Tragic Pleasures

Situating "Poetics" within the Aristotelian corpus and in the context of Greek culture in general, Belfiore argues that the texts, and those of other writers, call into question the traditional view of katharsis in the "Poetics" in which pity and fear affect emotions like themselves.

---

Elizabeth Belfiore offers an interpretation of Aristotle's "Poetics" by situating the work within the Aristotelian corpus and in the context of Greek culture in general. In Aristotle's "Rhetoric", the "Politics" and the ethical, psychological, logical, physical and bilogical works, Belfiore finds extremely important but largely neglected sources for understanding the elliptical statements in the "Poetics". The author argues that these Aristotelian texts and those of other ancient writers, call into question the traditional view that katharsis in the "Poetics" is a homeopathic process - one in which pity and fear affect emotions like themselves. She maintains, instead, that Aristotle considered katharsis to be an allopathic process in which pity and fear purge the soul of shameless, antisocial and aggressive emotions. While exploring katharsis, "Tragic Pleasures" analyzes the closely related question of how the "Poetics" treats the issue of plot structure. In fact, Belfiore's wide-ranging work eventually discusses every central concept in the "Poetics", including imitation, pity and fear, necessity and probability, character and kinship relations.