Tragedy (Ancient Greek: τραγῳδία, tragōidia, "he-goat-song"]. is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilisation. 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 anTragedy (Ancient Greek: τραγῳδία, tragōidia, "he-goat-song"]. is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilisation. 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. From its obscure origins in the theatres of Athens 2,500 years ago, from which there survives only a fraction of the work of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, through its singular articulations in the works of Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Racine, and Schiller, to the more recent naturalistic tragedy of Strindberg, Beckett's modernist meditations on death, loss and suffering, and Müller's postmodernist reworkings of the tragic canon, tragedy has remained an important site of cultural experimentation, negotiation, struggle, and change. A long line of philosophers—which includes Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin, Camus, Lacan, and Deleuze—have analysed, speculated upon, and criticised the tragic form. In the wake of Aristotle's Poetics (335 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....more
This is THE OFFICIAL group for Pastborn fans from all over the globe.
You're welcome here if any…more
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This is THE OFFICIAL group for Pastborn fans from all over the globe.
You're welcome here if any of these apply to you:
1) You've read Pastborn, and it left a strong impression on you (you loved it, you hated it, it cured your depression, it caused your depression etc.)
2) You haven't read Pastborn but are curious about it (so you're not a pastbornie yet, just pastcurious)
3) You were born in the past but are living in the future. Interpret this as you will.
Have you thought about how many plays Shakespeare wrote? 37.
Have you read one or two?
Do you w…more
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Have you thought about how many plays Shakespeare wrote? 37.
Have you read one or two?
Do you want to read more of them?
Then join us on this quest to read more Shakespeare together! We are planning on reading a Shakespeare play every month and discussing it at the end in a liveshow on Youtube. It will take us just over 3 years, but we're up for the challenge. Feel free to join us at any point of this journey to pick up a play and talk about it with us (or talk about something you read years ago).
However many you choose to join with us for, we're happy to see more people reading Shakespeare!