TRAGEDY AND THE TRADITION Introduction:Tragedy and the Tradition is the second essay of part one of Raymond Williams

book Modern Tragedy. The essay is a discussion on the common and the traditional interpretations of tragedy. Williams has used his power of perception and has come with a strong thesis on the evolution of tragedy in the essay. In a previous essay, Raymond tells the basics of tragedy in these words; We come to tragedy by many roads. It is an immediate experience, a body of literature, conflict of theory, an academic problem. According to Williams, tragedy has not been the death of Princes; it has been at once more personal and more general. He has compared his own sense of tragedy with the conventions of the time. Tragedy is not simply death and suffering, and it is certainly not accident. Nor is it simply any response to death and suffering; it is, rather, , and kind of response to a particular kind of events which are genuinely tragic, and which the long tradition embodies. In this article, he has tried to examine two questions: (a) What is the meaning of tradition? (b) What is the relation between the tradition to tragedy and the kinds of experience that in modern times, we mistakenly call tragic? The writer proposes to examine the tradition, with particular reference to its actual historical development, Williams remarks, Tragedy comes to us, as a word, from a long tradition of European Civilization, and it is easy to see this tradition as a continuity in one important way: that so many of the later writers and thinkers have been conscious of the earlier and have seen themselves as contributing to a common idea or form. We usually try to make a contrast between the traditional and the modern, and try to compress and unify the various thinking of the past into a single tradition. Williams explaining this point says: It is a question, rather, of realising that a tradition is not the past, but an interpretation of the past: a selection and valuation of ancestors, rather than a neutral record. And if this is so, the present, at any time, is a factor in the selection and valuation. It is not the contrast but the relationship between modern and traditional that concerns the cultural historian. Williams further remarks: To examine the tragic tradition, that is to say, is not necessarily to expand a single body of work and thinking, or to trace various within an assumed totality. It is to look critically and historically, at works and ideas which have certain evident links, and which are associated in our minds by a single and powerful word. It is above all, to see these works and ideas in their immediate contexts as well as in their historical continuity, and to examine their place and function in relation to other works and ideas, and to the variety of actual experience. According to Williams, out of some three hundred Greek plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and many others, thirty two plays have survived. Yet what survives has an extraordinary power: some eight or ten plays are amongst the greatest dramas of the world. This major achievement has affected the subsequent development of tragic drama in all degrees from general awareness to conscious imitation. Yet there has been no recreation or reproduction of Greek tragedy because its uniqueness is genuine, and in important ways not transferable. Even in itself, Greek Tragedy is resistant to any kind of systematisation: there are intractable differences between the three major tragedians. The reason is that the three issues of tragedy i.e. Fate, Necessity and the nature of the Gods were not systematised by the Greeks. The particular dramatic form is also least imitable. This is not an isolable aesthetic and technical achievement: it is deeply rooted in a precise structure of feeling. This is where the modern system most clearly misinterprets the plays: it looks at the mainspring of the action as the isolation of the hero. In fact, what the form embodies is not an isolable metaphysical stance, rooted in individual experience, but a shared and indeed collective experience. The specific and varying relations between chorus and actors are its true dramatic relations. When this unique Greek culture changed, the chorus which was the crucial element of dramatic form was discarded. With it, the unique meaning of tragedy was also lost. We can see this clearly in the transition from the classical to the mediaeval world. Discussing the historical development of tragedy, Williams says that when the unique Greek culture changed, the chorus which was the crucial element of dramatic form was discarded and the unique meaning of tragedy was lost. He says that things change and concepts change. On the basis of our concepts we tend to seek permanent meanings in art, which, according to Williams, is a serious mistake. People think that the medieval period produced no tragedy, but Monks Tale is the example in which we see protagonist fall ing from prosperity to adversity. Thus again, according to him, tragedy is the result of the fixation to an absolute meaning of tragedy. He says: It is not that we lack the evidence. But we fail to use it because it doesnt fit our idea of tragedy. It is now generally agreed that there was little or no tragedy in mediaeval literature. This agreement seems to rest on two grounds: first, that tragedy was then understood as narrative, rather than as drama; second that the general structure of mediaeval belief had little place for the genuinely tragic action. In this major historical period, the word tragedy was used in a quiet specific sense. The most famous English mediaeval definition of tragedy is in Chaucers Prologue to the Monks Tale: Story of a person falling from height to low degree. The emphasis here is obviously on a change of worldly condition, dramatised by the reference to high degree. In the Monks Tale, the element of chance is also included in the meaning of tragedy. Williams concludes: The story of tragedy, then, is the change from prosperity to adversity, determined by the general and external fact of mutability. Medieval tragedies are usually collected examples of the operation of a general law, and the keyword is fortune. Williams quotes many examples to explain this point that the ground of tragic action was the operation of this arbitrary and incomprehensible power. The medieval idea of tragedy was worldly as fortune was taken to be worldly success. The falls of heroes were examined in the light of the doctrine of fortune. Behind the particular sins was a more general sin: that of trusting to fortune in the sense of seeking worldly success. The pride of the world involved all other vices, and the remedy was to put no trust in the world but to seek God. These

developments brought about the exclusion of conflict from the tragedy, and tragedy came to be considered as a story, an account, but not an action. A main source of Renaissance tragedy was the emphasis on the fall of famous man. But, with the dissolution of the feudal world, the practice of tragedy made new connections. Williams quotes Sidney to explain that the theme of mutability is still dominant, and its exemplary character. But the political distinction between King and Tyrant has replaced the simple exposure of eminence, and the emphasis of affects provides as link to a new interest. Within the exemplary tradition, and the continuing emphasis on the affairs of Kings, there is a new interest in the actual workings of tragedy. Two different traditions- the medieval emphasis on the fall of princes and the new Renaissance interest in tragic methods and effects gave birth to a new tradition. It was Sidney who gave more attention to the methods of writing tragedy than to any moral or physical idea. The idea of tragedy ceased to be metaphysical and became critical, though this development was not complete until the neoclassical critics of the seventeenth century: Over the next two centuries, until the radical Hegelian revision, the idea of tragedy comprises mainly methods and effects. In this period, the new significance of exalted rank in tragedy appears a continuity from the past. Socially, this is an aristocratic rather than a feudal conception. Rank in tragedy became important because of its accompanying style. The increasing secularisation of tragedy is related to the new understanding of dignity. Dryden argued thatexalted rank was necessary to show that no condition was exempt from the turns of fortune. But now a change was visible. The moving force of tragedy was now quite clearly a matter of behaviour, rather than either a metaphysical condition or a metaphysical fault. Error was related to the action, which was in itself a general mutability. Now the emphasis is on an increasingly isolated interpretation of the character of the hero: the error is moral, a weakness in an otherwise good man, who can still be pitied. The noble way to handle suffering appears in the widespread discussion of tragic effect. Within such an idea of tragedy, both hero and spectator are conscious consumers of feeling, and their actions are limited to occasions for displaying their modes of consumption. Lessing (1729-81) was a noted German Critic and dramatic poet. His major contribution to the idea of tragedy is (a) a theoretical rejection of neo-classicism, (b) a defence of Shakespeare, (c) and an advocacy and writing of bourgeois (middle class of society) tragedy. In Lessing, the whole previous tradition was reinterpreted in terms of a pressing contemporary interest and valuation. He said that the Neoclassicism was a false classicism and the real inheritor of the Greeks was Shakespeare; the real inheritor of Shakespeare was the new national bourgeois tragedy. Raymond Williams does not agree with Lessing and holds that Shakespeare was not the inheritor of the Greeks; rather he was a major instance of a new kind of tragedy. The character of Elizabethan tragedy is determined by a very complicated relationship between elements of an inherited order and elements of a new humanism. If the historical development of the idea of tragedy is to be fully understood, we must consider the complicated process of secularisation. In one sense, all drama after the Renaissance is secular, and the only fully religious tragedy we have is the Greek, Elizabethan drama is thoroughly secular in its immediate practice, but undoubtedly retains a Christian consciousness. Williams calls it a case of Backward assimilation which ignores forward assimilation. Secular drama was a major step in the historical development in the idea of tragedy. In fact, Elizabethan tragedy anticipates the trends of Humanism and Romanticism. Raymond William says: In o ne sense, all drama after Renaissance is secular Neo-classical is the first stage of substantial secularization. The increasing emphasis on a rational morality affected the tragic action in one important way: that it insisted on relating suffering to moral error, and so required the tragic action to demonstrate a moral scheme. Tragedy, in this view, shows suffering as a consequence of moral error and happiness as a consequence of virtue; meeting the demands of poetic justice. The weakness is that morality is static and moral emphasis is merely dogmatic. Further he discusses Hegel who didnt reject the moral scheme of poetic justice but he said that emphasis on morality would make a work social drama not tragedy. Tragedy, he said, was a specific kind of spiritual action. What is important for Hegel is not the suffering mere suffering but its causes. Mere pity and fear are not tragic. It does not consider the external contingency beyond the control of the individual i.e. illness, loss of property, death or the like. To Hegel, conscious individuality, individual freedom and self determination are essential for genuine tragic action. Hegel asserts that tragedy recognizes suffering as: suspended over active characters entirely as the consequence of their own act. Any tragedy which fails to do this must be reformed or re-written, to meet the demands of what is called poetic justice. The spectators will be moved to live well by the demonstration of the consequences of good and evil. Within the action itself, the characters themselves will be capable of the same recognition and change. In this tradition, the response to suffering is inevitably redemption, and the response to evil is repentance and goodness. But this scheme called poetic justice might be demonstrated in a fiction, but could not negotiate much actual experience. Unexplained and irrational suffering in the real world eventually over-threw not only this version of consequence but of its whole moral emphasis. Later tragedy became more secularized in the Renaissance and Neoclassical age. During Renaissance, there is a precise emphasis on the fall of famous men, as Rank was still important because the fate of ruling class was the fate of the city. But with the dissolution of feudal world, the practice of tragedy made new connections. The stories were transformed. During the neoclassical period emphasis on dignity and nobility of the hero continued. But the moving force of the tragedy was now a matter of behaviour rather than a metaphysical condition. The real question of tragedy now was moral than metaphysical. The tragic error was moral, a weakness in an otherwise good man who could still be pitied. After Williams has discussed the idea of tragedy, he gives his reading of 18th and 19th century tragic theories.

Hegel (1770-1831), a famous German philosopher, did not reject the moral scheme that had been called poetic justice, but he described it as the triumph of ordinary morality, and the work that embodied it as social drama rather than tragedy. This new emphasis marks the major emergence of modern tragic ideas. What is important in tragedy, for Hegel, is not suffering as such mere suffering but its causes. Mere pity and fear are not tragic. Tragedy recognises suffering as suspended over active characters entirely as the consequence of their own act. It does not take into consideration the external contingency or the circumstance beyond the control of the individual, such as illness, loss of property, death and the like. For a genuine tragic action, there should be present the principle of individual freedom and independence. This conscious individuality is the only condition of tragedy. Through it, the essential tragic action can occur an action of necessary conflict and resolution. In Hegels version of the tragic action, valid but partial claims come into inevitable conflicts; in the tragic resolution, they are reconciled; even at the cost of the characters that stand of them. Williams points out two differences between the ancient and modern tragedies. First, in the ancient tragedy, the characters clearly represent the substantive ethical ends; in modern tragedy, the ends are wholly personal. Secondly, in ancient tragedy, there is not only the downfall of conflicting persons and ends in the achievement of eternal justice. An individual may surrender his partial and under a higher command; in modern tragedy, the whole question of resolution is more difficult because the character is more personal. Justice itself is more abstract and colder. Reconciliation, when it comes, will often be within the character and will be more complicated. Hegels interpretation of tragedy is part of a general philosophy rather than a historical criticism. Williams concludes the discussion on Hegels idea of tragedy in these words: Thus Greek tragedy has been seen as the concrete embodiment of the conflict between primitive social forms and a new social order. Renaissance tragedy has been seen as the embodiment of the conflict between a dying feudalism and the new individualism. It is not eternal justice, in Hegels sense, that is affirmed in the tragic issue, but rather the general movement of history, in a series of decisive transformations of society. Not all conflicts of this kind lead to tragedy. There is only tragedy when each side finds it necessary to act, and refuses to give way. Schopenhauer (1788-1860) and Nietzsche (1844-1900) are German philosophers. Their views also contributed to the development of the idea of tragedy. Before Schopenhauer, tragedy was associated with (a) ethical crisis (b) human growth and (c) history. The German philosopher secularised the idea of fate when he said, The true sense of tragedy is the deeper insight, that it is not his own individual sins that the hero atones for, but original sin, i.e. the crime of existence itself. What Schopenhauer offers is the quite different sense of a general human fate which is above and beyond particular cases. In this respect, he is the forerunner of an idea of tragedy which seems now to be dominant: that it is an action and a suffering rooted in the nature of man, to which historical and ethical considerations are irrelevant. So the meaning of tragedy is this recognition of the nature of life, and the significance and the tragic hero is his resignation, the surrender not merely of life but of the will to live. The heroes of tragedy are purified by suffering in the sense that the will to live, which was formally in them, becomes dead. Within this negation, Nietzsche found a new kind of tragic affirmation. Tragedy, in his view, dramatises a tension which it resolves in a higher unity. There hero, the highest manifestation of the will, is destroyed, but the eternal life of the will remains unaffected. The metaphysical delight in tragedy is this active and communicated process. According to him, the action of tragedy is not moral, not purgative, but aesthetic. Nietzsches powerful linking of tragedy with myth, the rejection of science and political reaction has been of major importance. As a consequence of this, in tragic theory, the emphasis is on myth as the source of tragic knowledge, and on ritual as a description of communicated action. The central thesis of Nietzsches book Birth of Tragedy is: the ritual origin of Greek tragedy as well as the interdependence of myth and ritual in all primitive cultures. Later on anthropologists also emphasized the importance of myth and ritual in different cultures. Then this came to be known as the latest mode of an idea of tragedy. We should examine this idea in its historical and ideological context as it has played a crucial interpretative role. The terms myth and ritual seem capable of infinite extension. What we need to clarify is the difference between myth as heroic legend and myth in the Nietzsche and sense of a supra-rational source of spiritual wisdom. There is a plenty of evidence connecting tragedy of all periods with the former. The heroic legend, in the Greeks and others, is neither rational nor irrational, in the modern sense, because it was primarily taken as history. Similarly ritual in the sense of a form of worship of a particular god cannot be glibly (superficially) identified with the many forms of dramatic action, in which there is no properly ritual action at all. The fact is that myth and ritual are being used, in this modern idea of tragedy, as metaphors. The meaning of the tragic action, in this version, is a cyclic death and rebirth, linked to the seasons and centring on a sacrificial death which through lament and discovery becomes a rebirth: the death of the old is the triumph of the new. Now the essential movement described here is indeed a common tragic meaning. But we cannot identify this interpretation as the tragic vision as established by facts of tragic origins, which have somehow persisted through so many historical periods. What this idea of tragedy seems essentially to teach is that suffering is a vital and energising part of the natural order. To participate in this version of the life-process is seen as the tragic response, as opposed to the moral or optimistic or a rational response Williams concludes: At the centre of this ritual action, after all, is the tragic hero, whose inner confl ict is the whole tragic action, and whose crisis and destruction can be seen as the ritual tearing-to-pieces and sacrifice for life. Thus, not only do we find the use of myth in a specifically modern sense to rationalise a post Christian metaphysics, but the conversion of the ritual figure to a form of the modern hero the hero who in liberal tragedy is also the victim, who is destroyed by his society but who is capable of saving it. The separation of tragedy and tragedy is in one sense inevitable. The separation of tragedy from tragedy means the separation of some painful experiences from others. These some painful experiences should be considered

different from other painful experiences on the basis of certain grounds. We may take these grounds as defining element in tragic and non-tragic experiences. Our thinking about tragedy is important because it is a point of intersection between tradition and experience, and it would certainly be surprising if the intersection turned out to be a coincidence. The word coincidence is somewhat important to be kept in mind. Williams has given his point on tradition and experience as an introduction. Tragedy comes to us, as a word, from a long tradition of European civilization and it is easy to see this tradition as a continuity in one important way: that so many of the latter writers and thinkers have been conscious of the earlier, and have seen themselves as contributing to a common idea or form. Williams has used the word continuity as collate of tradition. The basic difference in two words is not ignored in any sense. Yet tradition and continuity, as words, can lead us into a wholly wrong emphasis. When we come to study the tradition, we are immediately aware of change. All we can take quite for granted is the continuity of tragedy as a word. It may well be that there are more important continuities, but we can certainly not begin by assuming them. There is a common pressure, in the ordinary verbal contrast between traditional and modern, to compress and unify the various thinking of the past into a single tradition, the tradition. So tradition is the word used for continuity of something through a long past. This continuity may be of some ritual, behaviour or idea. In case of tragedy the continuity is of the word tragedy used for a specific form of literature. It is not only the continuity of word but also the continuity of that form of literature this word is used for. So the tradition of tragedy is on two levels: the views and explanation about the word tragedy, and the definitions and interpretations of a literary form called tragedy. The involvement of social and cultural issues in the tradition of tragedy. In the case of tragedy, there are additional pressures of a particular kind: the assumption of a common Greco Christian tradition, which has shaped Western civilization. Tragedy is at first sight one of the simplest and most powerful illustrations of this cultural continuity. The Christian culture is the continuity of Grecian culture. What westerns have given the utmost importance in these days are the issues of culture and language. The culture and language are not the products of mankind. They are not subject to human beings. Rather human beings are subject to certain culture and language. Now with the progress of time the culture of the whole world shall undergo considerable changes. As all the human beings are using same type of things, the culture of the world shall no more be varying from country to country, but be same everywhere. Tragedy in the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, is a common activity. It is easy to see how convenient, how indispensable, an idea of tragedy this is. Most study of tragedy has been unconsciously determined by just this assumption, and indeed by a desire to teach and propagate it. At particular stages of our own history, the revival of tragedy has been a strategy determined by this consciousness of a necessary tradition. In our own century, especially, when there has been a widespread sense of that civilization being threatened, the use of the idea of tragedy, to define a major tradition threatened or destroyed by an unruly present, has been quite obvious. And then it is not a question of mere counter-assumption that there is no such significant continuity. It is a question, rather, of realizing that a tradition is not the past, but an interpretation of the past: a selection and valuation of ancestors, rather than a neutral record. And if this is so, the present, at any time, is a factor in the selection and valuation. It is not the contrast but the relationship between modern and traditional that concerns the cultural historian. What Williams has said is important not in the context of tragedy as form or tragedy as experience, but culture and its transformation to present and modern. The culture is a living thing. It never remains stagnant or still. It grows and wears out with time. What comes to present through past is a kind of genetic transformation. As the population never remains same, the culture never stays still. To examine the tragic tradition, that is to say, is not necessarily to expound a single body of work and thinking, or to trace variations within an assumed totality. It is to look, critically and historically, at works and ideas which have certain evident links, and which are associated in our minds by a single and powerful word. It is, above all, to see these works and ideas in their immediate contexts, as well as in their historical continuity, and to examine their place and function in relation to other works and ideas, and to the variety of actual experience. Williams has taken enough advantage of this style. It helps him take time to put forward the next point. It also makes his reader to get prepared for something new. And it also keeps a kind of suspense without which a book of criticism may feel drier. What he means by contemporary deadlock is perhaps the insensitivity of the people of twentieth century towards this form of literature. Conclusion:- Williams writings in the post-war period had a kind of existentialist motif of blocked individual liberation. The essay Tragedy and Tradition is a discussion on the common and the traditional interpretations of tragedy. He has used his power of perception and has come with a strong thesis on the evolution of tragedy in the essay. Raymond Williams takes the subject of tragedy as a form of art and tragedy as an experience. He retraces the tradition of tragedy as he believes in the continuity of tradition. He doesnt want to reject the present by the past or vice versa; but he thinks that concept of tradition is important to understand modern tragedy. He believes that tragedy is not the death of kings; it is more personal and general. Tragedy is not simply death and suffering and it is certainly not accident. Nor is it simply a response to death and suffering.. His basic thesis in this article is: The meaning of tragedy, the relationship of tradition to tragedy and the kinds of experience which we mistakenly call tragic The modern tragedy is wholly personal and our interest is directed not to the abstract ethical questions but to the individual and his conditions. As with Karl Marx, Renaissance tragedy has been seen as the result of the conflict between dying feudalism and the new individualism. Individual suffers, not because he is conflict with gods or fate, but with the process of the social transformation. Tragic hero, in Marxist Criticism becomes world historical individual, in conflict with world-spirit. Williams reads Schopenhauer who believes that tragedy and sufferings are rooted in human nature and that these above and beyond particular causes. To this tragic sense of life, ethical and historical considerations are irrelevant. Misfortunes and sufferings are not exceptions but normal facts of life. So, the meaning of tragedy is resignation to the nature of life. For Nietzsche, tragedy dramatizes a tension which is

resolved in higher order. According to him, the action of tragedy is not moral, not purgative, but aesthetic. Williams argues that we usually try to make a contrast between the traditional and the modern and try to compress and unify the various thinking of the past into a single tradition. About tradition Williams explains: It is a question, rather of realizing that a tradition is not the past; but an interpretation of the past a selection and evaluation of ancestors rather than a neutral record and the present serves as a link between the traditional and the modern According to Williams, Tragedy in modern times is an immediate experience, a body of literature, a conflict of theory and an academic problem. Thus tragic experience of a modern man is quite different from the tragic experience of a person in the past. There is a change or progress in the meanings of tragedy in the historical sense and the occurrence of experience in the social encompassing values. Williams stresses on the existence of tragedy and tradition as separate modes of behaviour. The tragedy we find in books is sometimes deeply missed in social experience. Tragedy has come through a long tradition of social behaviour and environmental awareness. Tragedy and the tradition of tragedy are two different things, yet mostly considered corresponding to each other. The most obvious reason of this continuity is the mutability of the English and Greek culture. There lies some underground vitality that helped so many of the Greek cultural facts take place in English culture. Tragedy, in this way, is a kind of cultural continuity. Secondly, it depends on the universal truth of the necessity of tradition. In this way, tradition is the ultimate need of some culture. Whatever the ancestors select and valuate becomes for the coming generations a kind of tradition. Question: critically assess Raymond Williams concept of tragedy and tradition. Q: what is the meaning of tradition and how it is connected with the change in tragedy? Give a satisfactory discussion. Q: what is the relationship between the tradition and the tragedy and what kind of experiences are that we mistakenly call tragic in modern times according to Williams?