TRAGIC FLAW,

So a tragic flaw is.. the character flaw or error of a tragic hero that leads to his downfall.

Key words etc to do with tragic flaws :
 
Aristotle - classical tragedy must have: plot, character, diction, reasoning, spectacle and lyric poetry.

Catharsis - to do with the idea of experiencing, normally a negative emotion, with the characters. Aristotle believed this worked by the purging of emotions by the audience, and learning from the tragedy for your own life. Brecht said catharsis encouraged you to go out and alter the world. I keep forgetting what catharsis means so to put it another way it's like the emotions we experience with the actors, in fact, that's exactly how i put it before. oh well.

Aristotle's 3 unities Action, time and place.
Action: one intention running all the way through.
Place: You stay in one place.
Time: real life time is same as stage time.

Shakespeare's writings often had lots of little sub-plots, e.g. Othello starts in Venice and then goes to Cyprus, Macbeth is similar. Shakespeare didn't follow Aristotle's 3 unities. Just because e.g. Hamlet doesn't follow it, it doesn't mean it's not a tragedy.

Just to clarify, and mainly to remind myself as I seem to be the only one who forgets these odd words....
 The hubris is a characters tragic flaw, normally excessive pride which leads to their downfall.
And the hamartia is the mistake - the thing that the character does wrong.

Karen Newman came up with the idea that tragedy is created by things 'contrary to nature' or things that go against what it's supposed to be. For example in Othello, Newman would say it is the fact that a white woman had married a black man. In Macbeth it could be that at the beginning someone has gone against the King, this would be seen as 'contrary to nature'.