Catharsis
Overview
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
word meaning "cleansing" or "purging". It is derived from the verb καθαίρειν, kathairein, "to purify, purge," and it is related to the adjective καθαρός, katharos, "pure or clean."
Catharsis is a term in dramatic art
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
that describes the "emotional cleansing" sometimes depicted in a play as occurring for one or more of its characters, as well as the same phenomenon as (an intended) part of the audience’s experience.
It describes an extreme change in emotion, occurring as the result of experiencing strong feelings (such as sorrow, fear, pity, or even laughter).
It has been described as a "purification" or a "purging" of such emotions.
More recently, such terms as restoration, renewal, and revitalization have been used when referencing the effect on members of the audience.
The Greek
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
philosopher Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
was the first to use the term catharsis with reference to the emotion
Emotion
Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...
s – in his work Poetics.
In that context, it refers to a sensation or literary effect that, ideally, would either be experienced by the characters in a play, or be wrought upon the audience at the conclusion of a tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
; namely, the release of pent-up emotion or energy.
In his works prior to Poetics, Aristotle had used the term catharsis purely in its medical sense (usually referring to the evacuation of the katamenia—the menstrual fluid or other reproductive material).
Here, however, he employs it as a medical metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
.
F. L. Lucas
F. L. Lucas
Frank Laurence Lucas was an English classical scholar, literary critic, poet, novelist, playwright, political polemicist, and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge....
maintains, therefore, that purification and cleansing are not proper translations for catharsis; that it should rather be rendered as purgation.
"It is the human soul that is purged of its excessive passions."
Lessing
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist, and art critic, and one of the most outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature...
sidesteps the medical aspect of the issue and translates catharsis as a purification, an experience that brings pity and fear into their proper balance: "In real life," he explained, "men are sometimes too much addicted to pity or fear, sometimes too little; tragedy brings them back to a virtuous and happy mean."
Tragedy is then a corrective; through watching tragedy, the audience learns how to feel these emotions at proper levels.
Some modern interpreters of the work infer that catharsis is pleasurable, because audience members experience ekstasis (Greek: – ecstasy) (literally: astonishment, meaning: trance) or, in other words, "relief," ensuing from an awareness that, compared with what they have just seen portrayed, their own life is less tragic.
Any translator
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
attempting to interpret Aristotle's meaning of the term should take into account that Poetics is largely a response to Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
's claim that poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
encourages people to be hysterical
Hysteria
Hysteria, in its colloquial use, describes unmanageable emotional excesses. People who are "hysterical" often lose self-control due to an overwhelming fear that may be caused by multiple events in one's past that involved some sort of severe conflict; the fear can be centered on a body part, or,...
and uncontrolled.
Aristotle maintains that, on the contrary, the effect of poetry is to allow people to be less controlled by emotion – not more so – by its providing a healthy outlet for their feelings.
In literary aesthetics, catharsis is developed by the conjunction of stereotyped characters and unique or surprising actions or events over time.
Throughout a play, we do not expect the nature of a character to change significantly; rather, preexisting elements are revealed in a relatively straightforward way, as the character faces these confrontations.
This is clearly evident in Oedipus Rex, where King Oedipus is confronted with ever more outrageous actions, until the catharsis/emptying generated by the death of his mother-wife, and by his own act of self-blinding.
In contemporary aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
, catharsis may also refer to any purging of emotion experienced by an audience, in relation to drama.
This exstasis (ekstasis – ἔκστασις – ecstasy) can be perceived in comedy, melodrama and most other dramatic forms.
There have been, for political or aesthetic reasons, deliberate attempts made to subvert the effect of catharsis in theatre.
For example, Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
viewed catharsis as a pap (pablum) for the bourgeois theatre audience, and designed dramas which left significant emotions unresolved, intending to force social action upon the audience.
Brecht reasoned that the absence of a cathartic resolution would require the audience to take political action in the real world, in order to fill the emotional gap they had experienced vicariously.
This technique can be seen as early as his agit-prop play The Measures Taken.
Catharsis before the sixth-century rise of tragedy is, for the Western World
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
, essentially a historical footnote to the Aristotelian conception.
Unanswered Questions
