ABSTRACT
Aristotle does not indicate what emotions comedy evokes that correlate with the “pity and fear” aroused by tragedy. Yet since he requires a spoudaios tragic protagonist because such a one best elicits pity and fear, comedy must logically arouse the emotion that responds to its phauloi characters. This opposition of tragic and comic character types runs parallel to another one that Aristotle draws in the Rhetoric: the opposition of pity to nemesan, or “righteous indignation.” He defines nemesan as pain felt at another’s undeserved good fortune and as a virtuous mean between the vices of envy and spite. Indignation thus seems exactly the response aroused by the disproportion intrinsic to comic error – something also perceived by Philip Sidney and Jonson. Indignation is not vindictive or envious, but seeks the balanced justice characteristic of the comic ending.
