Meaning Of Tragedy Outline
McJesse Chen
Mr. Leal
Honors English 10 – Period 3
8 October 2010
McFarland, Thomas. “The Meaning of Tragedy.” Tragic Meanings in Shakespeare. New York: Random House, 1968. 3-16.
Thesis Statement: “We look into the tragic mirror ... to extricate our being from nothingness” (7).
Tragedy reflects human existence. It is very unusual for one to be thinking of his or her death. Instead, we look into tragedy, which reflects human life in the bluntest and most straightforward sense. This tragic mirror allows us to look at the pain and suffering of humans and free ourselves without it affecting us. In many cases, art enhances security. Mirrors show things as a whole with a reversed truth. At times, art is more real than history. We know far more about …show more content…
We can see that the relationship of time, past and future, is intertwined. We can also see that tragedy reflects someone moving through a social system. When we analyze tragedy, we look for the human experience.
Quotations: * “The paradoxicality of tragedy (that we see the highest meaning of life only as we see the full fact of mortality) combines with untranslatability of its meaning (like the response to great music) to point toward the truth enunciated by Jaspers: ‘There is no tragedy without transcendence’” (9). * “If tragedy and religion thus share a common involvement, so too do tragedy and philosophy. ‘To be a philosopher is to learn to die,’ muses Montaigne. ‘True philosophers,’ says Socrates, ‘make dying their profession’ (Phaedo 67E). ‘Those who really apply themselves to philosophy in the right way are always preparing themselves for dying and death’ (Phaedo 67A)” (13). * “It does urge that image-counting, metaphorical analysis, linguistic or textual approaches, can never be more than preliminaries to meaning. It urges that all tragic meaning depends on the as if assumption that dramatic creations are human beings”
Mr. Leal
Honors English 10 – Period 3
8 October 2010
McFarland, Thomas. “The Meaning of Tragedy.” Tragic Meanings in Shakespeare. New York: Random House, 1968. 3-16.
Thesis Statement: “We look into the tragic mirror ... to extricate our being from nothingness” (7).
Tragedy reflects human existence. It is very unusual for one to be thinking of his or her death. Instead, we look into tragedy, which reflects human life in the bluntest and most straightforward sense. This tragic mirror allows us to look at the pain and suffering of humans and free ourselves without it affecting us. In many cases, art enhances security. Mirrors show things as a whole with a reversed truth. At times, art is more real than history. We know far more about …show more content…
We can see that the relationship of time, past and future, is intertwined. We can also see that tragedy reflects someone moving through a social system. When we analyze tragedy, we look for the human experience.
Quotations: * “The paradoxicality of tragedy (that we see the highest meaning of life only as we see the full fact of mortality) combines with untranslatability of its meaning (like the response to great music) to point toward the truth enunciated by Jaspers: ‘There is no tragedy without transcendence’” (9). * “If tragedy and religion thus share a common involvement, so too do tragedy and philosophy. ‘To be a philosopher is to learn to die,’ muses Montaigne. ‘True philosophers,’ says Socrates, ‘make dying their profession’ (Phaedo 67E). ‘Those who really apply themselves to philosophy in the right way are always preparing themselves for dying and death’ (Phaedo 67A)” (13). * “It does urge that image-counting, metaphorical analysis, linguistic or textual approaches, can never be more than preliminaries to meaning. It urges that all tragic meaning depends on the as if assumption that dramatic creations are human beings”