These terms, adopted from Aristotle’s Poetics, serve as both dramatic taxonomy and as general terms for aesthetic judgments. As genres, they differ in their motives and “rules” of construction. Tragedies are carefully defined by such requirements as “a great man falls from a high place” due to “a tragic flaw” in his character, causing a national catastrophe (represented by a “chorus” of citizens,), etc. Comedy has often been defined as “tragedy avoided.” In modern terms, tragedies are unhappy (tragic) occurrences from any cause (heredity, natural disaster, etc.), while comedies are stories with “happy outcomes,” reconciled dramatic twists, etc.—often humorous and/ or romantic, with likable characters and everyday, non-serious dilemmas. The passages of Aristotle’s descriptions of types of drama that deal with a definition of “comedy” have been lost to posterity.
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