Template:Tragedy

"Tragedy! When the feeling's gone and you can't go on, it's tragedy!"

—The Bee Gees, Tragedy (or, for younger, British Tropers, Steps)

In a sentence, you could say that Tragedy concerns itself with the fall of a great man due to his own mistakes and/or flaws.

As a genre, tragedy is Older Than Feudalism. It has changed quite a bit since its conception in ancient Greece, and nowadays is a dying genre... how tragic! Soon it will be just as dead as Irony.

As you can guess from the above facetiousness, Tragedy is also as clingy as Irony and as difficult to define and apply. It's not enough to be on the deep cynical end and have a Twist or Downer Ending with plenty of artsy angst along the way, or have the hero's happy home life destroyed with a girlfriend raped and Dead Little Sister; it has to be of an epic scope with inexorable and self-inflicted pain brought about for past sins. And despite all that, it also has to give the viewer closure.