This document discusses the concept of catharsis and Aristotle's views on it. It notes that there has been much controversy around what exactly Aristotle meant by catharsis. It examines questions around Aristotle's actual view of catharsis, how accurate his view is considered to be, and what led him to adopt this theory of catharsis. Specifically, it suggests Aristotle developed his theory of catharsis in response to Plato's criticisms of poetry by arguing that tragedy can purge emotions rather than encourage uncontrolled feelings.

1. PRESENTEDBY- URVI DAVE
CLASS- M.A. SEM 1
TOPIC- CATHARSIS
PAPER NO.- 3
SUBMITTED TO- SMT. S.B. GARDI
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH & M. K.
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.

9. THANK
YOU