ABSTRACT
Of all technical terms, ‘catharsis’ is probably the one most often used in relation to tragedy. It appears in this context in Aristotle’s definition of the Kind. There is general agreement that it came into his picture through his wish to counter Plato’s argument, given notable expression in Book X of The Republic, that the poets were to be blamed, and exiled, because their arousing of emotions, including that of pity, worked against a man’s duty to follow the dictates of reason. Gerald F. Else suggests that both the idea of eliminating and the idea of purifying pity and fear are mistaken. In Aristotle’s Poetics: The Argument, he contends that Aristotle had in mind the purging of the tragic event. Aristotle is presented as arguing that in a theatre all the remoteness and authority of dramatic production (or, in reading, the splendour of the poetry) give them the distance and compensation that allow us to observe them with equanimity.
