PARALLELS BETWEEN “THE TRAGIC” AND “THE KAFKAESQUE” AS LITERARY TERMS: AN ANALYSIS OF THE CHARACTERS IN THOMAS MIDDLETON AND WILLIAM ROWLEY'S THE CHANGELING AND WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S MACBETH

Kafka’s influence on literature was so enormous that the adjective ‘Kafkaesque’ was coined in his honour. Although the term has different definitions, this article expresses its meaning as the character's paradoxical situation and their despairing struggle against it. Similarly, if an analyst looked deeper at any of the tragic heroes in a tragedy, the predicament and continued fall of those characters would be a popular topic of research. In this essay, the ‘Kafkaesque’ traits of the characters Beatrice and De Flores from Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's The Changeling (1622) and King Macbeth from William Shakespeare's Macbeth (1606) will be examined comparatively with their tragic qualities. Revealing the ‘Kafkaesque’ features of these characters in these famous tragedies will also present the similarities between the concepts of the ‘tragedy’ and the ‘Kafkaesque’. The main difference between the two can be obtained from the process of their downfall: While Kafkaesque fall is due to the system, the tragic downfall is because of the characters’ themselves. The study will attempt to assess how consistent the attributes of these characters, penned around three centuries before the coinage of the phrase, are with the term itself.