Definition of Drama Symbolism in Sam Shepard's drama Curse of the starving class

and euphony . Much of modern British and American poetry is to some extent a critique of poetic tradition, playing with and testing among other things the principle of euphony itself, to the extent that sometimes it deliberately does not rhyme or keep to set rhythms at all. In todays globalized world poets often borrow styles, techniques and forms from diverse cultures and languages. Great poems differ from others exactly because of these, since their words invoke thoughts and powerful feelings in the listener or reader. Some poets, like the Hungarian József Attila , wrote exceptional poems with words combined in sentences that achieve meaning greater than the sum of the meanings of the words. Some of these became sayings in the everyday language. Across time and cultures the meanings of the words change, and make it difficult to enjoy the original beauty and power of poems.

C. Definition of Drama

Generally speaking, drama is a performance played by actors to speak about the written text. In complete definition, drama is the art of telling a story through the speech and actions of actors. To the ancient Greeks, the word drama means doing or action. Nowadays, drama means the words that have been written down to be spoken and acted in play. Drama is intended to express a meaning, to create a feeling or impression. 6 The classification of drama such as comedy, farce, and tragedy, is really general terms to guide us in our understanding of a play. These terms can also 6 The World Book Encyclopedia Vol. IV, London: Field Enterprises Education Corporation, 1996, p. 206. describe the drama or other theatrical forms such as opera or ballet. There are four kinds of drama: tragedy, comedy, tragic-comedy, and melodrama. The first type of drama, tragedy, is associated with a sad and death story with the death of protagonist character. According to Aristotle, it is the imitation of an action of high importance, complete and of some amplitude; in language enhanced by distinct and varying beauties; acted not narrated and with incidents arousing pity and fear. 7 Tragedy involves events which climax the story in unhappy disaster. It is probably the earliest form of art, and the one that deals with the most serious themes. Tragedy focuses on man’s struggle against hopeless odds. The struggle can be against the forces of destiny, society, or any other elements that place man in an exposed and doomed position. In tragedy, man can not hope to win, but in his attempts to stand up to his odds, he gains greatness. Comedy deals with the lighter side of life. Tragedy examines the eternal questions that a man faces during his life and shows how he tries to answer these questions, whereas comedy is rooted more in the events of our daily lives, such as the way humans live together in communities. Many dramatists use comedy scenes in tragedies to lessen the seriousness of the tragedy, as well as to highlight the seriousness of the tragedy’s main theme. Tragic-comedy, is a mingle of tragedy and comedy. Shakespeare did this collaboration when he arisen the tragedy in farce and arisen farce in tragedy in Anthony and Cleopatra. As Barrows has stated: “This third form resembles tragedy in making use of a temporarily serious action and in raising one of the Ralph H. Singleton and Stanton Millet, An Introduction to Literature, New York: The World Publishing Company, 1966, p. 545. tragic powers, and fear . It resembles comedy by employing comic situations and characters and by an ending that resembles of a comedy .” 8 Melodrama was developed as a theatrical form in the late 1700s in Europe. Early melodrama consisted of plays that used music in their action. In these plays, when the actor was silent, musicians played music to describe the actor’s thoughts or mood. Melodrama develops a distinctive type of plot involving suffering, dangerous adventures, villainy, and false accused heroes fighting for their honor. The plot usually deals with a man or a woman who is in a difficult or dangerous situation because of the villain’s actions. The hero is usually triumphant in the end and the villain is punished. When writing the stories of the drama, writers’ aim is to say as much as possible with the briefest as possible. This doesn’t imply that most good stories are brief. It indicates that only nothing is wasted and that each word and detail is selected for maximum effectiveness. Writers choose the details and incidents that contribute most to the meaning they are after; they omit those whose usefulness is minimal. As far as possible they choose details that are multi-valued that serve a variety of purposes at once. Doing so, they use symbols and allegory.

D. Definition of Semiotics