CATASTROPHE

(Yunanca köken — orijinale bakınız.) In modern literary language, the final event of a drama or romance,to which the other events are subsidiary. The vtpnrcTeia, or revolution, indicated by Aristotle as one of the parts of the drama, was a change in the fortunes of the principal personages of the play; as, the fall of CEdipus from sovereignty into extreme misery and banishment, in the CEdipus Tyrannus. Some such change is generally involved in the idea of a catastrophe: thus, marriage is the ordinary catastrophe of a comedy or a novel, as some disastrous change is that of a tragedy. CATCH-DRAlNS. Open drains acro a declivity to intercept surface water. The term is sometimes also applied to under drains acro a declivity. [s. 216]