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Name:
Aarti H. Vadher
Course:
M.A (English)
Topic:
Hamartia & the "Tragic Flaw" misinterpretations of Aristotle
Semester:1
Unit:
1
Roll.no:9
Paper
no.:3
Email
Id:artivadher10@gmail.com
Submitted
to :Dr. Dilip Barad,
Smt:
S.B.Gardi
Unit:1 
·
HAMARTIA:
A term from Greek tragedy
that literally means "missing the mark." Originally applied to an
archer who misses the target, a hamartia came to signify a tragic flaw, especially
a misperception, a lack of some important insight, or some blindness that
ironically results from one's own strengths and abilities. In Greek tragedy,
the protagonist frequently
possesses some sort of hamartia that causes catastrophic results after he fails
to recognize some fact or truth that could have saved him if he recognized it
earlier. The idea of hamartia is often ironic; it frequently implies the very
trait that makes the individual noteworthy is what ultimately causes the
protagonist's decline into disaster.
What does he mean by Hamartia?
What is this error of Judgment. The term Aristotle uses here, hamartia,
often translated "tragic flaw"(A.C.Bradely) has been the subject of
much debate. Aristotle, as writer of the Poetics, has had many a lusty infant, begot
by some other critic, left howling upon his doorstem ; and of all these (which
include the bastards Unity-of-Time and Unity-of-Place) not one is more trouble
to those who got to take it up than the
founding 'Tragic Flaw'. Humphrey House, in his lectures (Aristotle's Poetics,
ed. Colin Hardie (London,1956),p.94) delivered in 1952-3, commented upon this
tiresome phrase: "The phrase 'tragic flaw' should be treated with
suspicion. I do not know when it was first used, or by whom. It is not an
Aristotelian metaphor at all, and though it might be adopted as an accepted
technical translation of 'hamartia' in the strict and properly limited sense,
the fact is that it has not been adopted, and it is far more commonly used for
a characteristic moral failing in an otherwise predominantly good man. Thus, it
may be said by some writers to be the 'tragic flaw' of Oedipus that he was
hasty in temper; of Samson that he was sensually uxorious ; of Macbeth that he
was ambitious ; of Othello that he was proud and jealous- and so on.....but
these things do not constitute the 'hamartia' of those characters in
Aristotle's sense."
Mr. House goes on to
urge that
'all serious modern Aristotelian scholarship agrees..... that 'hamartia' means an error which is derived from ignorance of some material fact
or circumstance, and he refers to Bywater and Rostangni in support of his view.
But although “all serious modern scholarship' may have agreed to this point in
1952-3, in 1960 the good news has not yet reached the recesses of the land and
many young students of literature are still apparently instructed in the theory
of the 'tragic flaw'; a theory which appears at first sight to be a most convenient
device for analyzing tragedy but which leads the unfortunate user of it into a
quicksand of absurdities in which he rapidly sinks, dragging the tragedies down
with him. In his edition of Aristotle on the Art of Poetry (Oxford, 1909),
Ingram Bywater refers to such a misreading, though without using the term
'tragic flaw': "Hamartia in the Aristotelian sense of the term is a
mistake or error of Judgment (error in Lat.), and the deed done in consequence
of it is an erratum. In the Ethics an erratum is said to originate not in vice
or depravity but in ignorance of some material fact or circumstance... this
ignorance, we are told in another passage, takes the deed out of the class of
voluntary acts, and enables one to forgive or even pity the doer." The
meaning of the Greek word is closer to "mistake" than to
"flaw", "a wrong step blindly taken", "the missing of
mark" ,and it is best interpreted in the context of what Aristotle has to
say about plot and "the law or probability or necessity". In the
ideal tregedy, claims Aristotle, the protagonist will mistakenly bring about
his own downfall - not because he is sinful of morally weak, but because he
does not know enough. The role of the hamartia in tragedy comes not from its
moral status but from the inevitability of its consequences. Both Butcher and
Bywater agree that hamartia is not a moral failing. This error of Judgment may
arise from:
(i) ignorance (Oedipus),
(ii)hasty - careless view(Othello)
(iii)decision taken voluntarily but not deliberately(Lear, Hamlet
).
The error
of Judgment is derived from ignorance of some material fact or circumstance. Hamartia
is accompanied by moral imperfections(Oedipus, Macbeth ). Hence the peripatetic
is really one or more self-destructive actions taken in blindness, leading to results
diametrically opposed to those that were intended (often termed tragic irony),and
the anagnorisis is the gaining of the essential knowledge that was previously
lacking. Butcher is of the view that, "Oedipus the king - includes all
three meaning of hamartia, which in English cannot be termed by a single
term.... Othello is the modern example, Oedipus in the ancient, are the two
most conspicuous examples of ruin wrought by characters, noble, indeed, but not
without defects, acting in the dark and, as it seemed, for the best."
Hamartia is Modern plays: Hamartia is practically removed from the hero
and he becomes a victim of circumstance - a mere puppet. The villain in Greek
plays was destiny, now its circumstances. The hero was powerful, he struggled
but at the end of the day, death is inevitable. Modern heroes, dies several
deaths - passive - not the doer of the action but receiver. The concept of
heroic figures in tragedy has now become practically out of date. It was
appropriate to the ages when men of noble birth and eminent positions were viewed
as the representative figures of society. Today, common men are representative
of society and life.
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