A tragic hero is the protagonist of a tragedy. Tragic heroes appear in the dramatic works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Webster, Marston, Corneille, Racine, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Strindberg, and many other writers.
A tragic hero is one that has one major flaw and the audience usually feels pity, sympathy, empathy, and compassion.
Read more about Tragic Hero: Aristotle's Tragic Hero, Examples
Famous quotes containing the words tragic hero, tragic and/or hero:
“The tragic hero prefers death to prudence. The comedian prefers playing tricks to winning. Only the villain really plays to win.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale, but even the tragic and terrible, are comely, as they take their place in the pictures of memory.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Typically, the hero of the fairy tale achieves a domestic, microcosmic triumph, and the hero of myth a world-historical, macrocosmic triumph. Whereas the former—the youngest or despised child who becomes the master of extraordinary powers—prevails over his personal oppressors, the latter brings back from his adventure the means for the regeneration of his society as a whole.”
—Joseph Campbell (1904–1987)