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Drama Is The Specific: Poetics

Drama is a specific mode of fiction that is represented through performance. It comes from the Greek word meaning "action". The two masks associated with drama represent the traditional divisions of comedy and tragedy. Considered a genre of poetry, drama has been contrasted with epic and lyrical modes since Aristotle's Poetics. Originally, drama was described as a "play" in English, but the term "drama" came to be used in a more narrow sense to describe plays that were neither comedies nor tragedies. This narrower definition of drama was later adopted by film, television, and film studies. The enactment of drama through live performance on stage presupposes collaborative production and collective reception, which directly influences dramatic

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26 views

Drama Is The Specific: Poetics

Drama is a specific mode of fiction that is represented through performance. It comes from the Greek word meaning "action". The two masks associated with drama represent the traditional divisions of comedy and tragedy. Considered a genre of poetry, drama has been contrasted with epic and lyrical modes since Aristotle's Poetics. Originally, drama was described as a "play" in English, but the term "drama" came to be used in a more narrow sense to describe plays that were neither comedies nor tragedies. This narrower definition of drama was later adopted by film, television, and film studies. The enactment of drama through live performance on stage presupposes collaborative production and collective reception, which directly influences dramatic

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rohaidah
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance.

[1] The term comes from


a Greek word meaning "action" (Classical Greek: , drama), which is derived from "to do"
(Classical Greek: , drao). The two masks associated with drama represent the
traditional generic division between comedy and tragedy. They are symbols of the ancient
Greek Muses, Thalia, and Melpomene. Thalia was the Muse of comedy (the laughing face), while
Melpomene was the Muse of tragedy (the weeping face). Considered as a genre of poetry in
general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever
since Aristotle's Poetics (c. 335 BCE)the earliest work of dramatic theory.[2]
In English (as was the analogous case in many other European languages), the word "play" or
"game" (translating the Anglo-Saxon plga or Latin ludus) was the standard term used to describe
drama until William Shakespeare's timejust as its creator was a "play-maker" rather than a
"dramatist" and the building was a "play-house" rather than a "theatre."[3] The use of "drama" in a
more narrow sense to designate a specific type of play dates from the modern era. "Drama" in this
sense refers to a play that is neither a comedy nor a tragedyfor example, Zola's Thrse
Raquin (1873) or Chekhov's Ivanov (1887). It is this narrower sense that
the film and television industries, along with film studies, adopted to describe "drama" as
a genre within their respective media. "Radio drama" has been used in both sensesoriginally
transmitted in a live performance, it has also been used to describe the more high-brow and serious
end of the dramatic output of radio.[4]
The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience,
presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The structure of
dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production
and collective reception.[5] The early modern tragedy Hamlet (1601) by Shakespeare and
the classical Athenian tragedy Oedipus the King (c. 429 BCE) by Sophocles are among the
masterpieces of the art of drama.[6] A modern example is Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene
ONeill (1956).[7]

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