Discuss with reference to two or more works from the readings. (Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and Edgar’s The purloined letter )

Answer

Part 1: Drama Module

Tragedy is a weird thing. It is way past a style and very different from a genre but instead cuts across various art forms to find for itself a non-Euclidean artistic space (Gellrich & Zerba, 2014). Aristotle defines tragedy in his Poetics as an imitation of an act that is severe, of a given scale, and in itself complete and arouses pity and panic, all of which are achieved by a catharsis of such emotions (Gellrich & Zerba, 2014). The poetics are reflected on the lecture notes, and there does not come out clearly what Aristotle meant by the word catharsis. The drama module draws from the form and Henrik Ibsen's A Doll House to critically evaluate the argument by George Steiner.

Tragedy is not in any way close to the dramas that are just created to induce sadness though undoubtedly it is not cheery. It entails sad things. But being a sensibility it is ordered in a way that is more vertiginous. It uses sadness as a tool to strike out awareness. This is a classic case with the Corinne in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll House (Ibsen, 1889). Whether she is compulsorily silenced or indicted of being theatrical, she gets reduced just to her body. She gets entombed in the whole situation in the first case while, in the second one, she is turned into a dramatic spectacle. In both cases, she is not given an ear, her words went unheard, and her humanity remains unappreciated. This is a tragedy. A sexist dilemma then ensues where Corinne is either theatricalized or silenced forcibly, and in either case reduced to a thing.  In many a times, women who find themselves in such positions will strive to signify their existence and their humanity. Corinne, being a woman did exactly what she was expected to do. By losing her voice, Corinne ends up dying misconstrued and unappreciated. 

Helmer’s refinement is not able to handle death and the subsequent pain. Dr. Rank maintains his stance that Helmer is not wanted by his friend’s deathbed (Ibsen, 1889). With his refined nature, Helmer feels an intense sense of disgust for all the hideous things.  Throughout his suffering and the holiness that he has, Dr. Rank provides in the same way as if it were a cloudy background to the sunlit happiness of man (Ibsen, 1889). Helmer utterances are like those of a painter because all that he can think of is the effects on the surface. Helmer is so desperate when prodded by Nora that he can do anything include giving up sex by the thought of anything however ugly that thing may be (Ibsen, 1889). Such act is a tragedy that people should strive to keep themselves from.

Tragedy is not all about the fall of great men as is the case with Helmer, who can do anything, even the ugly one, out of desperation. The central mechanism of a tragedy is actually a leveling one. Tragedy has got no heroes at all. Casualties are more pronounced during tragedies. The history on dramatic literature reveals that tragedy is not just a confronting, but also a dangerous one. As a theater form, tragedy begins to vanish just the same way the outside world is overwhelmed by the terrifying calamity. At one given point, it becomes a transformation of the form while in another it is a retreat from the same form.

Tragedy does not provide a reason for illogical obliteration, but it instead gives a shape to it. It does illuminate human condition when they are challenged with the ultimate test. A person gains better qualities. Response id made with the knowledge that something important is yet to come. A notion that has the understanding of a tragedy is a notion that respects limits. Literally speaking, tragedy is a limit case, like for instance a person that steps past where they are allowed to and settling it with everything in their possession. Given the fact that they get to accept that their fate entails logic, it is not only salutary but also illuminating. Through tragedy, people tend to have a deeper feeling of the things and also have a clear view of them. They come to learn about the fragile threads binding human existence in the universe. Tragedy, in this case, is thrown out, and the nation opts for more amenable dramatic forms. It would therefore be deduced that that which a country rejects in the theater it will definitely meet in the streets.  The fact that the idea of limits artistically cannot be realized points out the fact that such idea cannot be realized socially either.

Part 2: Overview of Unit

The notion of the genre has continuously attracted attention for the past few decades in regards to English language learning and teaching. This trend has mainly come about as a result of the changing views of learning to write and discourse which integrates better indulgent of structure of language used in accomplishing social purposes in given contexts of use.  In regards to the various contexts of use, two genre theories have emerged: literary and rhetorical genre theories (Cuddon & Habib, 2013). Both theories have in the recent past begun developing new genre perceptions. Even as early as the times of Aristotle, the genre was already a significant concept for both the rhetoric and the literary studies. Aristotle gave definitions of literary kinds in The Poetics and outlined the categories of oratory in the ON Rhetoric. The basis of genre applied by Aristotle is still applied in one way or the other in the modern literary works.

The term genre refers to an abstract, socially accepted way of language usage. The idea of genre anchors upon the notion that members of a community often have little or no difficulty in identifying the similarities in their frequently used texts and are capable of drawing on their repeated encounters with such texts to read, comprehend and possibly write them quite easily (Bhatia, 2014).  This is partly because the art of writing is founded on expectations: the likelihood of the reader interpreting the purpose of the writer are improved if the writer assumes the trouble to predict what the reader’s expectations based on the earlier texts of similar kinds that they have read (Bhatia, 2014). Genre, as will be observed later on in the course of the discussion, has widely been applied in the two literary works: Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and Edgar Allan's The Purloined Letter (Allan, 1844; Miller, 1949).

The traditional perceptions of the genre that came later after Aristotle gave genre more formalistic classifications of text types. Redefinitions of the genre have been in the offing within the rhetoric-composition from the 19^th century into the 20^th century in the times of such linguists like Arthur Miller and Edgar Allan. The works by the modern theorists have been seen to have taken another direction with most ideologies underlying the scientific articles. Such unusual approaches and study objects have assisted genre theory in rhetoric-composition to develop a complexity of perspective. Underlying most of such work, nonetheless, is a core consensus regarding the social and the rhetorical basis of genre. The new rhetorical genre theorists like Arthur Miller and Edgar Allan have often had a common ground on the treatment of genre as demonstrated social action instead of regarding unadventurous formulas as the rhetorical application of symbols in commonly encountered contexts in with the aim of accomplishing the purposes of readers and writers.

Social, rhetorical and functional views of genre at times are largely based on the study of the discourse that operates in a pragmatic world (Cuddon & Habib, 2013). These views appear to be foreign to the understanding of the literary genres and works of art whose functions appear to be either irrelevant or obvious. One of the major divides between rhetoric-composition and literature prominently emanates from the rhetoric reconception of the genre (Cuddon & Habib, 2013). The social and rhetoric theory of the genre, however, by drawing from the issues, questions and objects of study of the rhetoric neatly fits with the views that are derived from historicism like Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and cultural studies like Edgar Allan's The Purloined letter and offers new approaches to the conventional literary genres.

As has been observed over time, when applied effectively, the literary genres offer formal constraints that are artistically enabling as has been observed in the two literary works: Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and Edgar Allan's The Purloined letter. The literary studies are today renewing their interests in the genre by reconceiving nature of the genre (Cuddon & Habib, 2013). Genre can be reclaimed as a tool for literary critics. Owing to the fact that genre is part of the cultural context within which the readers and writers operate, genre-like cultures and context are inevitable. They have been widely applied in the teaching pedagogy to bring out the meaning of literature in some contexts. Literary works of today typically make use of genre in one way or the other to induct new comers in the world of literature to become even better theorists. It therefore clearly comes out that when literary genres are used effectively they provide formal constraints that are creatively enabling.