Greek Concept of Tragedy

Almost every culture offers an audience pleasure - paradoxically - through an art based on human suffering. In Western culture a significant form of such art is tragedy, a word whose meaning changes with time and place of text or performance. Through the centuries, too, the very word 'tragedy' has acquired a valorizing resonance, which is unique for an art form. Ancient and modern critics have contrasted tragedy with comedy; and more recently with melodrama. Early critics - pre-eminently Aristotle - focused on tragic action, whereas recent critics dwell on tragic vision. After centuries of commentary on Greek ...