Exploring Shakespearean Tragedy:
A New Critical Theory
By Paul H. and Robin Jaeckle Grawe
© 2024
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Appendix A
Work in progress
Defining Tragedy as a Genre
Greek tragedy and Shakespearean tragedy are not the same thing; that is, they are both forms of tragedy, but they are not the same sub-genre within some larger concept called tragedy itself.
Aristotle thought he was defining tragedy in general, but, in fact, he had a pitiably small sample of works to consider as representative of the tragedic range. Later authors in many cultures have seriously enlarged our sense of what can be tragedy. Shakespeare is probably the foremost of these enlargements.
This is a particularly sad state of affairs because, within literary criticism generally, Aristotle made much more progress on defining tragedy as a dramatic genre than has since been achieved for other genres like the novel, the short story, the lyric poem. (The situation is probably not quite so bad for branches of non-literary writing: the essay, the biography, the legal brief, documented history, and the like.)
It was in this context that better than half a century ago, ITCHS put forth a formal definition of comedy as a whole and has since then been working to further understanding through refinements at the sub-genre level. Based on that experience, ITCHS now suggests the following as a working definition of tragedy as a whole, recognizing that such a definition needs to be succinct and minimal, leaving substantial elaborations for definition of various sub-genres of tragedy. Like our definition of comedy, our proffered definition of tragedy as a whole is formal, that is, based in its form:
Tragedy starts in well-being, content, stability or some other form of survivability, then takes a downward turn, moves progressively lower, at some point its descent becoming irremediable and disaster becoming inevitable.
This is the tragedic form. That form recognizes that humanity would like life to proceed smoothly from cause to effect, all the effects being rationally controllable and leading to increased well-being. While this is everyone’s inarticulate hope, human experience repeatedly indicates that things can certainly go elsewise and that adults need to be cautioned against such aberrant possibilities. Tragedy, then, is the cautionary genre.
Tragedy generally begins in a state of seeming survivability and perhaps even of reasonable content. But the movement of tragedy from there is a movement toward increasing threats to both survivability and content. At least in retrospect, it is possible for an audience of tragedy to feel that the tragic result was not from the beginning inevitable. Right decisions at key point might have allowed the situation to remain tenable.
But at some point, tragedy asserts movement beyond right decisions that can save the situation. From that point on, the action of tragedy seems to take on a life of its own. Nothing the protagonist can do can reverse the situation and return the flow of things to the tenable.
So defined, tragedy is a relatively simple concept covering an immense range of dramatic and narrative works in many cultures. It is at the sub-genre level that tragedy can be elaborated beyond the simple general concept.
Aristotle begins his definition similarly as a matter of form, evidently not inherently at odds with what has been said above. But he moves on from there, defining the type of character involved in the action. And he is entirely right to do so, not because it helps define tragedy but because it helps define Greek tragedy, the sub-genre.
The Warp and the Woof
For that sub-genre definition, Aristotle then adds stipulations about language and other “embellishments” that work with language. The language and embellishments are not the action. They cut across the form of action somewhat like the warp working against the woof to make a patterned piece of cloth.
And then Aristotle moves on in perhaps the most inspired moment of literary criticism for all the ages. He posits that the warp and the woof are there to create something, a poesis, a making, something greater than the form or the embellished language, something that works with both of them and creates something that pertains to the work of art as a constructed whole. That something about the work as a whole can only be created by a completed artistic work.
And Aristotle finds that greater reality to be dynamis, the power which the work as a whole has over a normative audience. For Greek tragedy, Aristotle finds that dynamis to be a purgation of pity and fear, a wringing out of pity and fear in the audience, leaving it finally evacuated.
With dynamis, Aristotle’s definition has very satisfying completeness. No doubt individual Greek tragedies have some individual character of their own, but form with character, embellished language, and dynamis are what Greek tragedies all have in common. More than that, they all share the same type of form and character, the same type of embellished language, and the same type of dynamis.
Aristotle’s brilliance has been admired for the last 2300 years. Unfortunately, the admirers have thought he was defining tragedy as a whole. But tragedy as a whole necessitates only a very generalized form of action. It is the sub-genre definition, Greek tragedy in Aristotle’s case, that needs to do more and that finally depends on much more specific ideas of character, embellished language and dynamis to unite individual works at the sub-genre level.
In the case of Shakespearean tragedy, we have tried to define at least a sub-genre covering the four Great Tragedies. And to do that, beyond general tragedic form, we found it necessary to define Shakespeare’s specific type of character and of embellished language, his specific type of dynamis. Additionally, beyond Aristotle‘s model in Greek tragedy, Shakespeare’s tragedy always has at least sketched action other than the tragedic line, contrastive to it and working to other ends. These contrastive features always affect the production of final dynamis for a Shakespearean tragedy.
We would hope that proceeding on these lines could eventually create sub-genre definitions for Henry Jamesian “tragedy in a tea cup,” and American Naturalist tragedy, to name only a few among many tragedic sub-generic alternatives.