Class Notes: October 25-29

Class Notes: October 25-29

This week we began learning about drama and started reading Oedipus Rex.

The Nature of Drama (Perrine: Chapter One)

“Much drama is poetry” (Perrine 1115).

Impact of drama: direct and immediate

Two ways to enter the character’s mind

1.      Soliloquy: characters are speaking to themselves

2.      Aside: characters turn away from the play and speak directly to the audience

“The playwright is not dependent on the power of words alone” (Perrine 1115).

Drama is communal; poetry is individual.  Communal effects are more intense.

Romantic: imbued with or dominated by idealism, a desire for adventure, chivalry, etc.; characterized by a preoccupation with love or by the idealizing of love of one’s beloved

Satiric: a literary style, in verse or prose, in which human folly and vice are held up to scorn, derision, or ridicule

Protagonist: the leading character, hero, or heroine of a drama

Antagonist: the adversary of the hero or protagonist of a drama

Foil Characters: a minor character that has traits that are in contrast with main character

Plot: the story line

Suspense: a state or condition of mental uncertainty or excitement

Themes: the unifying or dominant ideas; motifs

Didactic: teaching or intended to teach a moral lesson

Dramatic Exposition: The presentation through dialogue of information about events that occurred before the action of a play, or that occur offstage or between the staged actions; this may also refer to the presentation of information about individual characters' backgrounds or the general situation (political, historical, etc.) in which the action takes place

Realistic and Nonrealistic Drama (Perrine: Chapter Two)

Actors are required “to depart from an absolute realism (Perrine 1160) when they perform on stage.

“All degrees of realism are possible” (Perrine 1161).

Chorus: a group of actors speaking in unison (a chant) while dancing formally; characteristic of Greek drama

Audience members must take on a “temporary suspension of disbelief,” according to Coleridge.

Dramatic Realism: descriptive, not evaluative

“Human truth, rather than fidelity to fact, is the highest achievement of literary art” (Perrine 1164).

Tragedy and Comedy (Perrine: Chapter Three)

Two drama masks represent tragedy and comedy

(Picture: http://www.bellport-playcrafters.com/trivia.html)

Tragedy and Comedy often overlap.  “If we take them too seriously, the tragic mask may laugh, and the comic mask weep” (Perrine 1310).

Perrine’s Archetypal Notion of Tragedy

1.      The tragic hero is one of noble stature

2.      The tragic hero is good, though not perfect, and his fall results from committing what Aristotle calls “an act of injustice” (hamartia) either through ignorance or from a conviction that some greater good will be served

3.      The hero’s downfall is his own fault, the result of his own free choice- not the result of pure accident or someone else’ villainy or some overriding malignant fate (Pathetic vs. Tragic Events)

4.      The hero’s misfortune is not wholly deserved.  It’s seen as a waste of human potential

5.      The tragic fall is not pure loss; results in a change from ignorance to knowledge (ex: death of Romeo and Juliet brings the Montagues and Capulets closer together)

6.      Tragedy, when well performed, does not leave its audience in a state of depression

Comedy

·         Mask can be seen as laughing or smiling, and comedy can thus be scornful or satirical

·         Exposes human folly

·         May be educative, but not too much

·         Characters are usually common, not noble

·         No organic unity typically

Melodrama

·         “Melodrama, like tragedy, attempts to arouse feelings of fear and pity, but it does so ordinarily through cruder means” (Perrine 1309).

·         Good triumphs over evil; villainy is crushed/destroyed

·         Hero marries heroine

·         Is not as complex as tragedy and does not offer such tremendous insights

·         “It is usually commercial rather than literary” (Perrine 1310).

Farce

·         The goal of farce is to make people laugh hysterically

·         Violent, physical conflicts are typical

·         Often seems absurd and impossible

·         “Coarse wit, practical jokes, and physical action are stables” (Perrine 1310).

·         “It is usually commercial rather than literary” (Perrine 1310).

Terms concerning Drama:

http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072405228/student_view0/drama_glossary.html

http://quizlet.com/130882/drama-literary-terms-flash-cards/

Tragedy vs. Comedy

http://condor.depaul.edu/~dsimpson/tlove/comic-tragic.html