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Another Look At Calderón’S El Príncipe Constante As Tragedy, Matthew D. Stroud

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

The forms and definitions of tragedy have been a frequent preoccupation for James Parr over the course of his distinguished career. One of his more influential articles was "El príncipe constante and the Issue of Christian Tragedy," published in 1986. Parr's approach was primarily ethical and formalist, dealing with the Aristotelian requirements of tragedy: areté, hubris, catharsis. He countered the long and distinguished scholarship that maintains that Christian tragedy is an impossibility by reconsidering, even redefining, hamartia and anagnorisis, and essentially ignoring peripeteia. Hamartia, in his reading, is much more than a flaw or an …