Wordsmith.org
Posted By: wwh anagnorisis - 12/17/02 09:00 PM
anagnorisis - variously translated as "discovery" or "recognition"; an important element of
tragedy according to Aristotle's Poetics whereby a tragic protagonist gains information
previously unknown leading to important insight.

For example, Oedipus's discovery of identity of his parents. (I could never imagine a young man
wanting to marry a middleaged woman. Just as it never made sense to me to have the Greeks
fighting twenty years for a woman who would have been an old hag .)

© Wordsmith.org