Tragic Pathos

Pity and Fear in Greek Philosophy and Tragedy

Dana LaCourse Munteanu (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

294 Seiten

2015
Cambridge University Press (Verlag)
978-1-107-52658-7 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

In modern times philosophers and neuropsychologists have explored the nature of the emotions aroused by literature; but ancient Greek thinkers had already developed their unique assessments of the tragic emotions. This analysis of pity and fear within fifth-century tragedies provides insights into the ethical and social implications of the emotions.

Scholars have often focused on understanding Aristotle's poetic theory, and particularly the concept of catharsis in the Poetics, as a response to Plato's critique of pity in the Republic. However, this book shows that, while Greek thinkers all acknowledge pity and some form of fear as responses to tragedy, each assumes for the two emotions a different purpose, mode of presentation and, to a degree, understanding. This book reassesses expressions of the emotions within different tragedies and explores emotional responses to and discussions of the tragedies by contemporary philosophers, providing insights into the ethical and social implications of the emotions.

Dana Munteanu is Assistant Professor in the Department of Greek and Latin at Ohio State University. She has published articles on Aristotle, Greek drama and the reception of classics in modern literature and in opera, as well as editing a forthcoming collection of essays on emotion, gender and genre in antiquity. Her future research projects include a monograph on 'staged death' in Greek drama and an interdisciplinary project on the ethics of aesthetics.

Introduction; Part I. Theoretical Views about Pity and Fear as Aesthetic Emotions: 1. Drama and the emotions: an Indo-European connection?; 2. Gorgias: a strange trio, the poetic emotions; 3. Plato: from reality to tragedy and back; 4. Aristotle: the first 'theorist' of the aesthetic emotions; Part II. Pity and Fear within Tragedies: 5. An introduction; 6. Aeschylus: Persians; 7. Prometheus Bound; 8. Sophocles: Ajax; 9. Euripides: Orestes; Appendix: catharsis and the emotions in the definition of tragedy in the Poetics.

Zusatzinfo	Worked examples or Exercises
Verlagsort	Cambridge
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	400 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Altertum / Antike
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Philosophie Altertum / Antike
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-10	1-107-52658-2 / 1107526582
ISBN-13	978-1-107-52658-7 / 9781107526587
Zustand	Neuware