LITR 4370 TRAGEDY Final Exam Samples 2015 (final exam assignment) Model Answers to Part 3. Complete Research Report

Part 3. Complete Research Report: Write at least 8-10 substantial paragraphs with four sources to complete your Research Report on selected special topic.

Michaela Fox

Nietzsche, You Complete Me

Honesty is the best policy. With that in mind, I confess my enrollment in this course had little to do with my interest in the topic and more to do with balancing my schedule. However, I quickly realized my extreme interest in the complexity and depth that is tragedy. As an aspiring English teacher of grades seven through twelve, I expect I will have likeminded students, entering my classroom with little to no expectations of finding joy in literature. The source on Horace and Literature describes mixing the pleasant with the useful, which directly mimics my own philosophy on learning and teaching. If students do not believe in the purpose of their learning, they will not learn it. This relates to not only students but all learners, regardless of age. We must find some connection to information in order for a true experience of learning to occur. Fortunately, tragedy has within it the potential for connectivity, but it is the teachers who must help students make that connection.

          Mimesis is described as the “representation or imitation of the real world in (a work of) art, literature, etc.” The genre of tragedy depicts this type of real world imitation in a fashion unlike any other genre of literature, because it involves concepts central to being human. It poses questions central to identity and character, which reside within the souls of all human beings. Complications in teaching tragedy arise due to the conjectures implying it as dreadful, devastating, and depressing. Unfortunately, the wall of ignorance cannot be broken down until one experiences tragedy in all of its glory. As a teacher, I will have the responsibility of exposing tragedy in an advantageous light.

          I had originally decided to write on the topic of teaching tragedy, however, as I dig further into the meat of tragedy, I discover my indescribable magnetism towards Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas involving the tragic chorus and the Apolline/Dionysiac in The Birth of Tragedy. He explains that similar to how the “reproduction of species depends on the duality of the sexes,” art depends on the “duality of the Apolline and Dionysiac”—Dionysus being the non-visual “god of wine, disorder or ecstasy, ecstatic worship, and drama” and Apollo being the visual “god of light, music and poetry, order, medicine, prophecy, and interpretation of dreams” (14). To better understand the two tendencies of the Apolline and the Dionysiac, Nietzsche explains them as the “two separate art worlds of dream and intoxication” (14).

The dream world is the “precondition of all visual art” in that it permits the artist to put forth a visible form for observers to admire, yet it will always be a mere “illusion”—an imitation of reality. However, the ultimate poet observes his creations (dreams) as a way to interpret life, which deems dreams as necessary experiences for human enjoyment. Nietzsche compares this to principium individuationis, an illusory state situated in an undifferentiated reality, that when fragmented by the disappearance of forms (visual—Apollo), gives us a “glimpse into the nature of the Dionysiac” (17). Therefore, the Apolline consists of dreams and forms, and individualization*, whereas the Dionysiac involves unity, oneness, and spiritual harmony. In the union of these two art worlds, tragedy takes its form.

          While the Apolline and the Dionysiac tendencies account for the makeup of tragedy, it is the tragic chorus, Nietzsche explains, from which tragedy arose. He discusses the illogicality of the proposal of the chorus as the “ideal spectator” in that it contradicts the original ideal of art as a means for contrasting the nobility with the populace (36).  Yet, if we visualize the chorus as the Apolline vision of Dionysiac unity, it is possible to see the original chorus as the “ideal spectators” of their own unified (Dionysus) dream world (Apollo). As an “unscientific yet brilliant” concept, it introduces the idea of transformation occurring within the members of the chorus. However, Nietzsche claims Schiller’s Bride of Messina provides a more accurate description of the chorus, describing it as “a living wall” that closes off tragedy from reality.

          In viewing the chorus as a “living wall,” we conceptualize the Greeks intention to invent a “floating scaffold of an invented natural state” where “natural beings” are “invented especially for it.” This created space provides life for the Dionysiac chorus to reveal the world of myth and ritual. Making up the Dionysiac chorus is the satyr, which Nietzsche describes “relates to cultural humanity as Dionysiac music relates to civilization.” The satyr, or the “idyllic shepherd,” is the man of primal instinct and primitive nature, which the members of the chorus seek in their transformations. By abandoning individuality and joining together to form a unified sanction of worshippers, the tragic chorus prepares to receive its Apolline counterpart.

          As mentioned previously, Nietzsche insists on the unification between the Dionysiac and the Apolline, which comes to life when the Dionysiac chorus pairs with the lyrical tone of the Apolline. Once the Dionysiac spirit intercedes with the Apolline image, the “drama is complete” and the audience waits to join the show. The process of drawing the audience in occurs in a transformative manner through the internal transformation of the members of the chorus themselves. They begin to see the characters for what they are, rather than as a man in a costume—they are transformed into a sphere of myth.

          The Apollonian/Dionysian and the tragic chorus may be two of Nietzsche’s most complex ideals in The Birth of Tragedy because they require a level of thought way outside of traditional thinking processes. The unification of the world of beauty and order with the world of ecstatic worship results in an art form that reveals the truths of life, yet it provides us with a consolation for those truths. This concept aids in understanding tragic plays but it can also exist as profound concept on its own. Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy will remain one of the most interesting reads I have ever come across even if it literally gave me headaches and made me want to dunk my head in a bath of hot oil.

Works Cited

Del Caro, Adrian. "The Birth of Tragedy." A Companion to Friedrich Nietzsche. Ed. Paul Bishop. Rochester: Camden House, 2012. 54-79. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 290. Detroit: Gale, 2014. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 May 2015.

Nietzsche, Frederich. The Birth of Tragedy: Out of the Spirit of Music.  Trans. Shaun Whiteside. Ed. Michael Tanner. England: Penguin Books, 2003. Print.

Sophocles. The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus. Trans. Robert Fagles. England: Penguin Books, 1984. Print.

White, Craig. LITR 4370 Course Webpage. University of Houston – Clear Lake, 2015. Web. 1 Apr. 2015.