Heroes in Classical Tragedy
While ordinary people had always been the subject of comedies, classical and neo-classical theorists asserted that tragic heroes should always be men of noble rank. Aristotle articulates this idea in ars poetica (The Poetics) and it figures prominently in later ancient writings on drama and poetics. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century critics, including the influential German Martin Opitz, perpetuated the theory that only members of the higher classes were capable of suffering harm serious enough to deserve dramatic reenactment. This rule was followed throughout Europe for centuries: usually, princes and members of the nobility, such as Andreas Gryphius' Carolus Stuardus (i.e. King Charles I of England), Jean Racine's Phèdre (the wife of Theseus, a mythical king of Athens) or William Shakespeare's King Lear, serve as tragic protagonists.
Read more about this topic: Bourgeois Tragedy
Famous quotes containing the words heroes, classical and/or tragedy:
“I have always been a friend to hero-worship; it is the only rational one, and has always been in use amongst civilized people—the worship of spirits is synonymous with barbarism—it is mere fetish.... There is something philosophic in the worship of the heroes of the human race.”
—George Borrow (1803–1881)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those who feel.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)