The Moral Function of Tragedy: Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s Life is a Dream and Tawfiq al-Hakim’s The People of the Cave as Cases

Abstract

There is considerable discussion about how to properly locate Arabic literature within World literature
and Comparative literary studies today. The prospect of such an endeavor remains largely ambiguous. I
propose focusing and adopting Tragedy—specifically, the ethical component it entails—as a literary form
that allows for comparisons between Arabic and other countries’ literatures. This paper examines
tragedy’s role by drawing on literary criticism, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. It takes as corpuses
Tawfiq al-Hakim’s (1898–1987) The People of the Cave (3311) and Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s (1600–
1681) Life’s a Dream (1635), both which reflect the moral function of tragedy across different epochs,
languages, and civilizations. Hence, this study employs a multidisciplinary comparative methodology,
applying Aristotelian and Jungian concepts to the textual analysis of the two plays, as well as testing the
premise that tragedy’s ethical function is universal. The key finding here is that tragedy, when interpreted
ethically, emerges as an essential component of comparative studies, with the shared aim of studying and
foreshadowing the universal human experience beyond national limits. Evidently, this ethically universal
paradigm for studying tragedy aids Arabic literature in gaining ground in the contemporary comparative
arena