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peripeteia
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Quick Facts
Greek:
“reversal”
Related Topics:
narrative
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peripeteia

drama
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History

peripeteia, the turning point in a drama after which the plot moves steadily to its denouement. It is discussed by Aristotle in the Poetics as the shift of the tragic protagonist’s fortune from good to bad, which is essential to the plot of a tragedy. It is often an ironic twist, as in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex when a messenger brings Oedipus news about his parents that he thinks will cheer him, but the news instead slowly brings about the awful recognition that leads to Oedipus’s catastrophe.