Tragedy (from the Greek: τραγῳδία, tragōidia) is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audiences. While many cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the term tragedy often refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization. That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it.
From its origins in the theatre of ancient Greece 2500 years ago, from which there survives only a fraction of the work of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides; through its singular articulations in the works of Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Jean Racine, and Friedrich Schiller to the more recent naturalistic tragedy of August Strindberg; Samuel Beckett's modernist meditations on death, loss and suffering; Müller's postmodernist reworkings of the tragic canon; and Joshua Oppenheimer's incorporation of tragic pathos in his nonfiction film, The Act of Killing (2012), tragedy has remained an important site of cultural experimentation, negotiation, struggle, and change. A long line of philosophers—which includes Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin,Camus, Lacan, and Deleuze—have analysed, speculated upon, and criticized the genre.
Tragedy is Julia Holter's first studio LP, released on August 30, 2011. The album is inspired by Hippolytus, a play by Euripides.
A tragedy is a literary work with an unhappy outcome.
Tragedy may also refer to:
Here I lie
In a lost and lonely part of town
Held in time
In a world of tears I slowly drown
Goin' home
I just can't make it all alone
I really should be holding you
Holding you
Loving you loving you
Tragedy
When the feeling's gone and you can't go on
It's tragedy
When the morning cries and you don't know why
It's hard to bear
With no-one to love you
You're goin' nowhere
Tragedy
When you lose control and you got no soul
It's tragedy
When the morning cries and you don't know why
It's hard to bear
With no-one beside you
You're goin' nowhere
Night and day
There's a burning down inside of me
Burning love
With a yearning that won't let me be
Down I go
And I just can't take it all alone
I really should be holding you
Holding you
Loving you loving you
Tragedy
When the feeling's gone and you can't go on
It's tragedy
When the morning cries and you don't know why
It's hard to bear
With no-one to love you
You're goin' nowhere
Tragedy
When you lose control and you got no soul
It's tragedy
When the morning cries and you don't know why
It's hard to bear
With no-one beside you