Tragic Pathos: Pity and Fear in Greek Philosophy and Tragedy
Cambridge University Press, 11/10/2011
EAN 9780521765107, ISBN10: 0521765102
Hardcover, 292 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm
Language: English
Scholars have often focused on understanding Aristotle's poetic theory, and particularly the concept of catharsis in the Poetics, as a response to Plato's critique of pity in the Republic. However, this book shows that, while Greek thinkers all acknowledge pity and some form of fear as responses to tragedy, each assumes for the two emotions a different purpose, mode of presentation and, to a degree, understanding. This book reassesses expressions of the emotions within different tragedies and explores emotional responses to and discussions of the tragedies by contemporary philosophers, providing insights into the ethical and social implications of the emotions.
Introduction
Part I. Theoretical Views about Pity and Fear as Aesthetic Emotions
1. Drama and the emotions
an Indo-European connection?
2. Gorgias
a strange trio, the poetic emotions
3. Plato
from reality to tragedy and back
4. Aristotle
the first 'theorist' of the aesthetic emotions
Part II. Pity and Fear within Tragedies
5. An introduction
6. Aeschylus
Persians
7. Prometheus Bound
8. Sophocles
Ajax
9. Euripides
Orestes
Appendix
catharsis and the emotions in the definition of tragedy in the Poetics.