The Genre Studies: Tragedy

Aristotle: Hero: Above Average, dies at the end, problems have to solution, conflict with Gods.

New Hero -- Christ (existential in nature).

Comic (below average) character as tragic (Chaplin). Dostoevsky, Kafka and the rest.

Nietzsche, "The Birth of Tragedy"; Hegelian dialectic (A.C. Bradley, "Hegel's Theory of Tragedy," Oxford Lectures on Poetry, pp. 69-95), Miguel Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life.

Beckett Lecture Notes ***

Samuel Beckett's NY Times Obituary December 27, 1989 - Wednesday - Late Edition By Mel Gussow

godot sparknotes *

What is Tragedy BBC :

Stalin: 'A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.'
Goethe: 'The conflict on which a tragedy is based must ideally be one where there is no possible resolution.'
Miguel De Unamuno: (In San Manuel Bueno) '...the essence of tragedy is killing eternity.'

Mel Brooks: 'Tragedy is when I cut my finger, comedy is when you fall down an open sewer and die.'

tragedy answers.com

godotcompany

Review Summary of Waiting For Godot : The plot for this play is taken from Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act v, sc. 5, just after Macbeth's wife commits suicide. 'Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.' Note that Shakespeare says in thirty-eight words what Beckett takes a whole play to say.

Tragedy The Literary Encyclopedia

...