With what terms do we describe horrific events? Some of the strongest come from literary tradition. When something unthinkable happens, when evil forces seem to be at work, when many innocent people die, and the subject is war, carnage, and threatened national identity, we call this spectacle a tragedy. But we often use that word with little understanding of its history and meaning over time.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines tragedy as "A play or other literary work of a serious or sorrowful character, with a fatal or disastrous conclusion: opp. to COMEDY," then as "An unhappy or fatal event or series of events in real life; a dreadful calamity or disaster." Aristotle, in his Poetics, perceptively argued that the literary representation of suffering and disaster can produce an elevating effect, which he called "catharsis" - a purging of the emotions of pity (for the victims) and terror (of the gods or their laws). A tragic hero, superhuman in his or her moral strength, infused with unusual daring and ambition, which the Greeks called "hubris," is shown, in the end, to have too much pride. It is the deep flaw, or "hamartia," which, while making the hero great, also brings him or her into fatal conflict with the universe.

Although Aristotle had in mind a specific body of plays that follow this tragic pattern, the term has become more flexible over the centuries, no longer limited to dramatic action on a stage. And whereas tragedy was once considered a serious form of worship, the highest expression of dramatic art, representing human nature at its noblest and most poetic, it has lost its centrality as cultural ritual. Part of this shift took place during the revolutions in Europe in the late eighteenth century, when working- and middle-class theaters strove for space to present their plays outside the courts, where tragedy and comedy still reigned for elite patrons. As these court forms demanded literacy, they protected themselves by banning from popular stages plays that depended on lengthy and refined speech. As a result, new theatrical forms emerged that depended less on speech and more on mime and music. This new genre was called "melodrama," literally theater with music.

Historically melodrama has striven for some of the effects of tragedy - high emotional excitement, serious and often violent action - but with significant changes. Instead of noble heroes concerned with national themes, divine law, or social order, the heroes of melodrama are ordinary characters, often caught in the throes of love, lost identity, family crisis, or class conflict. Their predicaments may have fatal results, but good always triumphs over evil in the end. Actions speak louder than words, gestures count more than speeches, and music provides a universal language.

Melodrama has been immensely popular and, one could argue, culturally useful, as capitalism has emerged in the modern world as the dominant political and social structure; its appeal across class, gender, racial, and national boundary lines has made it the preeminent genre in an increasingly global culture. Although from the late nineteenth century melodrama has suffered from the distaste of critics who lambaste its aesthetic of emotional excess, simplified moral conflicts, and concern with the personal, sometimes at the expense of the political, it has continued to give expression to marginalized groups, to provide aesthetic and emotional satisfaction, to spur reform, and to innovate constantly on its basic premises. At the same time, melodrama has been criticized for working, as many products of mass-produced culture do, to provide entertainment that resolves cultural differences into a single plot with predictable and unchallenging features.

We are reminded at times of crisis of how much our experience as a culture depends on our narratives about ourselves. The news media can serve the function of epic bards and tragic playwrights in articulating those narratives for us; but we give them enormous power when we cede our own story-making to others. The power of judging events - are we involved in a national tragedy or a melodrama? Is this question relevant to what is really happening? - ultimately resides in the hands of individuals.

Wyn is a senior lecturer in literature at MIT.

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