Word Finder - tragedy

definition

A drama or similar work, in which the main character is brought to ruin or otherwise suffers the extreme consequences of some tragic flaw or weakness of character.

definition

The genre of such works, and the art of producing them.

definition

A disastrous event, especially one involving great loss of life or injury.

For every tragedy, there is a possible happy ending.

As we move toward that future, it is a great tragedy that the experiences of all the people of the past are lost to us.

A Latin tragedy on her fate is attributed, though wrongly, to Seneca.

It was as if I hadn't had time to come to grips with that tragedy with the world wind swirling around me.

That this tragedy should have been reprinted in 1714 and acted in 1745 only shows that the public, as is often the case, had an eye to the catastrophe rather than to the development of the action.

To throw that away because of an accident of circumstance would be a tragedy.

Then began the last act of the local tragedy.

In 1769 his tragedy of The Fatal Discovery had a run of nine nights; Alonzo also (1773) had fair success in the representation; but his last tragedy, Alfred (1778), was so coolly received that he gave up writing for the stage.

As in a Greek tragedy, we hear in his works the echo of great events and terrible catastrophes; we do not see them.

At the age of ten he composed a tragedy under the inspiration of Caesarotti's translation of the Ossianic poems. On the marriage of his twin sister Rosina with a maternal cousin at Lyons he went to reside in that city, devoting himself during four years to the study of French literature.

In 1887 he returned to drama with the powerful tragedy Fadren, produced in Paris also as Le pere; this was followed in 1888 by Froken Julie, described as a naturalistic drama, to which he wrote a preface in the nature of a manifesto, directed against critics who had resented the gloom of Fadren.

It is unclear how Simkin would limit the parameters of the revenge tragedy genre, if at all.

Asia-Pacific growth was stunted at 2.5% in the aftermath of the tsunami tragedy.

This culminated in the Heysel stadium tragedy of 1985, when violence by English hooligans led to the deaths of over 30 Italian fans.

Whether its notoriety represents a triumph or a tragedy depends on your point of view.

A quite unaccountable tragedy left this fine gentleman bereft of his good humor.

With flashbacks and narration from the films, you are immersed in story of the tragedy of Middle Earth and the quest to destroy the Ring of Power.

Experience Torque's past through flashbacks and see the tragedy of what happened to him before he was originally sent to the island penitentiary.

This tragedy leaves very few survivors, but you are one of the lucky ones.You will begin your journey in the Ammen Vale of Azuremyst Isle, where you will spend your initial quests trying to make friends and allies along the way.

The result was the "thalidomide tragedy" during which there was a drastic increase in the number of babies born with deformations of the limbs.

Some fear having another child, due to misgivings that the tragedy they have experienced may repeat itself.

The success encouraged him to begin a new tragedy, Die V erschworung des Fiesco zu Genua, and he edited a lyric Anthologie auf das Jahr 1782, to which he was himself the chief contributor.

Kabale and Liebe, especially, is an admirable example of that "tragedy of common life" which Lessing had introduced into Germany from England and which bulked so largely in the German literature of the later 18th century.

He had also the opportunity of reading the first act of the new tragedy before the duke of Weimar at Darmstadt in December 1784, and, as a sign of favour, the duke conferred upon him the title of "Rat."

In adopting verse instead of prose as a medium of expression, Schiller showed that he was prepared to challenge comparison with the great dramatic poets of other times and other lands; but in seeking a model for this higher type of tragedy he unfortunately turned rather to the classic theatre of France than to the English drama which Lessing, a little earlier, had pronounced more congenial to the German temperament.

In the summer of 1790 he had lectured in Jena on the aesthetics of tragedy, and in the following year he studied carefully Kant's treatise on aesthetics, Kritik der Urteilskraft, which had just appeared and appealed powerfully to Schiller's mind.

Without entirel y break ing with the pseudo-classic method he had adopted in Don Carlos - the two lovers, Max Piccolomini and Thekla, are an obvious concession to the tradition of the French theatre - Wallenstein shows how much Schiller's art had benefited by his study of Greek tragedy; the fatalism of his hero is a masterly application of an antique motive to a modern theme.

Wallenstein was followed in 1800 by Maria Stuart, a tragedy, which, in spite of its great popularity in and outside of Germany, was felt by the critics to follow too closely the methods of the lachrymose "tragedy of common life" to maintain a high position among Schiller's works.

A finer production in every way is Schiller's "romantic tragedy," Die Jungfrau von Orleans (1801).

With Die Braut von Messina (1803) he experimented with a tragedy on purely Greek lines, this drama being as close an approximation to ancient tragedy as its medieval and Christian milieu permitted of.

Besides writing Tell, Schiller had found time in 1803 and 1804 to translate two French comedies by Picard, and to prepare a German version of Racine's Phedre; and in the last months of his life he began a new tragedy, Demetrius, which gave every promise of being another step forward in his poetic achievement.

He also published sympathetic monographs on Cowper and Jane Austen, and attempted verse in Bay Leaves and Specimens of Greek Tragedy.

But although he goes to the Scriptures, and tastes the mystical spirit of the medieval saints, the Christ of his conception has traits that seem borrowed from Socrates and from the heroes of Attic tragedy, who suffer much, and yet smile gently on a destiny to which they were reconciled.

To his Leipzig student-days belong also two small plays in Alexandrines, Die Laune des Verliebten, a pastoral comedy in one act, which reflects the lighter side of the poet's love affair, and Die Mitschuldigen (published in a revised form, 1769), a more sombre picture, in which comedy is incongruously mingled with tragedy.

It had been inaugurated with Gotz von Berlichingen, and a few months later this tragedy was followed by another, Clavigo, hardly less convincing in its character-drawing, and reflecting even more faithfully than the former the experiences Goethe had gone through in Strassburg.

The exuberance of the young poet's genius is also to be seen in the many unfinished fragments of this period; at one time we find him occupied with dramas on Caesar and Mahomet, at another with an epic on Der ewige Jude, and again with a tragedy on Prometheus, of which a magnificent fragment has passed into his works.

Thanks to a manuscript copy of the play in its earliest form - discovered as recently as 1887 - we are now able to distinguish how much of this tragedy was the immediate product of the Sturm and Drang, and to understand the intentions with which the young poet began his masterpiece.

A religious epic, DieGeheimnisse, and a tragedy Elpenor, did not, it is true, advance much further than plans; but in 1777, under the influence of the theatrical experiments at the Weimar court, Goethe conceived and in great measure wrote a novel of the theatre, which was to have borne the title Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung; and in 1779 himself took part in a representation before the court at Ettersburg, of his drama I phigenie auf Tauris.

The calm beauty of Greek tragedy is seen in the new iambic version of Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787); the classicism of the Renaissance gives the ground-tone to the wonderful drama of Torquato Tasso (1790), in which the conflict of poetic genius with the prosaic world is transmuted into imperishable poetry.

With the aid of the vast body of Faust literature which has sprung up in recent years, and the many new documents bearing on its history above all, the so-called Urfaust, to which reference has already been made - we are able now to ascribe to their various periods the component parts of the work; it is possible to discriminate between the Sturm and Drang hero of the opening scenes and of the Gretchen tragedy - the contemporary of Gotz and Clavigo and the superimposed Faust of calmer moral and intellectual ideals - a Faust who corresponds to Hermann and Wilhelm Meister.

The Dutch were already too strongly entrenched in the Indian archipelago for English competition to avail there, and the intense rivalry between the two nations led to the tragedy of Amboyna in 1623, when Governor Van Speult put to torture and death nine Englishmen on a charge of conspiring to take the Dutch forts.

The sensation produced by the tragedy of the expedition was profound and a large fund was subscribed for the benefit of the relatives of the dead explorers and for the promotion of polar research.

As it was, his reforms helped to elaborate the kind of verse necessary for the classical tragedy, and that is the most that can be said for him.

She has been made the heroine of a tragedy by Francois Ponsard, Agnes de 161eranie.

But, as it involved the grandson of the Prophet, the son of Ali, and so many members of his family, Hosain's devout partisans at Kufa, who by their overtures had been the principal cause of the disaster, regarded it as a tragedy, and the facts gradually acquired a wholly romantic colouring.

He built a temple to Homer and composed a tragedy, to which his vile favourite Agathocles added a commentary.

On his release in 1830 he published Schill and die Seinen, a tragedy, and a translation of Oedipus in Colonus.

Then these two nations entered upon that long tragedy of the Hundred Years' War, a calamity absolutely immeasurable to both.

Though he lived through that agony of the Italian people, he does not seem to be aware that he is writing a great historical tragedy.

Seneca was chosen as the model of tragedy; Plautus and Terence supplied the groundwork of comedy.