Topic: THE SOURCE OF PLEASURE PROVIDED BY TRAGEDY

Name: Chauhan Sejal  Arunbhai

Subject: Literary Theory and Criticism

 Paper: 3

Roll no:31

M.A. Part I Sem I

Year: 2013-15

Submitted to:M.K.Bhavanagar University

THE SOURCES OF PLEASURE PROVIDED BY TRAGEDY

v ARISTOTLE’S EMPHASIS UPTON THE FEELING OF PITY AND FEAR

           Aristotle concludes his defination of tragedy with stipulation that tragedy, by arousing pity and fear,the Catharsis of such emotion. Now , the meaning of the word “Catharsis” has been the subject of a controversy through the ages Catharsis has been translated as purgation or purification ; and yet in the history of literary criticism few terms have been so extensively and hotly debated as Catharsis , beacuse even the words purgation and purification in this contexts are not self-explanatory . Aristotle lays a great stress upon the feeling of pity and fear as being the emotions which tragedy must arouse. Not only does he specify these emotions in his defination of tragedy, but he reverts to them several times in the course of his treatise. For instance, in Chapter X he says: Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but of events inspiring fear of pity. In Chapter XI he says that recognition, combined with reversal, will produce either pity or fear; and actions, producing these effects, are those which, by our definition, tragedy represents. In Chapter XIII, he write that tragedy should imitate actions which excite pity and fear, this being the distinctive mark of tragic imitation. In Chapter XIV, he writes that fear and pity may be aroused by spectacular means but that the better way is that these emotions should result from the inner structure of the play. He also says here that the plot of a tragedy should be so constucted that the listener will thrill with horror and melt to pity at what takes place. In Chapter XIX, he refers to the excitation of the feeling such as pity, fear , anger , and the like . Aristotle in this connection also speaks several times of fearful and pitiful events.

v CATHARSIS, THE SUBJECT OF MUCH DISCUSSION

But what does Aristotle mean by the Catharsis of the emotion of pity and fear? There has been so much discussion of the meaning of Catharsis that one scholar described this dicussion as “a grotesque monument of sterility”. Another scholar writes: “Every varity of moral, aesthetic, and therappeutic effect that is, or could be, experienced from tragedy gas been subsumed under the venerable word at one time or another”. It would be worth while taking a look at some of the interpretation of Catharsis which have been put forward by scholars and critics. Stephen Halliwell, in a profound book, has indicated the various interpretation.

v THE MORALITY OR DIDACTIC VIEW OF CATHARSIS

First of all, there is the moralistic or didactic view of Catharsis. According to this view, tragedy teaches the audience by example to curb their own emotions and the faults which those emotions may cause. The audience can learn through Catharsis to avoid those passions which lead to suffering and tragedy. Thus, according to this view, Catharsis becomes synonymous with direct ethical teaching. This interpretation of Catharsis is rooted deeply in neo-classicism. It may also be pointed out here that the moralistic interpretation of Catharsis sometimes incorporates the medical analogy which Aristotle dwell upon in his other treatise known as the Politics. However, the medical analogy is not central to this interpretation.

v CATHARSIS,A SOURCE OF EMOTIONAL FORTITUDE

Then there is an interpretation of Catharsis which overiaps the  one already given but which may be stated separated. According to this view, Catharsis implies the acquisition by the audience of emotional fortitude. The idea here is that, through an exposure to the greater suffrrings of the characters in a tragedy, the susceptibility to pity and fear of the audience in their own lives is greatly diminished. When we witness a tragic performance, we become familiar with the spectacle of misfortune and suffering; and through the familiarity we become better able to tolerate our own misfortunes. Thus every tragic performance that we behold will be like a dose of addition courage to us. Our tragic experience of the stage would therefore prepare us to lead our own lives bravely. We grow emotionally stronger through of an experince which involves the feelings of pity and fear; and we are consequently toughened.It may here be pointed out that, if this view of Catharsis is taken to the extreme, the fortitude theory would lead to Stoicism which means a total immunity to emotion in our own lives. Aristotle would certainly not have advocated the elimination of all emotions from our lives.

v CATHARSIS AS A MEANS OF PHYSIOLOGICAL BALANCE

Another interpretation of Catharsis links this term in some way with Aristotle’s theory of the golden mean. This approach implies a process of psychological attunement or balance. It may even mean that Catharsis leads to a heightened capacity for emotion on the part of those who are deficient in the appropriate feelings. In other words, the arousal of pity and fear, by the spectacle of misfortune and suffering, accustoms us to experiencing these emotions in the right way and to the right extent. Thus this interpretation of Catharsis emphasizes the principle of balance and the golden mean. Milton in his preface to Samson Agonistes seems to have interpreted Catharsis in this same way. His paraphrase of Catharsis in that preface is “to temper and reduce the passion to just measure”. Milton’s use of a medical analogy in that preface is not the essential point and does not make him a precursor of that school of critics who have concentrated on the medical aspect of Catharsis.

v CATHARSIS AS A PROCESS OF EMOTIONAL OUTLET

In recent times, Catharsis has been taken to mean a process of emotional release or outlet. In other words, Catharsis is a harmless and pleasurable means of expending pent-up or excessive emotions. The chief originator of this view was Jacob Bernays who interprets the process as a pathological phenomenon. Bernays and others of his way of thinking have emphasized the medical analogy. The point to note here is that Bernays has emphasized this analogy in order to give to Catharsis the exclusive sense of therapeutic or quasi-therapeutic relief, and to rule out any question of an ethical dimension to the experience; whereas certain earlier writers had employed the medical analogy in combination with various types of moral reading of the doctrine.

v THE DOCTRINE OF INTELLECTUAL CATHARSIS

Apart from Number 1, all the above interpretations agree in regarding Catharsis as essentially a matter of emotional experience. But there have also been some writers who deduce from the Poetics a doctrine of intellectual Catharsis. According to these writers, the tragic emotions depend on cognitive judgements about the dramatic action. One writer, for instance, says that Catharsis means intellectual clarification and that it is a synonym for the process of inference. Another writer suggests that Catharsis means the removal of the spectator’s false opinion about the tragic agent, and consequently the removal of his pity and fear for the tragic agent, at the point at which the latter’s culpability is perceived. However, these interpretations do not carry much conviction.

v DESCRIPTIVE OR STUCTURAL CATHARSIS

Then there are various theories which have been given the loose description of dramatic or structure Catharsis. These theories locate Catharsis as an internal and objective feature of the poetic work itself. The chief exponent of such an interpretation describes Catharsis as the purification of the tragic act by the demonstration that its motive was not morally odious. According to this exponent, we come to realize that the agent is innocent and therefore not polluted; and so our emotions towards him are released. However, in this connection it may be pointed out that innocence does not generally guarantee freedom from pollution.

v ETHICAL ALIGNMENT BETWEEN THE EMOTIONS AND THE REASON

There is also the view, expressed by Stephen Halliwall,that tragic Catharsis in some way conduces to an ethical alignment between the emotions and the reason. As tragedy arouses pity and fear by appropriate means, it does not water or feed the emotions as was alleged by Plato, but tends to harmonized the emotions with our perceptions and judgements of the world. And, because of this integration into the experience of tragedy, Catharsis must also be intimately associated with the pleasure derivable from the genre, for this pleasure arises from the comprehension of the same action which is the focus of the emotions. Tragic Catharsis and tragic pleasure are both grounded in the understanding of the plot structure which is regarded by Aristotle as the soul of tragedy.

v THE CLARIFICATION THEORY

The clarification theory hinted at above needs a little explanation. According to this theory, Catharsis means a clarification of the essential and universal significance of the events and situations depicted in a tragic play. The clarification leads to a better understanding by us of the universal law governing human life and human destiny. Such an understanding, even when the events depicted are horrible or repellent, leads to the pleasure which is proper to tragedy. Thus interpreted, Catharsis is neither a medical term nor a moral or didactic one, but an intellectual one. The word “Catharsis” would then refer not to the psychology of the audience but to the events and situations depicted in the tragedy, and to the way the poet, by his artistic skill, reveals their universal significance. Catharsis would then mean a process of learning and therefore pleasurable. But this view of Catharsis, divorced as it is from the emotion of the audience, goes altogether aginst the function of tragedy as conceived by Aristotle who insists, time and again, on the arousal by tragedy of the emotions of pity and fear. Aristotle specifically mentions the Catharsis of pity and fear and similar other emotions. Therefore, to delink Catharsis from these emotions, as the “Clarification Theory” does, would mean distorting Aristotle’s view.

v THE JOYFUL SAFETY THEORY

There are some other theories too, offered by various scholars, to explain the secret of the pleasure which is provided by tragedy. These theories have been classified by T.R.Henn. one of these is described by him as “the joyful safety theory”. According to this approach, the pain of suffering in tragedy brings tears to the eyes of the spectators, but this pain is accompanied with a vigorous sense of pleasure so that, at the fall of the curtain, the spectators feel an intensification of their vital powers, and their agitation is followed by a feeling of joyful safety. In other words, the spectators feel exultant to reflect that, while the characters in the tragedy have suffered agonies, the spectators themselves are perfectly safe.

v THE THEORY OF BALANCED FORCES

Then there is the theory of balanced forces. This has been neatly summarized by I.A.Richards. Pity, he says, is the impulse to advance, while fear is the impulse the existing emotional excess. This theory is attractive; but it breaks down as soon as we admit into the tragic range emotions other than pity and fear. Besides, pity and fear here are regarded as opposed to each other in their effect, while actually these are emotions which supplement each other.

v THE INOCULATION THEORY

Next comes the inoculation theory. According to it, tragedy provides small and harmless doses of passions which can be indulged in harmlessly in the theatre, whereas they might become dangerous obsessions in the world of reality.

v THE THEORY OF MALICIOUS SATISFACTION

According to one philosopher, the pleasure of tragedy results from the satisfaction of our malicious instincts. we secretly feel pleased to witness the sufferings and misfortunes of the characters in tragic plays, because these sufferings and misfortune give us a feeling of superiority over these characters. There is something sadistic about this pleasure.

v POETIC JUSTICE

It has also been affirmed that one source of pleasure in tragedy is the observance of poetic justice by the author. The audiences derive immense pleasure from the fact that evil is in the long run exposed and punished even though tremendous suffering has been caused to some people by the manipulations of evil-minded persons.

·      S.H.BUTCHER’S VIEW OF CATHARSIS

v CATHARSIS, NOT EXPLAINED BY ARISTOTLE HIMSELF

The most lucid exposition of Aristotle’s concept of Catharsis has been provided by S.H.Butcher who is undoubtedly a great authoritybon the great Greek philosopher. Butcher points out that difficulty with regard to the meaning of the word’’Catharsis’’ is fundamental one, and that it is a difficulty for the solution of which Aristoble’s treatise itself does not offer any help at all because, after having used the word’’Catharsis’’ in his defination of tragedy, Aristotle nowhere in the treatise attempts to explain the word. Butcher also points out that a great historic discussion has centred round this word. No passage, probably, in ancient literature has been so frequently debated by commentators, critics, and poets. Literature has been so frequently debated by commentators, critics, and poets.

v PURIFICATION OR PURGATION OF THE PASSIONS

Butcher then goes on to say that a tradition almost unbroken through the centuries found in the word ‘’Catharsis’’ a reference to the moral effect which tragedy produces through the purification of the passions. What the precise effect is, and what those passions are, has variously been interpreted. Corneille, Racine, Lassing, all agreed in assuming the purely ethical intention of drama, though each offered different solutions. In 1857, a pamphlet by Jacob Bernays reopened the whole question and gave a new direction to the argument.Bernays mainted that Catharsis was a medical metaphor. Catharsis may be paraphresed as “puegation” which is a medical term. Purgation here implies a pathological effect on the soul similar to the effect of medicine on the body. Tregedy excites the emotions of pity and fear, which are kindred emotions to be found in the breasts of all men. By this act of excitation, tragedy affords pleasurable relief. The feelings aroused by the tragic spectacle are not permanently removed, but are calmed for the time, so that the human system can revert to its normal course. The theatre thus provides a harmless and pleasurable outlet for instnicts which demand satisfaction and which can be indulged in the theatre more fearlessly than in real life. Plato in his attack upon the drama had said that the “natural hunger for sorrow and weeping,” which is kept under control by us in our own misfortune, is satisfied and fed by the poets. “poetry feeds and waters the passions instead of starving them,” said Plato. In other words, by evoking tears, drama weakens the manly temper and creates disorder in the soul by exalting the lower elements over the higher and by dethroning reason in favour of feeling. Aristotle, on the other hand, holds that it is not desirable to kill or to starve the emotional part of the soul, and that the regulated indulgence of the feelings serves to maintain the balance of our nature. Tragedy is thus a vent or outlet for the particular emotions of pity and fear. In the first place, it is true, the effect of tragedy is to excite, not to tranquillize. However, tragedy excites emotion only to allay it. Pity and fear, when artificially stirred by tragedy on the stage, expel the latent pity and fear which we bring with us from real life, or at least expel such elements in our feelings of pity and fear as are disquieting. In the pleasurable calm, which follows when the passions are spent, an emotional cure has been effected.

v TRAGEDY,A FORM OF HOMOEOPATHIC TREATMENT

Butcher then points out that Milton had already understood something of the true maening of Aristotle’s cocept. In his preface to Samson Agonistes, Milton writes:

“Tragedy has been ever held the gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other poems; therefore said by Aristotle to be of power, by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such-like passions; that is, to temper or reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight stirred up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is Nature herself wanting in her own effects to make good Aristotle’s assertion, for so, in physick, things of melancholic hue and quality are used against melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt humours.”

These words clearly show that Milton regarded tragedy as a form of homeoepathic treatment, curing emotion by means of an emotion like in kind, but not identical. In the homeoepathic mode of treatment, the patient suffering from any disease is given doses of a medicine which, if administered in similar dises to a healthy man, would produce in him the symptoms of the same disease. In homoeopathy, like cures like. And, in the same way, the emotions of pity and fear, aroused by tragedy, cure the audience of those emotions of pity and fear which lie dormant in them and which constitude a kind of disease.

v MUSIC AS A CURE FOR RELIGIOUS ECSTASY

Aristotle, it would seem, was led to this theory by observing the effect of certain musical tunes upon a form of religious enthusiasm or ecstasy. There are people who go into a sort of religious ecstasy, and who then begin to make all kinds of wild and uncontrollable bodily movements and gestures. In ancient times, persons subject to such fits of ecstasy were regarded as men possessed by a god, and were taken by the priests under their own care. The treatment prescribed for such men was homoeopathic in character because it consisted in applying movement to cure movement and in soothing the internal tumult of the mind by a wild and tumultuous kind of music. On hearing this kind of music for some time, the patient felt gradually comforted and soothed, and returned to the condition of normality. In this way music brought about a Catharsia, and the patient fell back into his normal state, as if he had undergone a medical or purgative treatment. The emotional result was a harmless joy.

v CATHARSIS, A KIND OF AESTHETIC SATISFACTION

Butcher then goes on to say that the word ‘’Catharsis’’ probably had a further meaning also for Aristotle. The word certainly expresses a fact of a certain school of medicine, this word strictly means the removal of a painful or disturbing element from the organism, and hence the purification of what remains, by the elimination of alien matter. Applying this to tragedy, we observe thst the feelings of pity and fear in real life contain a morbid and distributing element. In the process of tragic excitation, these feelings find relief, and the morbid element is thrown off. As the tragic action progresses, the tumult of the mind is first roused; and it afterwards subsides. In the process, the painful element in the pity and fear of our real life is purged away. Thus the emotions themselves are purged. Tragedy, then, does more than effect the homoeopathic cure of pity and fear. Its function in not merely to provide an outlet for pity and fear, but to provides for then a distinctively asthetic satisfaction, to purify and by passing them through the medium of art.

v CONCLUSION

We can assume, then, that the tragic Catharsis involves not only the idea of an emotional relief but the further idea of the purofication of the emotions so relieved. In accepting this interpretation we do not attribute to tragedy a direct moral purpose and influence. Tragedy, according to the definition, acts on the feelings, not on the will. It does not make men better, through it removes certain hindrances to virtue. The excitation of noble emotions will probably in course of time exert an effect upon the will also. But whatever may be the indirect effect of the repeated operation of the Catharsis, we may confidently say that Aristotle in his definition of tragedy was not thinking of any such distant result but of the immediate end of the art, namely the aesthetic function which it fulfils.