The tragic hero in fiction: A comparative analysis of Crime and Punishment and A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man

This thesis is a comparative study of tragic heroes in Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky?s Crime and Punishment and James Joyce?s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. As representatives of modern literature, the protagonists of these two novels bear some qualities which are contrary to the classical norms on tragic heroes set by Aristotle. The aim of this thesis is to establish a modern perception of tragic heroes by evaluating the protagonists of these two novels. For this reason, it is necessary to understand the foundations and the development of tragic theories and the perceptions of tragic heroes throughout time. The approach of this thesis has been from general to particular. First, the concept of tragedy as a literary genre has been comprehensively studied by considering its place in literature, historical development and its different aspects. Then, a number of tragic theories and the concept of tragic hero have been presented for a better evaluation of the protagonists in question. In the second chapter, the protagonists of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov and Sonia, have been studied. Inspection of the social milieu and the biographical background of the author have been useful in understanding the traits that shaped the tragic heroes. In the third chapter, the same procedures have been used in order to investigate the protagonist of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In the comparative section, the protagonists of these novels have been studied from several perspectives in order to better reveal their tragic status. This comparison reveals that although they represent different literary tendencies, modern tragic heroes do not carry the classical tragic traits any more.