A flashback on my favorite study on theory of literature: Northrop Frye's "Archetypal Criticism: Theory of Myths: The Mythos of Autumn: Tragedy" (Northrop Frye, "Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays." Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1973).
'In contrast with comedy, which deals with characters in society, tragedy is more concentrated on a single individual.
The tragic hero is indeed very great, but there is something on the side of him, compared to which he is small. This can be God, deities, fate, accident, or some other aspects.
The center of tragedy is in the hero's isolation.
Concerning something beyond, its name is variable, yet the form of which it manifests itself is fairly constant. Whatever the context is, tragedy tends to lead up to an epiphany of law ("what is, and must be").
The vision of law in tragedy operates as a revenge.
The tragic hero provokes enmity or inherits a situation of enmity, and the return of the avenger constitutes the catasthrope.
The tragic hero is a disturbance toward the balance in nature, which sooner or later must right itself.
The righting of the balance is called "nemesis."
The agents can be human/ghostly/divine vengeance/divine justice/accident/fate or the logic of events, but the underlying point is that the nemesis happens!
There are two reductive formulae which are frequently used to explain tragedy:
(1) the theory that all tragedy exhibits the omnipotence of an external fate, and
(2) the theory that the act which sets the tragic process going must be primarily a violation of moral law, whether human or divine.
Tragedy seems to elude the antithesis of moral responsibility and arbitrary law, as well as the antithesis of good and evil.
Anyone who is used to think archetypally of literature will realize that there is a mimesis of sacrifice within tragedy.'
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