Western Literature Week Eighteen

Term Explanation

Tragic flaw

The term hamartia derives from the Greek, which means “to miss the mark” or “to err”. In tragedy, hamartia is the protagonist’s error or flaw that leads to a chain of plot actions culminating in a reversal from his/her good fortune to bad. What qualifies as the error or flaw can include an error resulting from ignorance, an error of judgement, a flaw in character, or sin. For example, in Oedipus the King, the tragic flaw of Oedipus is hubris, as he tried to escape from the fate.

Catharsis

Catharsis (from the Greek katharsis meaning "purification" or "cleansing") is the purification and purgation of emotions—especially pity and fear—through art or any extreme change in emotion that results in renewal and restoration. It is a metaphor originally used by Aristotle in the Poetics to describe the effects of tragedy on the spectator. For example, when Oedipus discovers that his wife is his own mother and the person he had killed on the crossroad was his own father.

Chorus

A Greek chorus is a homogeneous, non-individualized group of performers in the plays of classical Greece, who comment with a collective voice on the dramatic action. The chorus consisted of between 12 and 50 players, who variously danced, sang or spoke their lines in unison and sometimes wore masks.

Dues ex machine

The term has evolved to mean a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved by the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability or object. Depending on how it is done, it can be intended to move the story forward when the writer has "painted himself into a corner" and sees no other way out, to surprise the audience, to bring the tale to a happy ending, or as a comedic device.

Parable

A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, which illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, whereas parables have human characters. A parable is a type of analogy. Some scholars of the canonical gospels and the New Testament apply the term "parable" only to the parables of Jesus, though that is not a common restriction of the term. Parables such as "The Prodigal Son" are central to Jesus' teaching method in the canonical narratives and the apocrypha.