This document discusses the concept of catharsis. It begins by noting there is controversy around the exact meaning of catharsis. It then examines Aristotle's view that tragedy accomplishes a purification of emotions through pity and fear. It also discusses alternative interpretations that catharsis means purgation, moderation of passions, or a release of emotions. The document questions how accurate Aristotle's view of catharsis is and explores what led Aristotle to adopt this theory, noting it was partly a response to Plato's criticisms of poetry.

1. CATHARSIS
Presented by- Divya Choudhary
Class- M A
Semester- 1
Paper no.- 3
Paper Name – Literary Theory & Criticism
Batch Year- 2015-17
Enrolment No.- PG15101007
Email id- choudharydivya400@mail.com
Submitted to- Smt. S B Gardi Department of
English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar
University

2.  What is Catharsis?
As the exact meaning and
concept of Catharsis, there has
been a lot of controversy among
scholars and critics down to the
centuries. Therefore, it deserved
separate treatment. Let us
consider it in details.

3. John Morley has rightly said: “the
immense controversy, carried on in
books, pamphlets, sheets and flying
articles, mostly German, as to what it
was that Aristotle really meant by the
famous words in the sixth chapter of the
poetics, about tragedy accomplishing the
purification of our moods and
sympathetic fear, is one of the disgraces
of the human intelligence, a grotesque
movement of sterility”.

4. F.L.Lucas in his tragedy: serious drama in
relation to Aristotle's poetics asks three
questions. These questions are-
1. What was really Aristotle's views?
• Catharsis means ‘purification’, correction or
refinement’.
• It has been suggested that our pity and fear
are ‘purified' in the theatre by becoming
disinterested.
• It is bad to be selfishly sentimental. Timid
and querulous; but it is good to pity Othello
or to fear for hamlet.

5. • Catharsis means not ‘purification’, but
‘purgation’; a medical metaphor. Yet, owing
to changes in medical thought, ‘purgation’
has become radically misleading to modern
minds.
• But catharsis means ‘purgation’, not in the
modern, but in the older, wider English
sense which includes the partial removal of
excess ‘humour’.
• Catharsis as ‘moderating' or ‘tempting' of the
passions.

6. 2. How far is Aristotle's view of catharsis true?
• Here is a example of tragedy that we may feel
released when certain emotions are worked up in
the mind and are rinsed out as it were at the end
which is more or less positive by implication for
death or calamity is explained and accounted for as
arising from certain avoidable weakness or
emasculations of the hero.
• Fulfillment or satisfaction.
• Positive and corrective of tragic errors to the
spectators.
• Tragic delight.
• Certain moral ends of catharsis might be
incidentally achieved. But it is not the chief end of
tragedy.

7. 3.What led Aristotle to adopt this theory?
• F.L.Lucas quote that “poetry, said Plato,
makes men cowardly by its picture of the
afterworld. No replies by Aristotle, it can
purge men’s fears. Poetry, said Plato,
encourages men to be hysterical and
uncontrolled. On the contrary, answers
his pupil, it makes them less, not more,
emotional by giving a periodic healthy
outlet to their feelings. Aristotle’s
definition of tragedy is half a defence”.

8.  Analytical inquiry of Aristotle's into the
nature of tragic delight and its
psychological effects.
Catharsis established tragedy as a drama
of balance.
 Such tragic beauty and tragic feeling
which it evokes constitutes the aesthetics
of balance as propounded for the first
time by Aristotle in his theory of catharsis.