Before we began exploring tragedy, I thought of tragedy as a sad event or story. After I started to research some more, I realized that it was so much more than that. In the past, I have read tragic stories such as Shakespeare's Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. When I read those stories I knew that they were tragedy, but that was where my knowledge of the subject stopped. When I began reading the wikipedia page about tragedy, I began uncovering more and more. Tragedy is one of the oldest forms of storytelling mainly because life is hard and everyone can relate to loss or sadness. In ancient times, the Greeks would write tragedies and perform them. "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." (Tragedy, Wikipedia) Their goal was catharsis, or trying to evoke strong emotions in the audience. As time went on, the type of tragedy changed, but the core of tragedy stayed the same.
Roman tragedy took the tragedies of the greeks and adapted them to be their own. The most famous of all of the Roman Tragedy writers was Seneca. “They dwell on detailed accounts of horrible deeds and contain long reflective soliloquies.” (Tragedy, Wikipedia) During the Renaissance, Tragedies by Aristotle were popular, and the models left by the Greeks would become very important. From there, tragedies evolved into the Shakespearean versions that I am already familiar with. However, as the tragedies continue to grow, they still focus on some form of human suffering and try to evoke emotions in their audience just as they did during the time of the ancient Greeks.
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