Cana Hauerland

Everything I Learned in Tragedy (excerpt)

            When I first began this course on tragedy I had a completely different idea of what tragedy meant.  First of all when I thought of tragedy I thought of mostly plays by Shakespeare such as Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear.  I had heard of Aristotle but had never read any of his works.  As far as comedies are concerned I had studied, once again, a few of Shakespeare’s but that was all.  I had never read any other tragedies or comedies of any other writer and was blind to plays of modern tragedy.  I had no idea of all the different and interesting ways that tragedy and comedy are described and related to each to other.  

            When I first learned about genre I was a little confused as to why we had to learn about the term and concentrate on it so much in class.  This confusion was because I could not grasp the concept of genre right away and apply it to tragedy as well as to other things.  I eventually became comfortable with genre and realized that it something I used to distinguish with everyday only I did not call it genre.  I had no idea that genre was used in the world of drama but now understand its value in the theater world.  Without genre we would not be able to classify plays such as tragedy, comedy, romantic comedy, and modern or classic tragedy.  Students like myself as well as other people need genre to be able to identify certain distinctions that can be useful when discussing and learning about a play.  As the genre handout says, “The study of genre thus exercises the critical act of classification, categorization, or taxonomy”. . . .