Το τραγικό στοιχείο στα πεζογραφήματα της Βάσως Καλαμάρα

Abstract

Please note: This article is in Greek. Vasso kalamara’s tragic vision: This paper explores the tragic vision of life as expressed in Vasso Kalmara’s collections of short stories Other Earth & Bitterness and in the play The Bread Trap. The paper identifies the significant features, which define literary works as “tragedies” and examines how the writer employs these features in her fiction. The emphasis is given to the function of the following: the tragic “heroes” (i.e. characters who initially show resistance and a will to change their life, which lead to hopelessness and their ultimate fall/destruction by fate); tragic peripeteia (i.e. the sudden change of fortune, which usually leads to suspense and ruin); tragic irony (i.e. the antithesis between action and result, between appearance and reality and between verbal word and true meaning of the situation); tragic anagnorisis (i.e. the moment of truth: when ignorance is replaced by knowledge). Finally, the debated element of catharsis is examined and its therapeutic effect through “pity and fear” as defined by Aristotle.