ABSTRACT
Now one might argue that this aspect of tragedy can yield us a meaning of catharsis, again in a therapeutic sense, and so, possibly acceptable to Aristotle. Pity and fear do not cancel one another in tragedy but they fuse into a finer and richer emotion by the tragic intensity so that the audience learns to sublimate them in its nature. But this is not an adequate view though Aristotle might be pleased to hear of it. For tragedy, according to this view, can cure only pity and fear, but not emotionalism. Plato's charge against tragedy that it weakens the rational side of our nature by encouraging the sentimental one is not fuIly met
by this theory. It may, theory that the dominant emotional aspect of balance and harmony which in the midst of tumult.t? But still this is not enough of an answer to the original charge. One can readily see that the diverse emotions depicted in a play combine only to heighten the total emotional effect, so the richer is the organizational or formal element involved in the combining process, the intenser will be the final effect. Emotional intensity will mount up, and the repose due to contemplation of the formal element cannot be a match for it.
