Tetralogy

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For the congenital heart condition, see Tetralogy of Fallot

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.

A tetralogy has also been called a "quadtology", basing the prefix on Latin Quadri instead of Greek. The musical term "quartet" has also been used.

1 Famous tetralogies
2 See also

[edit] Famous tetralogies

[edit] Literary works

In literature, the term Tetralogy has also been applied to novels, plays, and poetry, such as:

Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet
Maggie Furey’s Artefacts of Power
Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun and Book of the Long Sun
Jonathan Bayliss's Gloucesterman
Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter quartet
Terry Brooks's The Heritage of Shannara quartet
Yaşar Kemal's İnce Memed
Christopher Paolini's Inheritance
Henry de Montherlant's Les Jeunes Filles
Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers
T. H. White's The Once and Future King
Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End
John Updike's Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit at Rest)
Paul Scott's Raj Quartet
William Shakespeare's sequence of history plays: Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, Henry V
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)
Yukio Mishima's The Sea of Fertility
Harry Turtledove's Settling Accounts
Tamora Pierce's The Song of the Lioness

[edit] Movies

Main article: List of film tetralogies

[edit] Music

Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, a series of four epic music dramas.
Coheed and Cambria's The Amory Wars concept albums

[edit] Video games

Grand Theft Auto
Metal Gear Solid (series)
Monkey Island
Quest for Glory (Was originally planned as a tetralogy, but Wages of War was inserted.)

[edit] Historical works

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill.

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.