Tragedy
Tragedy (Ancient Greek: τραγῳδία, tragōidia, "he-goat-song") 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, the term 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.
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Famous quotes containing the word tragedy:
“It is comedy which typifies, where it is tragedy which individualizes; where tragedy observes the nice distinctions between man and man, comedy stresses those broad resemblances which make it difficult to tell people apart.”
—Harry Levin (b. 1912)
“When death comes too near, comedy and tragedy fall silent.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“... you have to have been desperately unhappy before you can play comedy, so that nothing can frighten you any more. And you can’t do tragedy before you know absolute happiness, because having known that, you are safe.”
—Dame Edith Evans (1888–1976)