A tetralogy is a compound work that is made up of four (numerical prefix tetra-) distinct works.
The name comes from the Attic theater, where tetralogies were meant to be played in one sitting at the Dionysia. In more recent times, Shakespeare wrote two tetralogies, the first consisting of the three Henry VI plays and Richard III, and the second consisting of Richard II, the two Henry IV plays, and Henry V. Richard Wagner's "Der Ring der Nibelungen" - the 'Ring Cycle' - is also referred to as a tetralogy.
The word "tetralogy" is not commonly used in the marketing of collections of works. The term "quadrilogy" has also been used, basing the prefix on Latin prefix quadri- instead of the Greek prefix. The musical term "quartet" is also used, as well as "legacy." The Alien and Batman series, each consisting of four films, have been released in collections titled The Alien Legacy and The Batman Legacy. The Alien and Die Hard series have also been released in sets under the title The Alien Quadrilogy and The Die Hard Quadrilogy.
Famous tetralogies
Literary works
In literature, the term Tetralogy has also been applied to novels, plays, and poetry, such as:
- A. S. Byatt's Frederica Quartet (The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman)
- Claude Royet-Journoud's Le Renversement, La Notion d'Obstacle, Les Objects contiennent l'infini, and Les Natures indivisibles (poetry published between 1972 and 1997)
- Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle
- E. E. Smith's Skylark series
- Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End
- Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun and Book of the Long Sun
- Harry Turtledove's Settling Accounts
- Henry de Montherlant's Les Jeunes Filles
- John Updike's Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit at Rest)
- Jonathan Bayliss's Gloucesterman
- L. Frank Baum's Ozma of Oz, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, The Road to Oz, and The Emerald City of Oz.
- Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet
- Maggie Furey's Artefacts of Power
- Paul Scott's Raj Quartet
- Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series
- Tamora Pierce's The Song of the Lioness
- Terry Brooks's The Heritage of Shannara quartet
- T. H. White's The Once and Future King
- Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter quartet
- Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers
- Yaşar Kemal's İnce Memed
- William Shakespeare's sequence of history plays: Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, Henry V (major tetralogy) and Henry VI, Part 1, Henry VI, Part 2, Henry VI, Part 3, Richard III (minor tetralogy)
- Sergei Lukyanenko's Watch series
- S. M. Stirling's Emberverse series (Dies the Fire, The Protector's War, A Meeting at Corvallis)
- Yukio Mishima's The Sea of Fertility
Movies
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Music
Video games (as of 2008)
Historical works
A series of four novels is also called a quartet.
The 20th Century Fox marketing team coined the nonstandard synonym "quadrilogy" for the release of their Alien DVD box set The Alien Quadrilogy and the Die Hard DVD box set The Die Hard Quadrilogy. This uses the Latin numerical prefix quadri-/quadr-, instead of the usual Greek tetra-, with the Greek -logy.
See also
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