“Salesman” and His Re-Death: Tragedy as the Bridge Between the Productive and the Practical Sciences

Aristotle dicusses “tragedy” as a social fact in his book, Poetics. It constructs a bridge in between the productive and the practical sciences which he classifies in his same book. This bridge signifies that a work of art has not only aesthetic but also ethic value and it has social function with catharsis. In this article, firstly, with reference to American writer Arthur Miller’s most known play, “Death of a Salesman”, the concept of “tragedy” will be discussed. The differences between the traditional and the modern tragedy will be questioned through the transformation of the tragic hero. Afterwards it will be asserted that the process of adaptation is a way of “reproduction” by analyzing Oscar Winner Film of 2017, “Salesman” which is the new film of famous Iranian Director Asghar Farhadi. Despite the film is an adaptation, it does not fit in any classification of adaptation theories and constructs an intertextual interaction with its viewer through containing different processes of adaptation and providing multifaceted way for seeing. The social contradictions in the film compels its viewer to think on the tragedy of the individual. Through this two art works, this article is an attampt to built a bridge between ethics and aesthetics and also to discuss the problem of “reproduction”