In what ways and to what extent is "Mother Courage" a tragedy?

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In what ways and to what extent is “Mother Courage” a tragedy?

Ross Gillott 11 Watsford

In order to determine to what extent Brecht’s “Mother Courage and her Children” is a tragedy, it is useful to look at the works of two of the great writers of tragedies of all time, Aristotle and Shakespeare in order to establish a definition of a dramatic tragedy.

Aristotle made a clear definition of the dramatic style of tragedy. According to Aristotle, tragedy is “an imitation of a noble and complete action, having the proper magnitude, it employs language which has been artistically enhanced”.  The main character of Aristotle’s works was typically an admirable, but not perfect person confronted by a difficult moral choice. Aristotelian tragedy involved the use of “catharsis”, which was Aristotle’s term for arousing the emotions of pity and fear in order to reduce the audience’s passions to a healthy, balanced proportion.

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These two key elements of Aristotelian tragedy cannot be found in Brecht’s “Mother Courage and her Children”.  None of Mother Courage’s actions throughout the text could be described as “noble” or of any significant magnitude, and she could hardly be described as an admirable figure. Furthermore, it is well known that Brecht deliberately simplified the language used in the story, and did not enhance it artistically in any way. Mother Courage involves absolutely no “catharsis”, in fact Brecht designed the story in such a way that the plight of the characters would be kept completely distant from the audience, ...

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