drama is evident in Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex”.

In the Poetics, Aristotle provides an outline of how the artist is to portray or represent the perfect Tragedy. A Tragedy, of course, was nothing more than a drama, in which the characters appeared "better" than in real life (in a comedy, they appeared "worse," according to Aristotle). Aristotle's Poetics makes several references to other dramatic works to illustrate his points, but he most commonly calls upon The Odyssey to support his argument for how a dramatic structure should be designed. However, along with the Odyssey, Aristotle extensively references Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. Both poetic works were enormously popular in their time (the former had been passed down orally for generations, and the latter won the top prizes at the dramatic festivals). Therefore, Aristotle is comfortable using both to support his viewpoint concerning Tragedy and the Tragic Hero. This paper will analyze the standards that Aristotle sets out concerning the definition of the Tragic Hero and show how Sophocles' Oedipus exemplifies Aristotle's definition of a Tragic Hero.

When hearing the word Tragedy, it would not be surprising if several different individuals would immediately think of several unique examples of the word. Perhaps one is an opera enthusiast who immediately thinks of Puccini’s La Boheme. Another is a war enthusiast that thinks about History Channel’s new episode highlighting the harshest and bloodiest battles of World War One. Even a third one obsessed with Greek mythology could generate a handful of examples of tragedy. Tragedy, like love or comedy is a universal theme that can be used to entertain, enlighten and excite its audiences. William Shakespeare, a world renown writer, was a master of this genre writing works, including Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and Hamlet. Another lesser known

What aspects employ the genre of tragedy within novels, plays, and cinema? Tragedy is something that is defined universally as the upheaval of any plot, story, or play where an event causes or leads to great suffering for everyone. Authors, playwrights, and even directors all know the certain scene or event that is key for the foreshadowing of tragedy to take place. This signal in any work allows us as an audience or reader to understand the meaning and significance for the need for a certain event to occur. King Lear the renown play about family ties by William Shakespeare has the genre tragedy stamped all over it due to the chaotic and brutal ending. The historian Hayden White’s essay “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact” focuses

Aristotle is known widely for developing his ideas on tragedy. He recorded these ideas in his Poetics in which he comments on the plot, purpose, and effect that a true tragedy must have. The structure of these tragedies has been an example for many writers including Shakespeare himself. Many of Shakespeare’s plays follow Aristotelian ideas of tragedy, for instance Macbeth does a decent job in shadowing Aristotle’s model.

eldest daughters all that he has, but Goneril and Regan do not fulfill Lear's needs

Tragedy as an element of the human experience has been the subject of many of the great works of literature written in the Western tradition. For some, tragedy embodies the highest form of humanity. It is through suffering that we are able to reveal ourselves most completely. Others see tragedy as an element of morality where we are to learn well the lessons of those who tempt the gods. The Ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, outlined a theory of tragedy as archetypal drama in his classic work, the Poetics. He uses the play by Sophocles, Oedipus the King (hereafter "Oedipus"), as the standard model by which all other tragedies are measured. In Aristotle's view, a perfect

Throughout time, the tragedy has been seen as the most emotionally pleasing form of drama, because of its ability to bring the viewer into the drama and feel for the characters, especially the tragic hero. This analysis of tragedy was formed by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, and also noted in his Poetics (guidelines to drama). As a playwright, Shakespeare used Aristotle’s guidelines to tragedy when writing Othello. The play that was created revolved around the tragic hero, Othello, whose tragic flaw transformed him from a nobleman, into a destructive creature, which would inevitably bring him to his downfall. This transformation follows an organic movement of the complex plot from the beginning, middle, to the end of the drama while

This reckless behaviour causes Lear to lose a valued and trustworthy follower. Without a doubt, Lear's rash behaviour contributes to the suffering he endures at the hands of others.

Aristotle was a famous disciple of Plato who first defines fine arts and he differs with his teacher Plato in his book of Poetic. His Poetic deals with the principles of Poetic art in general and tragedy in particular on the basis of his analysis and the principles of his Poetic are Probability, Catharsis, Mimesis, Tragic Hero and Hamartia. This essay will explain tragedy looking through Aristotle’s tragic principles in the book Things fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

The play King Lear is what is known as a Shakespearian tragedy. All that this means is that it was written by Shakespeare, possibly one of the most famous playwrights in history, and that the play is considered to fit into the category of a tragedy. A tragedy can be simply described as a play with an unhappy ending. Shakespeare wrote a number of tragedies, and readers of the plays debate which tragedies were the best. King Lear is certainly a well-known tragedy, but should it be counted as one of the best? Should it be considered one of Shakespeare’s four greatest tragedies? Many people do regard it as one of the best Shakespeare tragedies, but it generally comes down to opinion. In order to determine the best Shakespeare tragedy, it has to be stacked up against other well-known Shakespearian tragedies like Macbeth, Othello, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, and Hamlet in multiple ways, both objectively and subjectively. When compared to these plays, it is evident that King Lear should not be counted as one of the top four Shakespearian tragedies on account of three things, its popularity in relation to the other tragedies, its character development in relation to the other tragedies, and the clarity of its overall message compared to the other tragedies. This is not to say that King Lear is a poorly written play, just that although it is great in its own right, it does not deserve to be in the top four Shakespearian tragedies of all time list; other