Hide article tragic hero's penned (7)
I believe the answer is:
leather
'hide' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'article tragic hero's penned' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'article' could be 'the' (the 'definite article' part of speech) and 'the' is found within the answer.
'hero' could be 'lear' (I have seen 'tragic hero' mean 'lear' so perhaps 'hero' could also mean 'lear') and 'lear' is present in the leftover letters.
This accounts for all the letters.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for leather that I've seen before include "Whip" , "polish" , "Flog; hide" , "kid, perhaps" , "Processed animal skin" .)