ILLUMINA SERIES-3
Aristotle's
Theory of Catharsis
A
Note
by
Chanchal Chauhan
Aristotle's
'catharsis' has been interpreted by critics generally as a 'metaphor', but
there has been a controversy about its meaning. Some critics have interpreted
it as a 'medical metaphor' and translated it as 'purgation' and others used it
as a 'religious metaphor' and translated it as 'purification'. The term,
'catharsis' in the Poetics appeared in the definition of tragedy.
He first used this term in his Politics in which he referred to this
term in relation to music. He assured his pupils that he would explain the term
when he would deal with various functions of poetry. Aristotle says this in his
book, Politics:
We use this
term without explanation for the present; when we come to speak of poetry, we
shall give a clearer account of it.
Humphry
House remarks on this promise that ‘the trouble is that, when he does come to
speak of poetry, he does not make this promise good.’
Ingram
Bywater, a well-known translator of Aristotle’s Poetics further created
a complication by his translation of the whole definition of tragedy in such a
way that it reinforces the interpretation of the term as medical metaphor that
had already gained ground in English readership since Weil's use of it in 1847
and Bernays's in 1857. Humphry House gives an account of this line of thinking
that was borrowed from Italian renaissance scholars and even Milton in 17th
century knew about it. He gives a hint in the Preface to his play, Samson
Agonistes. Humphry House has rightly remarked on this view:
In simpler and
more popular works than Butcher's or Bywater's editions, there occur phrases
that imply a tacit acceptance of the medical origin of the term.
F.
L. Lucas mocked at the term remarking that it was a medical metaphor and
Aristotle used it as a laxative to treat the audience of some indigestion. He
commented, ‘The theatre is not a hospital’.
Most
of the critics including Humphry House focused on the impact of tragedy on the
audience and thought of catharsis related to the 'health' of viewers of
tragedy. G. F. Else, a modern critic, for the first time, challenged this
understanding and focused only on the component parts of tragedy, particularly
on 'tragic action' (‘pathe’) and interpreted the term as ‘purification
of such pathe' meaning thereby the purification of tragic action
that involved the murder of some blood relation. Aristotle himself had
elaborated the ideal tragic deed as one involving a blood relation and had
given examples (even one from Medea of Euripides). In Greek
society this type of murder was considered the most heinous one and it was the
belief that miasma was caused by such a murder which needed catharsis or
'purification'. Oedipus's tragic deed results in the breaking out of plague, a
kind of miasma that required 'catharsis' or purification. So the
imitation of this tragic act created fear, the fear of miasma. G. F.
Else has convincingly interpreted this term in a new way. It is neither a
medical metaphor nor a religious one; it is the part of imitation of the ideal
tragic act that involved all the social beliefs of the classical age.
Those beliefs were reinforced by Laws (Plato) and classical literature
of that time.