Post by whitewolfstark on Apr 2, 2016 2:14:19 GMT
A perfect opportunity to talk about Shireen's tragic story arc as we now have it in its entirety. From Literary Critic Northrop Frye's book "Anatomy of Criticism", I'd classify her personal story arc as either a Tragedy Phase One or a Tragedy Phase Two (solely looking at events from her perspective alone). And I'd like to lay out the case for each if I may.
First a bit on what tragedy is on an archetypal level:
"Anyone accustomed to think archetypally of literature will recognize in tragedy a mimesis of sacrifice. Tragedy is a paradoxical combination of a fearful sense of rightness (the hero must fall) and a pitying sense of wrongness (it is too bad that he falls). There is a similar paradox in the two elements of sacrifice. One of these is communion, the dividing of a heroic or divine body among a group which brings them into unity with, and as, that body. The other is propitiation, the sense that in spite of the communion the body really belongs to another, a greater, and a potentially wrathful power. The ritual analogies to tragedy are more obvious than the psychological ones, for it is irony, not tragedy, that represents the nightmare or anxiety-dream." (p 214)
And now the phases of Tragedy:
"The phases of tragedy move from the heroic to the ironic, the first three corresponding to the first three phases of romance, the last three to the last three of irony. The first phase of tragedy is the one in which the central character is given the greatest possible dignity in contrast to the other characters, so that we get the perspective of a stag pulled down by wolves. The sources of dignity are courage and innocence, and in this phase the hero or heroine is usually innocent. This phase corresponds to the myth of the birth of the hero in romance, a theme which is occassionally incorporated into a tragic structure, as in Racine's Athalie. But owing to the unusual difficulty of making an interesting dramatic character out of an infant, the central and typical figure of this phase is the calumniated woman, often a mother the legitimacy of whose child is suspected. A whole series of tragedies based on a Griselda figure belong here, stretching from the Senedan Octavia to Hardy's Tess, and including the tragedy of Hermione in The Winter's Tale. If we are to read Alcestis as a tragedy, we have to see it as a tragedy of this phase in which Alcestis is violated by Death and then has her fidelity vindicated by being restored to life. Cymbeline belongs here too: in this play the theme of birth of the hero appears offstage for Cymbeline was the king of Britain at the time of the birth of Christ, and the halcyon peace in which the play concludes has a suppressed reference to this.
An even clearer example, and certainly one of the greatest in English literature, is The Duchess of Malfi. The Duchess has the innocence of abundant life in a sick and melancholy society, where the fact that she has "youth and a little beauty" is precisely why she is hated. She reminds us too that one of the essential characteristics of innocence in the martyr is an unwillingness to die. When Bosola comes to murder her he makes elaborate attempts to put her half in love with easeful death and to suggest that death is really a deliverance. The attempt is motivated by a grimly controlled pity, and is roughly the equivalent of the vinegar sponge in the Passion. When the Duchess, her back to the wall, says, "I am the Duchess of Malfi still," "still" having its full weight of "always," we understand how it is that even after her death her invisible presence continues to be the most vital character in the play. The White Devil is an ironic parody-treatment of the same phase."
Tragedy Phase Two:
"The second phase corresponds to the youth of the romantic hero, and is in one way or another the tragedy of innocence in the sense of inexperience, usually involving young people. It may be simply the tragedy of a youthful life cut off, as in the stories of Iphigeneia and Jephthah's daughter, of Romeo and Juliet, or, in a more complex situation, in the bewildered mixture of idealism and priggishness that brings Hippolytus to disaster. The simplicity of Shaw's Joan and her lack of worldy wisdom place her here also. For us however the phase is dominated by the archetypal tragedy of the green and golden world, the loss of the innocence of Adam and Eve, who, no matter how heavy a doctrinal load they have to carry, will always remain dramatically in the position of children baffled by their first contact with an adult situation. In many tragedies of this type the central character survives, so that the action closes with some adjustment to a new and more mature experience. "Henceforth I learn that to obey is best," says Adam, as he and Eve go hand in hand out to the world before them. A less clear cut but similar resolution occurs when Philoctetes, whose serpent-wound reminds us a little of Adam, is taken off his island to enter the Trojan war. Ibsen's Little Eyolf is a tragedy of this phase, and with the same continuing conclusion, in which it is the older characters who are educated through the death of a child."
While the easy way to go about this is to say: put Shireen next to Iphigeneia and be done with it; I'd like to argue that a strong number of elements from Phase One have been brought over into Shireen's story. Most clearly is her resistance to die when she realizes what is to happen, there is also the classic scene of a character trying to persuade her into accepting her death--though Shireen is played as being so innocent as to not realize what she is agreeing to. Also that despite her greyscale, she manages to bring life and joy to wherever she goes as she in the show teaches Ser Davos how to read as she does in our introduction of her, here in this episode (and later seasons). And then there is the symbol of the Stag pulled down by wolves, that D&D practically spell out for us by having Davos give Shireen a toy stag to play with.
An argument against this can be found in the books, where she is kept in a green and gold world of youthful companions like her cousin Edric in Aegon's Garden, which corresponds more to Phase Two. Likewise we're given less her perspective on things in the books and instead see her solely through the eyes of others, giving us a bit of distance on her character.
The show arguably promotes and makes Shireen more of a tragic figure and active player in her own death, really gutting us as they pull in elements from the Phase One of Tragedy. Meanwhile the books seem set up to follow the Phase Two plan much more thoroughly. In this case it would appear that Shireen on the show is made more of an actor in her own story, while George simply has her there as the lamb ready to be slaughtered. From the perspective of Shireen being a character in her own right, I'd argue that her arc as a character in which she takes action and attempts to bring life and joy to all even until the end when she is at first convinced and then argues against her death, a better arc for her character to make her story meaningful for the audience.
First a bit on what tragedy is on an archetypal level:
"Anyone accustomed to think archetypally of literature will recognize in tragedy a mimesis of sacrifice. Tragedy is a paradoxical combination of a fearful sense of rightness (the hero must fall) and a pitying sense of wrongness (it is too bad that he falls). There is a similar paradox in the two elements of sacrifice. One of these is communion, the dividing of a heroic or divine body among a group which brings them into unity with, and as, that body. The other is propitiation, the sense that in spite of the communion the body really belongs to another, a greater, and a potentially wrathful power. The ritual analogies to tragedy are more obvious than the psychological ones, for it is irony, not tragedy, that represents the nightmare or anxiety-dream." (p 214)
And now the phases of Tragedy:
"The phases of tragedy move from the heroic to the ironic, the first three corresponding to the first three phases of romance, the last three to the last three of irony. The first phase of tragedy is the one in which the central character is given the greatest possible dignity in contrast to the other characters, so that we get the perspective of a stag pulled down by wolves. The sources of dignity are courage and innocence, and in this phase the hero or heroine is usually innocent. This phase corresponds to the myth of the birth of the hero in romance, a theme which is occassionally incorporated into a tragic structure, as in Racine's Athalie. But owing to the unusual difficulty of making an interesting dramatic character out of an infant, the central and typical figure of this phase is the calumniated woman, often a mother the legitimacy of whose child is suspected. A whole series of tragedies based on a Griselda figure belong here, stretching from the Senedan Octavia to Hardy's Tess, and including the tragedy of Hermione in The Winter's Tale. If we are to read Alcestis as a tragedy, we have to see it as a tragedy of this phase in which Alcestis is violated by Death and then has her fidelity vindicated by being restored to life. Cymbeline belongs here too: in this play the theme of birth of the hero appears offstage for Cymbeline was the king of Britain at the time of the birth of Christ, and the halcyon peace in which the play concludes has a suppressed reference to this.
An even clearer example, and certainly one of the greatest in English literature, is The Duchess of Malfi. The Duchess has the innocence of abundant life in a sick and melancholy society, where the fact that she has "youth and a little beauty" is precisely why she is hated. She reminds us too that one of the essential characteristics of innocence in the martyr is an unwillingness to die. When Bosola comes to murder her he makes elaborate attempts to put her half in love with easeful death and to suggest that death is really a deliverance. The attempt is motivated by a grimly controlled pity, and is roughly the equivalent of the vinegar sponge in the Passion. When the Duchess, her back to the wall, says, "I am the Duchess of Malfi still," "still" having its full weight of "always," we understand how it is that even after her death her invisible presence continues to be the most vital character in the play. The White Devil is an ironic parody-treatment of the same phase."
Tragedy Phase Two:
"The second phase corresponds to the youth of the romantic hero, and is in one way or another the tragedy of innocence in the sense of inexperience, usually involving young people. It may be simply the tragedy of a youthful life cut off, as in the stories of Iphigeneia and Jephthah's daughter, of Romeo and Juliet, or, in a more complex situation, in the bewildered mixture of idealism and priggishness that brings Hippolytus to disaster. The simplicity of Shaw's Joan and her lack of worldy wisdom place her here also. For us however the phase is dominated by the archetypal tragedy of the green and golden world, the loss of the innocence of Adam and Eve, who, no matter how heavy a doctrinal load they have to carry, will always remain dramatically in the position of children baffled by their first contact with an adult situation. In many tragedies of this type the central character survives, so that the action closes with some adjustment to a new and more mature experience. "Henceforth I learn that to obey is best," says Adam, as he and Eve go hand in hand out to the world before them. A less clear cut but similar resolution occurs when Philoctetes, whose serpent-wound reminds us a little of Adam, is taken off his island to enter the Trojan war. Ibsen's Little Eyolf is a tragedy of this phase, and with the same continuing conclusion, in which it is the older characters who are educated through the death of a child."
While the easy way to go about this is to say: put Shireen next to Iphigeneia and be done with it; I'd like to argue that a strong number of elements from Phase One have been brought over into Shireen's story. Most clearly is her resistance to die when she realizes what is to happen, there is also the classic scene of a character trying to persuade her into accepting her death--though Shireen is played as being so innocent as to not realize what she is agreeing to. Also that despite her greyscale, she manages to bring life and joy to wherever she goes as she in the show teaches Ser Davos how to read as she does in our introduction of her, here in this episode (and later seasons). And then there is the symbol of the Stag pulled down by wolves, that D&D practically spell out for us by having Davos give Shireen a toy stag to play with.
An argument against this can be found in the books, where she is kept in a green and gold world of youthful companions like her cousin Edric in Aegon's Garden, which corresponds more to Phase Two. Likewise we're given less her perspective on things in the books and instead see her solely through the eyes of others, giving us a bit of distance on her character.
The show arguably promotes and makes Shireen more of a tragic figure and active player in her own death, really gutting us as they pull in elements from the Phase One of Tragedy. Meanwhile the books seem set up to follow the Phase Two plan much more thoroughly. In this case it would appear that Shireen on the show is made more of an actor in her own story, while George simply has her there as the lamb ready to be slaughtered. From the perspective of Shireen being a character in her own right, I'd argue that her arc as a character in which she takes action and attempts to bring life and joy to all even until the end when she is at first convinced and then argues against her death, a better arc for her character to make her story meaningful for the audience.