Can we read the Gospel of Mark as tragedy? How so? With what limits? With what results? I depart from previous explorations of these questions by rejecting their definition of tragedy as a work faithful to the dramatic conventions described in Aristotle's Poetics. I build instead on Aristotle's essential definition of tragedy as a work that inspires fear and pity in an audience. Using a narrative-critical approach, which allows a focus on the effects generated by Mark's plot and characters, I conclude that Mark, while more tragic than Matthew, is not clearly tragic or comic: the gospel maintains a careful balance of tragic and comic possibilities, challenging the reader to appropriate the story in her own world and tip the scales towards the comic. The effect of the text, however, is dependent on audience; Matthew's rewriting of and Papias' comments on Mark demonstrate that contemporary readers probably did not perceive Mark as tragic.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.79824 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Creators | Berube, Amelinda |
| Contributors | Henderson, Ian H. (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Faculty of Religious Studies.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002085352, proquestno: AAIMQ98416, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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