CBCS SEM 1 Qualities of a tragic protagonist in tragic poetry: Aristotelian Model from Poetics

 

Qualities of a tragic protagonist in tragic poetry: Aristotelian Model from Poetics

Aristotle defined tragedy, as an imitation of action which is exalted and ‘serious’, evoking the twin emotions of ‘pity and fear’ leading to ‘Catharsis’, a purgation or cleansing of the emotions at the end.  While defining tragedy in his ‘Poetics’, Aristotle realized that the tragic action requires a central agent to be carried out. This agent or the conveyor of the tragic action is the tragic hero or tragic protagonist.

An Aristotelian tragic hero must possess specific characteristics, which can be pointed out as having (i) Flaw or error of judgment- ‘hamartia’, (ii) A reversal of fortune- ‘peripety’, brought about because of the hero's error in judgment. (iii) The discovery or recognition that the reversal was brought about by the hero's own actions- ‘anagnorisis’, (iv) Excessive Pride- ‘hubris’, (v) The character's fate which leads him to the misfortunes- ‘nemesis’.

While enumerating the characteristic features of the tragic hero, Aristotle first takes up the perfectly good man and dismisses his journey from happiness to misery as unfit for a tragic hero. The spectacle, he says of a blameless character encountering suffering does not evoke pain in us, nor is it piteous; such a sight of perfect innocence would evoke righteous anger instead of ‘pity and fear’ and would therefore be not tragic in essence. Aristotle, then, considers the viability of the completely bad man as a tragic hero. He says that such a bad man passing from misery to happiness is also unsuitable for a tragic situation. In fact, the spectacle of a bad man rising from misery to happiness would be the most unfitting for tragedy, since it would be the grossest violation of all our sense of poetic justice.Next comes the case of an extremely bad man passing from happiness to misery. Even such a situation would never arouse pity in us, nor would it evoke fear, since fear is the result of our identification with the hero, and we can never completely identify our selves with an agent of evil. Moreover, the sight of a guilty villain’s suffering is basically pleasing to us and caters to our sense of poetic justice.

There remains, then, the intermediate kind of personage, “a man not pre-eminently virtuous and just whose misfortune however is brought upon him not by vice and depravity, but by some error of judgment. Aristotle exemplifies the characters of Oedipus and Thyestes from the tragedies of Sophocles and Aeschylus respectively who essentially fit the definition of a tragic hero. A tragic hero therefore is socially exalted,elevated and grand whose downfall is not the result of any moral lapse, but of some flaw or error of judgment that is ‘hamartia’ in Aristotle’s language.The phrase ‘error of judgment’ has been a source of great confusion because the original Greek word ‘Hamartia’ is actually a term taken from Archery, which means the missing of the mark by the archer. Since the missing of the mark is not itself a culpable act, and often proceeds from chance, many would argue that the hero is not himself guilty but a victim of misfortune.

Aristotle’s contentions about the tragic hero have been challenged by a host of modern critics who contradict Aristotle on his observation that the perfectly good man is an unfit character of tragedy. Pointing out stories from the Four Gospels which present a history of suffering inflicted on perfect innocence. Christian literature is filled with the stories of saints and martyrs who were destitute, afflicted and tormented. Heroic greatness and perfect guiltlessness were the secret of their power. In spite of the contentions, the vast majority of tragedies seem to support Aristotle’s views. The very paucity of tragedy on the blameless hero is itself the strongest argument in his favour. Moreover, those characters embodying blameless goodness and perfect innocence seem to be so far removed from the general sphere of fallible morality that such characters never excite our sense of identification with them and, therefore, to arouse fear at the spectacle of such tragic suffering is very difficult on the part of the dramatist.

 

Thus it appears that over and above all, Aristotle’s definition of the tragic hero is still relevant. It is not worthy that Aristotle emphasizes the necessity of the tragic hero being in the enjoyment of prosperity and regard. It is only on rare occasions that the 20th century writers of tragedies such as Galsworthy with his Strife   or Synge whit his Riders to the Sea, has been able to make the ordinary character tragic.  But this exception only reinforces the general validity of the Aristotle principles of the tragic protagonist.