ABSTRACT

Aristotle, we have seen, recommended but did not insist on the use of the traditional stories in tragedy: the practice entailed that the central place was normally given to heroes and kings. Moreover, he laid it down as inherent in tragedy that the personages must be ‘better than we are’, which S. H. Butcher in Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (1894) interpreted as more fully ‘organized’, further along in the path of nature’s realization of itself, than is possible in the ordinarily confused human condition. The tragic hero – as Conrad said of Lord Jim in the preface to the novel where Jim was the focus of regard – is ‘one of us’. He is not necessarily virtuous, not necessarily free from profound guilt. What he is a man who reminds people strongly of our own humanity, who can be accepted as standing for the people.