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akademiskacademic quarterkvarterTransgression as Tragic TypologyMia RendixIn toto: The America dramatists’ take on tragedy and the tragic isfundamental different. In the American vision the didactics appearafter the physical or symbolic death of the heroine/hero. The moralintention of the tragedy unfolds in the resurrection. Despite Lavinia’sangry dreams of revenge and Prior Walter’s repeated denial ofhis chosenness, the readers/audience are never in doubt: The tragicplot and the response of the audience are controlled towards thetransgressive collision and the regenerative salvation. The didacticscan only be reached through this individual and collective regeneration.Additionally, this is closely related to the American use ofhamarthia, ‘flaw’. The Greek heroine/hero of the tragedies commithubris and and releases ‘nemesis‘ the causal chain of reactions, andthe Aristotelian hamarthia is naturally defined as sinful and wrong.The consequence is simple: moral and ethical denunciation andcondemnation of the sinner(s) by the gods, the other characters inthe play, and from the audience. But according to the Americans itis their correct and right decisions that catapult them into the predeterminedand irreversible movement towards destruction: The processual-soteriologicalcollision of the American idea of the tragic isunleashed from the confirmation of the American nation, peopleand cosmos. Subsequently, there is a potentially greater and moreomnipotent pain, suffering and despair caused by the thought ofthe potential atomization and destruction of the entire universe.The American tragedy shows the possibility of both splintering andrecreating cosmic harmony through the transgressive apocalyptictragedy and the tragic.NOTES1http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/sep/21/highereducation.news#article_continue2Currently, there is two works, to my knowledge, that attemptto discuss a distinct American tragedy: The Closed Frontier: Studiesin American Tragedy from 1970 by Harold P. Simonsons andThe Three Masks of American Tragedy from 1974 by Dan Vogel.Simonson is a literary and cultural critic, and he compares theidea of Frederic Jackon Turner’s ‘frontier’ to a concept of Americantragedy. However, Simonson exemplifies his otherwise in-Volume03 228