ABSTRACT
The first part of the chapter gives an overview of emotion in tragedy based on features identified by Aristotle, Hegel, and Nietzsche; it addresses questions raised about the death of tragedy, concluding with some recent reflections on modern tragedy, its continuity with the classical models and the relevance of the genre for emotion studies. The overview of comedy foregrounds not only the saliency of laughter and humor, but of the “the comic rhythm,” as Susanne Langer elaborates that idea in Feeling and Form. Langer ties comedy to the festive celebration of biological life, as the origin of the genre in fertility rituals anticipates. The second section explores the trope of emotional tears in conjunction with concepts derived from the cognitive theory of trust, applying these concepts to King Lear, arguing that tears, often regarded as honest signals of distress, are elicited by the expectation of sympathy. Since the tragic genre is oriented toward eliciting sympathy, the focus on tears (and trust) is the narrow lens used in discussing examples. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion, conversely, of the redemptive function of tears at moments of restored trust in Shakespeare’s Cymbe-line, where reconfigured relationships create harmony that is conducive to the festive celebration of biological life.
