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Functions of Tragedy

1. Aristotle defined tragedy as an imitation that arouses pity and fear in order to purge such emotions through catharsis. 2. Catharsis was proposed by Aristotle as a defense against Plato's criticism that poetry has immoral effects, by arguing that tragedy provides a healthy outlet for emotions that moderates rather than encourages them. 3. Modern interpretations of catharsis understand it not as a complete purging of emotions but as a tempering or moderation, specifically of pity, fear, grief, and other related passions, in order to maintain a healthy balance of mind.

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Noor Khan
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4K views

Functions of Tragedy

1. Aristotle defined tragedy as an imitation that arouses pity and fear in order to purge such emotions through catharsis. 2. Catharsis was proposed by Aristotle as a defense against Plato's criticism that poetry has immoral effects, by arguing that tragedy provides a healthy outlet for emotions that moderates rather than encourages them. 3. Modern interpretations of catharsis understand it not as a complete purging of emotions but as a tempering or moderation, specifically of pity, fear, grief, and other related passions, in order to maintain a healthy balance of mind.

Uploaded by

Noor Khan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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“Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious,

complete and of a certain magnitude…through pity and


fear effecting the proper purgation of these
emotions.”(​Poetics​, p. 10)
The above given definition of Aristotle indicates that
the function of tragedy is to arouse ‘pity and fear’ in the
spectator for both moral and aesthetic purpose. One has
to remember in this context that he had Plato’s famous
charge against the immoral effects of poetry on people’s
minds. Aristotle uses the word in his definition of tragedy
in chapter –VI of Poetics, and there has been much
debate on exactly what he meant. The key sentence is:
‘Tragedy through pity and fear effects a purgation of such
emotions.’ So, in a sense, the tragedy, having aroused
powerful feelings in the spectator, has also a salubrious
effect; after the storm and climax there comes a sense of
release from tension, of calm. His theory of ​Catharsis
consists in the purgation or purification of the excessive
emotions of pity and fear. Witnessing the tragedy and
suffering of the protagonist on the stage, such emotions
and feelings of the audience are purged. The purgation of
such emotions and feelings make them relieved, and they
emerge as better human beings than they were. Thus,
Aristotle’s theory of ​Catharsis​ has moral and ennobling
function.
Why Aristotle had adopted this theory
It should be remembered that Plato, his master, had
attacked poetry in general including tragedy from moral
and philosophical points of view. So Aristotle had to
defend poetry against his master’s attack on the moral
and philosophical grounds. He has to refute Plato’s
charges. To quote F.L.Lucas: “Poetry, said Plato, makes
men cowardly by its picture of the afterworld. No, replies
Aristotle, it can purge men’s fears. Poetry, said Plato,
encourages men to be hysterical and uncontrolled. On
the contrary, answers his pupil, it makes them less, not
more, emotional by giving a periodic healthy outlet to
their feelings. In short, Aristotle’s definition of tragedy is
half a defence.”(Pg. 57) But it is only half a defence. That
is to say, the other half of the theory is possibly the
result of a serious, analytical inquiry of Aristotle’s into the
nature of tragic delight and its psychological effects. His
Catharsis​ forms the most important part of his concept of
tragedy as a positive, not pessimistic, drama which
leaves wholesome effect, not mere disturbance, in the
minds of the spectators.

The Meaning of Catharsis


Let us quote F.L.Lucas at length on the meaning of
catharsis: “First, there has been age-long controversy
about Aristotle’s meaning, though it has almost always
been accepted that whatever he meant was profoundly
right. Many, for example, have translated ​Catharsis​ as
‘purification’, ‘Correction or refinement’ or the like. There
is strong evidence that ​Catharsis​ means, not
‘Purification’, but ‘Purgation’ - a medical term (Aristotle
was a son of a Physician.) Yet, owing to changes in
medical thought, ‘Purgation’ has become radically
misleading to modern minds. Inevitably we think of
purgatives and complete evacuations of water products;
and then outraged critics ask why our emotions should be
so ill-treated. “But Catharsis means ‘Purgation’, not in the
modern, but in the older, wider English sense which
includes the partial removal of excess ‘humours’. The
theory is as old as the school of Hippocrates that on a
due balance … of these humours depend the health of
body and mind alike.” (F.L.Lucas) To translate ​Catharsis
simply as purgation today is misleading owing to the
change of meaning which the word has undergone. The
theory of humours is outdated in the medical science.
‘Purgation’ has assumed different meanings. It is no
longer what Aristotle had in mind. Therefore, it would be
more appropriate to translate ​Catharsis​ as ‘moderating’
or ‘tempering’ of the passions. But such translation, as
F.L.Lucas suggests, ‘keeps the sense but loses the
metaphor’. However, when it is not possible to keep up
both, the meaning and the metaphor, it is better to
maintain the meaning and sacrifice the metaphor in
translating ​Catharsis​ as ‘moderating’ or ‘tempering’. The
passions to be moderated are those of pity and fear. The
pity and fear to be moderated is, again, of specific kinds.
There can never be an excess in the pity that results into
a useful action. But there can be too much of pity as an
intense and helpless feeling, and there can be also too
much of self-pity which is not a praise-worthy virtue. The
Catharsis​ or moderation of such forms of pity ought to be
achieved in the theatre or otherwise when possible, for
such moderation keeps the mind in a healthy state of
balance. Similarly, only specific kinds of fear are to be
moderated. Aristotle does not seem to have in mind the
fear of horrors on the stage which as Lucas suggests are
“supposed to have made women miscarry with terror in
the theatre”, Aristotle specifically mentions ‘sympathetic
fear for the characters’. “And by allowing free vent to this
in the theatre, men are to lessen, in facing life thereafter,
their own fear of … the general dread if destiny.”
(F.L.Lucas) There are, besides fear and pity, the allied
impulses which also are to be moderated: “Grief,
weakness, contempt, blame – these I take to be the sort
of thing that Aristotle meant by ‘feeling of that sort’.”
(Lucas).

The Relevance of the Theory of Catharsis in the Present Scenario

Since Aristotle, in Europe tragedy has never been a


drama of despair, causeless death or chance-disaster.
The drama that only paints horrors and leaves souls
shattered and mind unreconciled with the world may be
described as a gruesome, ghastly play, but not a healthy
tragedy, for tragedy is a play in which disaster or
downfall has causes which could carefully be avoided and
sorrow in it does not upset the balance in favour of
pessimism. That is why, in spite of seriousness, even
heart-rending scenes of sorrow, tragedy, in the ultimate
pronouncement, embodies the vision of beauty. It stirs
noble thoughts and serves tragic delight but does not
condemn us to despair. If the healthy notion of tragedy
has been maintained throughout the literary history of
Europe, the ultimate credit, perhaps, goes back to
Aristotle who propounded it in his theory of Catharsis.
​Catharsis​ established tragedy as a drama of balance.
Sorrow alone would be ugly and repulsive. Beauty pure
would be imaginative and mystical. These together
constitute what may be called tragic beauty. Pity alone
would be sentimentality. Fear alone would make us
cowards. But pity and fear, sympathy and terror together
constitute the tragic feeling which is most delightful
though it is tearfully delightful. Such tragic beauty and
tragic feeling which it evokes constitutes the aesthetics of
balance as propounded for the first time by Aristotle in
his theory of Catharsis. Therefore, we feel, the reverence
which Aristotle has enjoyed through ages has not gone to
him undeserved. His insight has rightly earned it.

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