Tragic hero
A tragic hero is the main character in a tragedy.
Traditional view
The idea that this be a balance of crime and punishment is incorrectly ascribed to Aristotle, who is quite clear in his pronouncement that the hero's misfortune is not brought about "by vice and depravity but by some error of judgment." In fact, in Aristotle's Poetics it is imperative that the tragic hero be noble. Later tragedians deviated from this tradition: the more prone the tragic hero was to vice, the less noble and the less tragic, in the Aristotelian sense of the word, the tragic hero happened to be.[1]
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.
Aristotle's Tragic hero
Aristotle established his view of what makes a tragic hero in his Book Poetics. Aristotle suggests that a hero of a tragedy must evoke in the audience a sense of pity or fear that is why he says, “the change of fortune presented must not be the spectacle of a virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity."[2] He establishes the concept that the emotion of pity stems not from a person becoming better but when a person receives undeserved misfortune and fear comes when the misfortune befalls a man like us. This is why Aristotle points out the simple fact that, “The change of fortune should be not from bad to good, but, reversely, from good to bad.” Aristotle also establishes that the hero has to be “virtuous” that is to say he has to be ‘a morally blameless man” (article 82).
Aristotle contests that the tragic hero has to be a man “who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty.” He is not making the hero entirely good in which he can do no wrong but rather has the hero committing an injury or a great wrong leading to his misfortune. Aristotle is not contradicting himself saying that the hero has to be virtuous and yet not eminently good. Being eminently good is a moral specification to the fact that he is virtuous.[3] He still has to be to some degree good. Aristotle adds another qualification to that of being virtuous but not entirely good when he says, “He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous.” He goes on to give examples such as Oedipus and Thyestes.”
Classic examples
- Macbeth in Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Macbeth.
- Othello in Shakespeare's Othello, the Moor of Venice.
- Lear in Shakespeare's King Lear.
- Oedipus in Sophocles' Oedipus the King.
- Hamlet in Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
- Richard in Shakespeare's Richard III.
- Heracles in Sophocles' Women of Trachis.
- Medea in Euripides' eponymous play.
- Electra in the plays of Sophocles and Euripides.
- Antigone in Sophocles' eponymous play.
- Creon in Sophocles' Antigone.
- Brutus in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
References
- ^ Preminger, Alex, ed. (1965). "Tragic Flaw". Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton UP. pp. 864–65.
- ^ S.H. Butcher, The Poetics of Aristotle, (1902), pp. 45-47
- ^ Charles H. Reeves, The Aristotelian Concept of The Tragic Hero, Vol. 73, No. 2 (1952), Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/291812 pp. 172-188</ref