Ancient Greek tragedy was influenced by the Peloponnesian satyr play. As the Romans called them, "Satyrs" were fauns--goatlike creatures--who were famous for being constantly drunk and chasing nymphs. The word tragedy comes from the Greek tragoidia, consisting of two words. The first one is tragos, meaning goat. The second word is oidia, which comes from the root oeidein meaning to sing.

In general, tragedy is a description of a fact of life. In our time, in day to day usage, the word tragedy defines a disastrous event, a calamity, or a series of terrible events. In its historical and literary usage, however, the word tragedy carries a deeper meaning. On one hand, tragedies are those disasters that happen by chance to the people involved who are not able to control the events. On the other hand, they are the images and stories of man in conflict with himself, his adversaries, or the world around him. The aim man's tragedy is to succeed as a human by gaining meaning, love, understanding, and wisdom through the ordeals.

During the fifth century Greece and during the seventeenth century England and France, tragedy experienced its two most popular periods. The origins of Greek tragedy are little known and foggy. One theory is that tragedy had its roots in the fertility ceremony of the God Dionysus, when the plays with the death and rebirth themes were put on stage during spring. Of the hundreds and maybe thousands of plays written for this celebration we have only thirty-three left today: those of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. These early playwrights treated tragedy in their own unique way. Their common denominator was the connection between men and Gods, heavily emphasizing the role of fate, necessity, and the supreme rule of the Gods.

The seventeenth century tragedy honors go to Shakespeare who wrote his plays mainly to entertain London audiences. With Shakespeare, the hero is usually a famous and kindly figure who falls into some kind of a disaster through a flaw in his character. The Shakespearean tragedy points out to the good that has become spoiled through mishap. Alongside Shakespeare, Corneille and Racine in France wrote tragedies during the same era. Unlike Shakespeare, however, Corneille and Racine’s tragedies were harsh, high-handed, and simple remakes of the old Greek tragedies where destiny was the supreme ruler.

During the twentieth century, our understanding of tragedy has evolved through the unfortunate hero's facing sudden revelations of the facts of character, of the paths he followed when, suddenly, he gained consciousness and realization. These heroes became victims and visionaries even though, once in a while, they lost their lives. Bowman’s “Death of a traveling Salesman”, Arthur Miller’s, Tennessee Williams’, Eugene O’Neil’s, Joseph Conrad’s and Hemingway’s works are some of the examples. Poets like Robert Penn Warren and Yeats, also employed tragedy in their subject matter, because tragedy happens in life.

Tragedy shows itself in the struggle of man against nature, man against man, man against fate, man against convention, man against reason with irreconcilable differences. These struggles usually move from safety to calamity as the hidden self is revealed. It is in this revelation, in this movement, that tragedy becomes attractive. After all, as long as the world stands, the calamities and disasters in real life that fall upon human beings--because they are human beings--will be inevitable.

Since we human beings plan to stay human, we are going to reflect those events in our art and in our writing. In other words, if we’ll bleed, we’ll write about it.

Joy Cagil is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ Her background is in foreign languages and linguistics. Her portfolio can be found at http://www2.writing.com/main/view_item/user_id/joycag/

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