Timothy Sharkey

The Art of Tragedy and the Battle Against It Timothy Sharkey

A new interpretation of tragedy from our tragic poets? perspective, The Art of Tragedy & the Battle Against It explains how a tragedy works aesthetically, with a principle of dramatic incongruity. It disagrees with how our literary critics have traditionally explained a tragedy morally, with a logic of moral propriety. It disagrees with how our literary critics have traditionally explained a tragedy as a natural result of a tragic hero?s flawed activity. It presents our tragic poets? ideas about how a tragedy produces its dramatic impact instead, as art, with a principle of dramatic incongruity. It considers our tragic poets? ideas about how a tragedy works with this principle of dramatic incongruity the best information we have about how a tragedy really works. Timothy Sharkey (ALM, Harvard University) spent ten years researching, writing and developing the arguments for The Art of Tragedy & the Battle Against It in an effort to clean-up our confusion about tragic drama. He presents his arguments now, in a new interpretation of tragedy, in an aesthetic interpretation that has dramatic incongruity at its core, and he uses the comments of our tragic poets about how a tragedy works aesthetically, with a principle of dramatic incongruity ? taken from the dialog of their plays ? to support his arguments. He disagrees with our literary critics for this fundamental reason: they draw a link a link of act and consequence, or causal connection, between a tragic hero?s catastrophe and the thing that he did wrong to cause it with his flaw, thereby precluding the way that a tragedy works aesthetically. They preclude the way that a tragedy produces its impact upon an audience by pushing the connection between act and consequence (between a tragic hero?s heroic activity and his unfair treatment) apart dramatically, in the opposite direction. A tragedy produces its impact upon an audience in aesthetic terms by uniting unequal ingredients, not equal ingredients. This is what The Art of Tragedy & the Battle Against It explains. It traces our literary critics? resistance to it from Aristotle up to our own present day.