By looking back upon medieval and early modern theoretical writings on tragedy, the paper reflects on the unstable views related to human agency that such writings embody. If Aristotle stresses the key role of hamartia in defining the features of tragic plot and, in doing so, minimizes the burden that fortune exerts on human agents, the very first definitions of tragedy in the early Middle Ages seem to remove every kind of reference to the notion of error. Two alternative moral-narrative patterns define the medieval theoretical tradition on tragedy : theodicy (tragedy as a narrative of compensation for crimes perpetrated by wicked agents) ; lament (tragedy as a narrative of misfortune, that is, of drastic reversals that hit with no apparent reason virtuous or, at least, neutral agents). Renaissance writings on tragedy, especially in Italy and France, make the first pattern hegemonic. The author argues that a significant thread of modern narrative implicitly embeds the second pattern, yet irreversibly dismissing its moralistic meaning and theological backdrop.
Una genealogia per il tragico
Cristina Savettieri
2014-01-01
Abstract
By looking back upon medieval and early modern theoretical writings on tragedy, the paper reflects on the unstable views related to human agency that such writings embody. If Aristotle stresses the key role of hamartia in defining the features of tragic plot and, in doing so, minimizes the burden that fortune exerts on human agents, the very first definitions of tragedy in the early Middle Ages seem to remove every kind of reference to the notion of error. Two alternative moral-narrative patterns define the medieval theoretical tradition on tragedy : theodicy (tragedy as a narrative of compensation for crimes perpetrated by wicked agents) ; lament (tragedy as a narrative of misfortune, that is, of drastic reversals that hit with no apparent reason virtuous or, at least, neutral agents). Renaissance writings on tragedy, especially in Italy and France, make the first pattern hegemonic. The author argues that a significant thread of modern narrative implicitly embeds the second pattern, yet irreversibly dismissing its moralistic meaning and theological backdrop.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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