a way to examine and navigate texts. genre-a category of artistic, musical, or literary...
Post on 17-Dec-2015
215 Views
Preview:
TRANSCRIPT
Genre-a category of artistic, musical, or
literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content
Old Way: Examine form Superficial Traits
Structure Features
Wedding at the end, Invocation to the Muse, death of the hero?
New Way: Examine content “Dimension of the soul”
What part of the human experience is the story exploring?
Ways of Looking at Genres
Hero’s suffering and loss
(and society’s) as he moves from ignorance to self-knowledge
Moment of crossing a threshold into the tragic realm: “marked by the sudden catastrophe of the loss of a garden state”
Expands the boundaries of society’s vision or “ordinary awareness”
The Tragic Abyss
Tragedy is “less an
analogy of anything that happens in life than an unconcealing of the substratum of human existence” It’s what at the root
of existence that we are afraid to face
The Tragic Abyss
Tragedy “dredges
something up from the bottomless pit” “something
essentially metaphysical”
Descent into tragedy is transformative for hero, society, and READER
The Tragic Abyss
Tragic Hero: highly placed member of
society Hamartia: Hero’s weakness (tragic flaw/
mistake) which leads to others suffering
Tragedy Terms
Peripeteia: the moment of reversal in a
tragedy Anagnorisis: recognition of hero’s or
another’s “true identity,” sometimes a recognition of his part in causing the suffering, often an epiphany
Tragedy Terms
Hubris: pride in self that violates the
prerogative of the gods; produces incomprehensible nameless suffering
Telos: the end towards which a community or individual wishes to go; teleological questions ask “what do we wish to become or accomplish in the end?”
Tragedy Terms
Eudaimonia: the deep happiness that comes
from living virtuously and moving toward one’s telos throughout life; happiness that comes from accumulated
momentum or responsible excellence that one has built through living one’s life
richest happiness possible for a human, attaining quantities of internal, external, and narrative goods
Hedononia: immediate pleasure and satisfaction (the word is related to hedonism)
Tragedy Terms
There is no time left in tragedy Consequences of previous actions now have
their unforeseen consequences Things have already been decided as the
action of the play is occurring. Choice has been narrowed down (usually to
those with unwanted or painful consequences)
Time in Tragedy
Man is a fool Subject to whims,
fancies, lusts, etc. Acceptance and
survival within limits Comic protagonist
accepts way things are and alters as he has no fixed ideas
Tragedy vs. Comedy
Ennobling of mankind in the struggle
Displays limits on human behavior and capabilities
Tragic motion reveals things as they are not the way they appear or thought to be
Tragic hero is forced to alter, painfully
“Lord, what fools
these mortals be.”
“Man is a giddy
thing.”
• Humor vs. comedy• Humor:
• Subversion of expectations (and expectations)/ variations of patterns
• Emotional distance• Laughter
• Comedy:• Not necessarily “funny”• Komos: revel or Kome:
the village
The Comic Terrain
• Comedy “endures
and perseveres in a fallen world … making its way by mutual helpfulness toward a community of love within the larger order of society”
The Comic Terrain
• Comic protagonist is
a survivor• never quite takes
himself seriously enough to erect a rigid world of his own making, as does the tragic hero.
• Not tragic agony but the fearful mystery of joy.
The Comic Terrain
• Low or base
characters • insignificant aims• some
accomplishment of aims • either lightens the
initial baseness • reveals the
insignificance of the aims.
The Comic Terrain
• Moral punishment?• Often ends “happily” • Reinforcement of
community (a wedding or dance)
The Comic Terrain
Consequences don’t “stick”—or are minimized Unlike tragedy, time remains, giving
opportunities to try solutions or avoid consequence
Solutions or choices remain open
Time in Comedy
Tragedy is a whirlwind Comedy is a wave
Football time is tragic Baseball time is comic
Comedy vs. Tragedy
“Epic is both more
frequent and more diverse than the recognized canon tends to indicate. Characteristics intrinsic to its nature include its sense of totality and its consciousness of mission.”
The Epic Cosmos
FOUR TRAITS OF EPIC penetration of the veil
separating material and immaterial existence, allowing an intimate relation between gods and men
an eschatological expansion of time
The Epic Cosmos
FOUR TRAITS OF EPIC restoration of
equilibrium between masculine and feminine forces
a sense of motion, linking human action to a divine destiny, toward which epic senses history moves
The Epic Cosmos
Creates a full picture
of the world (culture)that is struggling in transition. Recognition of Loss Hope? New Order
The Epic Cosmos
Hero of an epic is
excessive A superabundance of
human abilities or traits
Often causes his problem
Sometimes pulls back, allowing others “the stage” so that his abilities will be even more impressive
The Epic Cosmos
Hero may or may not
die—explaining why he isn’t around any more, and allowing for the founding for which he struggles
The Epic Cosmos
The speaker relates
to a “beloved object” by Hoping for it, Consummating his
love for it, or Lamenting its
passing
The Prospect of Lyric
The “beloved
object” It is the object
(the receiver) of the speaker’s desire or praise
Is not necessarily an object—it could be a person, a time, an idea, or a thing
The Prospect of Lyric
top related