Um Trágico Final Feliz

• Main Author: Maria Joana Melo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra 2014-03-01
• Series: MatLit : Materialidades da Literatura
• Subjects: Aristotle; Poetics; Happy End; Tragedy; Melodrama; Film
• Online Access: http://iduc.uc.pt/index.php/matlit/article/view/1651

This paper addresses the happy ending in Greek tragedy – viewed as the first audiovisual mass-culture manifestation –, connecting features specifically assigned to tragedy and melodrama, such as ex-machina endings and the Aristotelian alogon, pathos, tears and moans, which gave Plato the main reason to oppose that form of art. Following Aristotle’s precepts in the Poetics, I will focus on the contradiction between chapters 13 and 14, in which he prescribes a happy and an unhappy ending. I have concluded that there is little difference between tragedy and melodrama as pertains to the exclusive features of Greek tragedy, but that there is a great difference when focusing on the features proposed by Aristotle, who therefore can not be held responsible for the shifting of tragedy towards melodrama.