The Tragedy of the Goats

In the wake of Aristotle's Poetics BCE , tragedy has been used to make genre distinctions, whether at the scale of poetry in general where the tragic divides against epic and lyric or at the scale of the drama where tragedy is opposed to comedy. In the modern era, tragedy has also been defined against drama, melodrama , the tragicomic , and epic theatre.

Both Bertolt Brecht and Augusto Boal define their epic theatre projects non-Aristotelian drama and Theatre of the Oppressed , respectively against models of tragedy. Taxidou, however, reads epic theatre as an incorporation of tragic functions and its treatments of mourning and speculation. The word "tragedy" appears to have been used to describe different phenomena at different times. Scholars suspect this may be traced to a time when a goat was either the prize [15] in a competition of choral dancing or was that around which a chorus danced prior to the animal's ritual sacrifice.

Writing in BCE long after the Golden Age of 5th-century Athenian tragedy , Aristotle provides the earliest-surviving explanation for the origin of the dramatic art form in his Poetics , in which he argues that tragedy developed from the improvisations of the leader of choral dithyrambs hymns sung and danced in praise of Dionysos , the god of wine and fertility: Anyway, arising from an improvisatory beginning both tragedy and comedy—tragedy from the leaders of the dithyramb, and comedy from the leaders of the phallic processions which even now continue as a custom in many of our cities , [tragedy] grew little by little, as [the poets] developed whatever [new part] of it had appeared; and, passing through many changes, tragedy came to a halt, since it had attained its own nature.

Tragedy is, then, an enactment of a deed that is important and complete, and of [a certain] magnitude, by means of language enriched [with ornaments], each used separately in the different parts [of the play]: There is some dissent to the dithyrambic origins of tragedy, mostly based on the differences between the shapes of their choruses and styles of dancing.

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Here, he suggests the name originates in the use of a chorus of goat-like satyrs in the original dithyrambs from which the tragic genre developed. There is abundant evidence for tragoidia understood as "song for the prize goat". Athenian tragedy—the oldest surviving form of tragedy—is a type of dance -drama that formed an important part of the theatrical culture of the city-state. The presentations took the form of a contest between three playwrights, who presented their works on three successive days.

Each playwright offered a tetralogy consisting of three tragedies and a concluding comic piece called a satyr play. Only one complete trilogy of tragedies has survived, the Oresteia of Aeschylus. The Greek theatre was in the open air, on the side of a hill, and performances of a trilogy and satyr play probably lasted most of the day. Performances were apparently open to all citizens, including women, but evidence is scant.

All of the choral parts were sung to the accompaniment of an aulos and some of the actors' answers to the chorus were sung as well. The play as a whole was composed in various verse metres. All actors were male and wore masks.

A Greek chorus danced as well as sang, though no one knows exactly what sorts of steps the chorus performed as it sang. Choral songs in tragedy are often divided into three sections: This event was frequently a brutal murder of some sort, an act of violence which could not be effectively portrayed visually, but an action of which the other characters must see the effects in order for it to have meaning and emotional resonance. Another such device was a crane, the mechane , which served to hoist a god or goddess on stage when they were supposed to arrive flying.

This device gave origin to the phrase " deus ex machina " "god out of a machine" , that is, the surprise intervention of an unforeseen external factor that changes the outcome of an event. From the time of the empire, the tragedies of two playwrights survive—one is an unknown author, while the other is the Stoic philosopher Seneca. Seneca's tragedies rework those of all three of the Athenian tragic playwrights whose work has survived.

Probably meant to be recited at elite gatherings, they differ from the Greek versions in their long declamatory, narrative accounts of action, their obtrusive moralising, and their bombastic rhetoric. They dwell on detailed accounts of horrible deeds and contain long reflective soliloquies.

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Though the gods rarely appear in these plays, ghosts and witches abound. Senecan tragedies explore ideas of revenge , the occult, the supernatural, suicide, blood and gore. Classical Greek drama was largely forgotten in Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 16th century. Medieval theatre was dominated by mystery plays , morality plays , farces and miracle plays.

In Italy, the models for tragedy in the later Middle Ages were Roman, particularly the works of Seneca, interest in which was reawakened by the Paduan Lovato de' Lovati — The earliest tragedies to employ purely classical themes are the Achilles written before by Antonio Loschi of Vicenza c. In Gian Giorgio Trissino — of Vicenza wrote his tragedy Sophonisba in the vernacular that would later be called Italian.

Tragedy, or: On the Problem of Being a Goat

Drawn from Livy 's account of Sophonisba , the Carthaginian princess who drank poison to avoid being taken by the Romans, it adheres closely to classical rules. Both were completed by early and are based on classical Greek models, Rosmunda on the Hecuba of Euripides , and Oreste on the Iphigenia in Tauris of the same author; like Sophonisba , they are in Italian and in blank unrhymed hendecasyllables. Although these three Italian plays are often cited, separately or together, as being the first regular tragedies in modern times, as well as the earliest substantial works to be written in blank hendecasyllables, they were apparently preceded by two other works in the vernacular: From about printed copies, in the original languages, of the works of Sophocles , Seneca , and Euripides , as well as comedic writers such as Aristophanes , Terence and Plautus , were available in Europe and the next forty years saw humanists and poets translating and adapting their tragedies.

In the s, the European university setting and especially, from on, the Jesuit colleges became host to a Neo-Latin theatre in Latin written by scholars. The influence of Seneca was particularly strong in its humanist tragedy. His plays, with their ghosts, lyrical passages and rhetorical oratory, brought a concentration on rhetoric and language over dramatic action to many humanist tragedies.

The most important sources for French tragic theatre in the Renaissance were the example of Seneca and the precepts of Horace and Aristotle and contemporary commentaries by Julius Caesar Scaliger and Lodovico Castelvetro , although plots were taken from classical authors such as Plutarch , Suetonius , etc. The Greek tragic authors Sophocles and Euripides would become increasingly important as models by the middle of the 17th century. In English, the most famous and most successful tragedies are those of William Shakespeare and his Elizabethan contemporaries. A contemporary of Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe , also wrote examples of tragedy in English, notably:.

Contemporary with Shakespeare, an entirely different approach to facilitating the rebirth of tragedy was taken in Italy. Jacopo Peri , in the preface to his Euridice refers to "the ancient Greeks and Romans who in the opinion of many sang their staged tragedies throughout in representing them on stage. Richard Wagner 's concept of Gesamtkunstwerk "integrated work of art" , for example, was intended as a return to the ideal of Greek tragedy in which all the arts were blended in service of the drama.

Corneille's tragedies were strangely un-tragic his first version of Le Cid was even listed as a tragicomedy , for they had happy endings. In his theoretical works on theatre, Corneille redefined both comedy and tragedy around the following suppositions:. Jean Racine 's tragedies—inspired by Greek myths, Euripides , Sophocles and Seneca —condensed their plot into a tight set of passionate and duty-bound conflicts between a small group of noble characters, and concentrated on these characters' double-binds and the geometry of their unfulfilled desires and hatreds.

Racine's two late plays "Esther" and "Athalie" opened new doors to biblical subject matter and to the use of theatre in the education of young women. Racine also faced criticism for his irregularities: For more on French tragedy of the 16th and 17th centuries, see French Renaissance literature and French literature of the 17th century.

The Vocabularist: 'Tragedy' originally meant 'goat-song'

It was a fruit of the Enlightenment and the emergence of the bourgeois class and its ideals. It is characterised by the fact that its protagonists are ordinary citizens. In modernist literature , the definition of tragedy has become less precise. The most fundamental change has been the rejection of Aristotle's dictum that true tragedy can only depict those with power and high status. Arthur Miller 's essay "Tragedy and the Common Man" argues that tragedy may also depict ordinary people in domestic surroundings.

After the musical, you're anybody's fool," he insists. In The Death of Tragedy George Steiner outlined the characteristics of Greek tragedy and the traditions that developed from that period. Aristotle wrote in his work Poetics that tragedy is characterised by seriousness and involves a great person who experiences a reversal of fortune Peripeteia. Aristotle's definition can include a change of fortune from bad to good as in the Eumenides , but he says that the change from good to bad as in Oedipus Rex is preferable because this induces pity and fear within the spectators.

Tragedy results in a catharsis emotional cleansing or healing for the audience through their experience of these emotions in response to the suffering of the characters in the drama. They pull down anything we try to put out of their reach, and pull up what we try to pin down. As nearly as we can determine, ours like to play with the dogs and take evening walks down to the river. Most of all, though, goats like to eat. Just as they try dismember anything their hooves can reach, so too do they take a nibble of anything within range of their mouths.

Shoestrings, shirttails, and buttons are fair game, along with rope and shadecloth. Among the results of edible food are two we particularly appreciate: The former is high-fat food, the latter is high-quality compost for the gardens. Autumn typically is rain-free here. Potatoes are heavy feeders, so the patch could use the nutrients.

The Vocabularist: 'Tragedy' originally meant 'goat-song' - BBC News

By the time we plant next spring, the compost will be working its magic. The other product from our goats is even more immediately rewarding, which better matches the American notion of instant gratification. We drink the milk raw i. Goat milk is homogenized, so the cream does not float to the top. We have a cream separator with which to separate the cream, thus producing skim milk and the basis for butter and ice cream.

Our single adult, milk-producing goat generates three to four quarts daily. Between stints typing this essay, I am making my third and fourth two-pound wheels of cheddar this week while watering the potato patch. Making cheese is so easy, even I can do it.