1. Tragedy AP Literature

2. What is tragedy?  Tragedy: a serious and often somber drama, written in prose or verse, that typically ends in disaster and that focuses on a character who undergoes unexpected personal reversals  Tragedy: your best efforts lead you to your doom  “Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy.” F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. Why is tragedy so important? (AKA: Why do we read so many depressing stories in English???)

4. The Ancient Greeks “Ancient Greece still talks to us through the plays of Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus, whose works celebrate their civilization. At the root of Greek tragedy is the dual recognition that humankind suffers terribly but that the suffering is not without meaning. Perhaps the implication of classical tragedy is for us to see that we should all become humbly submissive to our fate. Is that Aristotelian theater? True tragedy shows the depth of the human spirit.”

5. The Nature of Tragedy

6. Modern Viewpoints S. H. Butcher “Tragedy, in its pure idea, shows us a mortal will engaged in an unequal struggle with destiny, whether that destiny be represented by the forces within or without the mind.” Arthur Miller “I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing – his sense of personal dignity.”