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Chapter 1 - Poetic Fear-Related Affects and Society in Greco-Roman Antiquity
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- Affect and Literature
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Summary
Although numerous studies have dealt with expressions of emotions in Greco-Roman antiquity, less attention has been given to poetry as an artistic form deliberately meant to shape and transform human affectivity. This essay examines how ancient authors characterize lyric, dramatic, and didactic poetry as a means to influence affects, exemplifying with varieties of fear. The emphasis is on how poetic works can decrease or increase fear-related affects, such as panic on the battlefield, fear of death, horror, and existential anxiety. The examples range from archaic Greek lyric poetry (Tyrtaeus), to views about tragedy in classical Greek philosophy (Plato and Aristotle) and, finally, to didactic poetry in Rome (Lucretius).
(V.) Cinaglia Aristotle and Menander on the Ethics of Understanding. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Pp. xvi + 227. €104. 9789004269750.
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- The Journal of Hellenic Studies / Volume 136 / 2016
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- 07 October 2016, pp. 207-208
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Index
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Part i - Theoretical views about pity and fear as aesthetic emotions
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Introduction
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Premise and purpose
The activity of art is based on the fact that a man receiving through his sense of hearing and sight another man's expression of feeling is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed it. To take the simplest example: one man laughs and another, who hears, becomes merry; or one man weeps and another, who hears, feels sorrow.
(Leo Tolstoy, What is Art?, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude, London, 1930, 171)Certain assumptions about art can be found across cultures. The idea that works of art transmit emotions to the audience is formulated, for example, in Plato's Ion and resurfaces in Tolstoy's What is Art?. Yet, what lies behind such a general assumption of an “emotional chain” that links poet, bard, and audience? There is, in fact, not much agreement. Indeed, theorists continue to grapple with understanding the very formation of the emotions produced by art; so, naturally, adequately understanding the subsequent physical, psychological, and ethical effects of these emotions is all the more daunting. This book will explore some specific, culturally circumscribed approaches to the emotional responses to tragedy in fifth-century Athens. Although the subject matter is rather tightly focused, it will be of interest, I hope, to audiences from various humanistic fields, for it examines not only how the ancient Greeks thought about the emotional effects of poetry, but also assesses what may be culturally specific as well as universally relevant in our reflections on art.
Pity and fear, the emotions mentioned so frequently in Aristotle's Poetics, have stirred much spirited discussion within scholarly circles. Stephen Halliwell and Jonathan Lear, two of the most prominent Aristotelian scholars of our time, debate the significance of pity in the Poetics as follows. Halliwell notes that the emotion has the “potential to contribute to the tacit redefinition of an audience's moral identity.” Lear forcefully objects: “My response is this: that's very nice, if true. But what if it isn't? How would we ever know, especially if we are spending our philosophical time telling ourselves self-satisfied stories about the redemptive power of pity?” The controversy reflects an impasse that well characterizes the mainstream approach to the subject of tragic emotions in fifth-century Athens. Scholarly focus has often been on understanding Aristotle's aesthetic theory, and particularly the mysterious concept of catharsis in the Poetics as a reply to Plato's critique of tragic pity in the Republic. My book has a different focus, as it will not seek the “right” meaning of tragic pity. Rather, it will broadly examine various cultural views about pity and fear as responses to tragedy (and, in passing, epic) in classical Athens and reassess emotional expressions of pity and fear within different tragedies to suggest moral, social, and political implications of the responses of the audiences to various plays.
Bibliography
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Chapter 1 - Drama and the emotions: an Indo-European connection?
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L’art, c'est l’émotion sans le désir.
Art is emotion without desire.
(Muriel Barbery – L’élégance du Hérisson, Paris, 2006).As dramatic representations appear to have developed from rituals in Indo-European communities, they likely required the emotional participation of those involved in ceremonies. No reconstruction of such Indo-European drama is possible, of course. Overall, nevertheless, the vocabulary of emotions in Indo-European languages suggests a common idiom, or perhaps even some universal linguistic concepts. As West has observed in an analysis of the Homeric diction:
Where human emotions are described, we find a good deal of common ground in the kind of language used in different branches of the tradition, and this may reflect to some extent Indo-European idiom. On the other hand there is little that points to its being peculiarly Indo-European and similar phraseology appears in Near Eastern literatures. Emotions tend to be represented as external forces that come to one, enter one, or seize one.
Furthermore, a shared Indo-European background seems to be probable, for there exist striking similarities in the accounts of dramatic concepts in such different cultures as Greek and Indian, when those concepts were developed independently, as is made evident by the works of Aristotle and Bharata Muni. Without any claim of expertise, I will venture to outline certain features of the aesthetic emotions in ancient Indian culture, which can provide a point of comparison for the analysis of the Greek material.
Preface and acknowledgments
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Our fascination with literature depends to a great extent on how stories enrich our emotional lives. However, analyzing in a coherent manner the emotions that we feel for fiction remains extremely difficult. This book is an examination of how ancient Greeks described and understood the emotions stirred by tragedy. Since I have included an extensive introduction and ample explanations of my intentions before every chapter, I shall not bore the reader with a long preface, but shall list here only a few necessary disclaimers, followed by acknowledgments. What follows is not a study of Aristotle's Poetics, although both Aristotle and his Poetics receive extensive analysis, but a broader examination of pity and fear as tragic emotions in Greek thought. Although I have tried to cover diligently the bibliography relevant to my subject, it is inevitable that omissions will have occurred, which I regret but consider inevitable, as I have dealt with enormously popular authors and topics. Finally, as far as English is concerned, I remember starting graduate school and using my new adoptive language daily for scholarly matters: it felt at times as if I had played a character (as Rimbaud famously once said: “Je est un autre”). Nowadays English does not have any alienating effect on me, and many scholars and friends have made suggestions to improve the style used in this book, but I am sure that readers will still discover twisted idioms and infelicities. When they do, I can only ask for their clemency – and no one has put it better than Nünlist (2009, ix) in the preface of his recent book: “exasperated readers will, surely, take into account that the only other alternative would have been to write this book in my native language.”
The task of thanking the many scholars and friends who have helped me in the making of this book is daunting, but I shall do my best, with apologies for the omissions, starting from the most recent to the earliest acknowledgments. The anonymous readers from Cambridge University Press sent me illuminating comments, made helpful suggestions, and important corrections, for which I am very grateful. I thank the editor, Michael Sharp, for his prompt responses to all my queries and for his professionalism. I am deeply grateful to Professor Ann Michelini for her essential insights throughout various stages of writing this book, for her patience with my shortcomings and her enthusiasm for my ideas. In later stages of writing, I benefited from the advice of two wonderful Aristotelian scholars, whom I thank wholeheartedly, Professor Elizabeth Belfiore (University of Minnesota) and Professor David Konstan (Brown University). Professor Belfiore generously took time out of her sabbatical a few years ago to read a very rudimentary draft and helped me rethink the structure of the book. I am much indebted to Professor Konstan who has emailed me detailed comments and suggestions on earlier (and sometimes abandoned) drafts; he has often saved me from transgressions with kindness. For the early, dissertational stage of the project, my thanks go first and foremost to Professor Kathryn Gutzwiller, University of Cincinnati, who offered me steady guidance and valuable suggestions.
Chapter 2 - Gorgias: a strange trio, the poetic emotions
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Gorgias (c. 485–380 bce) associates pity and fear to describe the effect of poetry on the audience in the Encomium to Helen. In this piece of rhetorical virtuosity, simultaneously designed as laudatory discourse, apology, and intellectual joke, Gorgias intends to exculpate the infamous heroine of Greek mythology and, in his attempts to do so, he describes the power of language. Speech, a master who governs the world through its seductive power, must have persuaded Helen to go to Troy: a perfect excuse for the heroine's behavior. Speech can persuade and move everyone; more specifically, poetic speech arouses irresistible emotions, such as shivering “fear” (φρίκη) and “pity” (ἔλεος), (Hel. 9). As scholars have remarked, this observation, as well as a later comparison between the emotional effects of speech and drugs (Hel. 14), seems to prefigure the Aristotelian poetic theory. In fact, the treatment of the emotions in the Encomium deserves a closer examination. Hence, I next discuss the numerous other references to pity and fear, which reveal important information about the nature of each emotion as well as the complex relationship that exists between them.
Context (a): pity and hatred, guided reactions for gorgias’ audience (hel. 7)
Summary: Helen may have been kidnapped by Paris and taken away from her country. In this case, shouldn't she “reasonably be pitied” (εἰκότως ἐλεηθείη) rather than reviled? If she herself did not willingly perform a malicious act but only suffered misfortune, it is right “to pity” (οἰκτίρειν) her and “hate” (μισῆσαι) the one who has inflicted suffering upon her.
While Gorgias proposes an unusual version of the myth, he also indicates to his readers the correct emotional reactions to this possible story. In this scenario, Helen has “suffered” (ἔπαθε) undeservedly, as do (or claim) many characters in tragedy, and therefore she ought to be pitied, whereas Paris “has performed” (ἔδρασε) terrible acts, and therefore he should be hated. Two points are of interest. Firstly, pity is indicated to the audience as a “reasonably” (εἰκότως) felt response to the fate of the heroine, since she suffers undeservedly. The term “reasonably” suggests correlation between a specific course of the narrative and the emotional reaction of the reader, which does not differ from the emotion that a real event may arouse. If the events of the story unfolded in such a way, then the audience should react accordingly (i.e. feel pity). Later on, Aristotle insists on the importance of the probable sequence of events in the tragic plot (i.e. dramatic events should happen on account of one another), to elicit what he considers the appropriate tragic emotions. Secondly, pity is paired with hatred, a fascinating association, particularly when applied to tragedy. If the spectators respond with pity to the undeserved suffering of a hero, should they also feel simultaneously “hatred” toward those who inflict such suffering? Simply put, does the spectator's pity for Antigone require hatred for Creon? As I suggest later on, Greek tragedies often raise the problem of whether or not suffering is deserved, which Aristotle encapsulates in his famous concept of hamartia, “error” of the tragic character. Degrees of tragic “culpability” usually pose more complex cognitive and, therefore, emotional assessments from the audiences than simple opposites: innocent–guilty characters. Nevertheless, in many instances characters in Greek tragedy emphasize the undeserved nature of their suffering. Indeed, it is surprising that classical authors do not underscore more often this connection between pity and hatred, the opposite reactions that must be considered when assessing a spectator's responses to undeserved suffering (whether fictional or not).
Chapter 9 - Euripides: Orestes
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Context and interpretations: a play with a rather “comic” end
More than any other tragedy analyzed so far, the Ajax evoked through plot and certain internal reactions a type of pity that comes closest to the Aristotelian theoretical description. The spectators were invited to feel pity through understanding the particular misfortune of Ajax in relation to human universals and, in this way, to experience anxiety about their own ephemeral condition. Conversely, as literary critics suggest at times, Euripides’ Orestes appears to have departed from Aristotle's recommendations. The author of a hypothesis to Orestes, commonly identified as Aristophanes of Byzantium (third century bce), notes that this drama has a rather “comic dénouement,” (κωμικωτέραν ἔχει τὴν καταστροφήν, 32) and most characters are “base” (φαῦλοι, 44), perhaps in the sense of comic. This is the term used by Aristotle to describe comic characters. The Poetics, for example, distinguishes between imitation of “noble” (σπουδαῖοι) and “base” (φαῦλοι) people (Po. 4.1448b24–7; 5.1449a32–4), the former being proper to tragedy, the latter to comedy. Tragic devices that do not stir pity and fear receive the labels of “not proper to tragedy” and “rather proper to comedy” in the Poetics and later in the scholia of Ajax. In the Poetics, double plots bring pleasure to the audience but a pleasure “not proper to tragedy but rather to comedy” (οὐχ αὕτη ἀπὸ τραγῳδίας ἡδονὴ ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον τῆς κωμῳδίας οἰκεία, Po. 13.1453a35–6), because the tragic proper pleasure comes from pity and fear (Po. 14.1453b12). A scholiast (Aj. 1123) noted that the arguments of the debate (involving Teucer, Menelaus, and Agamemnon) were not “proper to tragedy,” because the poet loosens the “tragic pathos.” Therefore, the writer of the hypothesis of the Euripidean play may well imply in his critique that, ultimately, the tragic action and the conduct of characters in the Orestes are not emotionally conducive. Modern scholars do not agree on whether Euripides’ rendition of the myth of Orestes would have compelled the spectator to respond with sympathy for the plight of the heroes.
Appendix - Catharsis and the emotions in the definition of tragedy in the Poetics
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Before ending this book, I feel obliged to examine several interpretations of the definition of tragedy in the Poetics, even though the topic is not essential to my analysis of the tragic emotions, which has concentrated on the psychology of the audience and on pity and fear as internal responses to suffering in tragedies. The fascination with the notion of catharsis, comes to a great degree, it seems to me, from a hope that the enigmatic word in the definition of tragedy hides a full reply to Plato's critique of the effect of poetry in the Republic, and that it also provides an ethical redemption of the audience either through the emotions or despite them. On these things, otherwise, Aristotle has been generally – and stubbornly – silent in the Poetics. My study has had a rather practical purpose, namely to reconstruct some concrete Aristotelian features of tragic pity and fear.
Aristotle reshaped traditional ideas about tragedy to assess his own opinions about the structure and effect of tragic genre. Perhaps no other subject has caused as much scholarly debate as the Aristotelian definition of tragedy, which associates pity and fear, the emotions commonly reported as the audience's response to tragedy in Greek culture, with the enigmatic notion of catharsis:
ἔστιν οὖν τραγῳδία μίμησις πράξεως σπουδαίας καὶ τελείας μέγεθος ἐχούσης, ἡδυσμένῳ λόγῳ χωρὶς ἑκάστῳ τῶν εἰδῶν ἐν τοῖς μορίοις, δρώντων καὶ οὐ δι᾽ ἀπαγγελίας, δι᾽ ἐλέου καὶ φόβου περαίνουσα τὴν τῶν τοιούτων παθημάτων κάθαρσιν. (Po. 6.1449b24–8)
Tragedy, then, is mimesis of an action which is elevated, complete, and of magnitude: in language embellished with distinct forms in its sections, [using] enactment and not narrative, and through pity and fear producing the catharsis of such emotions.
Controversy surrounds the significance of catharsis and its connection with the tragic emotions, since the term is not further elucidated in the treatise. In the literature preceding Aristotle, the word and its family cover a series of medical, religious, and philosophic connotations. Various translations have been accordingly attempted for catharsis in the Poetics, from cleansing, to purification, to intellectual clarification. Furthermore, although the term occurs in other Aristotelian works, and most notably in the Politics, Book Eight, in a passage that deals with music, the relationship between these texts and the Poetics is not entirely clear.
Part ii - Pity and fear within tragedies
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Chapter 5 - An introduction
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Purpose of survey
Developmental psychologists have found that infants feel sympathetic distress before they fully realize that they exist apart from other people. Even a few months after birth, infants react to a disturbance in those around them as though it were their own, crying when they see another child's tears. By one year or so they start to realize the misery is not their own but someone else's, though they still seem confused over what to do about it.
(Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, New York, 1998, 98)Modern studies show that we are wired to feel sympathy for the suffering of another, and ancient Greek thinkers deemed pity the fundamental response to the human suffering represented in tragedy. But what are the features of pity in tragedies? Do the internal viewers invariably feel pity when they witness suffering? Is pity accompanied by fear, as Gorgias, Plato, and Aristotle have suggested? What kind of fears do the internal spectators express? Thus far, I have discussed theoretical views about pity and fear as tragic emotions in fifth- and fourth-century Athens. Ancient authors defined the effect of tragedy on the audience mainly in terms of emotion, pleasure, and cognitive stimulation, although different authors gave these characteristics varying degrees of emphasis and different nuances of meaning. My focus has been on less explored aspects of Aristotelian theory, which proposes an integrative response to tragedy, both emotional and cognitive, and thus conducive to pleasure. In this second part I will assess pity and fear as emotional responses within tragedies, ranging from early Aeschylean to late Euripidean, by examining how, why, and when internal audiences (the chorus and various characters) express the two emotions. The purpose is twofold. On the one hand, I am interested in comparing internal expressions of pity and fear to the theoretical descriptions of the emotions of the preceding chapters. To this end, the differences between the tragic expressions and the philosophical accounts are as important as the similarities. On the other hand, I concentrate on possible links between the expressions of pity and fear within tragedies and the responses of the external audiences. Despite their differences, Gorgias, Plato, and Aristotle generally assume that pity is an emotion that the Athenians feel naturally when watching tragedies. But is this an unquestionable truth? Moreover, how does fear depicted in tragedies relate to pity? What types of fears are expressed in tragedies? The focus of my analysis will be especially on the manner in which internal audiences debate pity as an appropriate response to suffering and the relevance of such disputes over pity for the contemporary fifth-century Athenian audiences. In all cases, I discuss first modern scholarly views about a play's ability to stir the sympathy of the Athenian audience, then examine the internal perspectives on tragic suffering, and conclude with an appraisal of how these internal viewpoints might have been received by the contemporary spectators.
Frontmatter
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Chapter 4 - Aristotle: the first “theorist” of the aesthetic emotions
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Pity and fear as responses of the audience in the poetics: an impasse
After a pause, Stephen began: Aristotle has not defined pity and terror. I have. (J. Joyce, A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, New York, 1922 [first published, 1916] 239)
Stephen Dedalus works out a definition of pity and terror, deploring the fact that Aristotle had not provided one in the Poetics and ignoring the fact that he had done so in the Rhetoric. (Umberto Eco, “The Poetics and Us,” in Umberto Eco On Literature, transl. M. McLaughlin, Orlando: Harcourt, 2004, 238)
It is difficult to understand from the Poetics how pity and fear might affect the audience of tragedy, psychologically, morally, or otherwise. Although Aristotle repeatedly mentions the two emotions in the treatise, he does so without specifying their ethical influence on the spectator. This aspect of the Poetics continues to puzzle scholars, especially after Plato's condemnation of tragic pity as disabling the moral strength of the audience. Furthermore, the brief references to tragic emotions do not pertain to the audience straightforwardly, but rather emphasize the conditions under which plot and characters bring about fear and pity. Besides occurring in the controversial context of the definition (Po. 6.1449b27), pity and fear can be evoked by the events of the play: “[tragedy] is not only an imitation of complete action, but also of the fearful and pitiable” (οὐ μόνον τελείας ἐστὶ πράξεως ἡ μίμησις, ἀλλὰ καὶ φοβερῶν καὶ ἐλεεινῶν, Po. 9.1452a2–3). Later on, Aristotle describes what sort of characters can make the tragic action fearful and pitiable (e.g. Po. 13.1452b32, 36; 13.1453a1, 3–4) and insists that “playwrights ought to contrive the pleasure from pity and fear” (τὴν ἀπὸ ἐλέου καὶ φόβου διὰ μιμήσεως δεῖ ἡδονὴν παρασκευάζειν τὸν ποιητήν, Po. 14.1453b12–13). And this should be built into events, which are further discussed as “the sort of things that seem terrible and pitiable” (ποῖα οὖν δεινὰ ἢ ποῖα οἰκτρὰ φαίνεται, Po. 14.1453b14).
When Aristotle insists that the structural elements of a play convey the two tragic emotions, he implies that they should do so for the sake of the audience. On one level, pity and fear are embedded into the internal structure of tragedy, on another, they are felt by the spectator. And yet, the effect of the tragic emotions on the spectator remains unspecified. Aristotle offers almost no elucidation about the psychology of the audience experiencing the emotions, in the manner in which Gorgias and Plato did. Moreover, Aristotle does not seem interested in discussing the moral and political implications of feeling pity and fear in this treatise. When he does refer to psychology, he uses very general terms, in order to distinguish between the emotions appropriate for the viewer of tragedy and other possible emotional reactions. For example, a prescription (that tragedy should not depict a very wicked person falling from prosperity to adversity, because this may elicit a fellow-feeling, but not the appropriate tragic pity) is followed by an impersonal parenthesis: “pity is felt for the undeserving, fear for the one alike” (Po. 13.1453a4–6). Therefore, Aristotle appears to have a different theoretical focus than a discussion of the emotional psychology of the audience in the Poetics, namely an interest in the dramatic techniques that can elicit the correct aesthetic emotions, the right varieties of “pity and fear” that ought to be distinguished from other emotional responses.
List of abbreviations
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Chapter 6 - Aeschylus: Persians
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A review of interpretations
Any appraisal of the initial reception of Aeschylus’ Persians raises an unusual problem. The play, produced in 472 bce, deals with the Persian defeat at Salamis in 480 bce, only a few years after the event. Could the Athenian spectators have watched a tragedy depicting the fall of their historical enemy with aesthetic detachment? My analysis examines pity and fear as emotions expressed in the tragedy and as possible reactions of the audiences, considering the internal structure, as well as the dramatic and historical milieu of the play. The dramatic background of this tragedy will be compared with other descriptions of the Persian Wars in the art and literature of the time, which probably shaped certain expectations for Aeschylus’ treatment of the topic. Particular emphasis is placed on the ways in which historical circumstances may have conditioned the audience's responses to the emotional appeals of this tragedy.
Modern critics have debated whether Athenian audiences were moved to pity by the ruin of Xerxes in the Persians after seeing the actual destruction caused by the king in Athens. According to some, no dramatic element of the play, not even the final threnody, was designed to lead the spectators toward feeling pity. Others, on the contrary, believe that the Persians should be regarded as a “typical” tragedy, which rises above ethnic differences and historical facts. Consequently, the play would have aroused pity on account of its tragic content, which the spectators saw as an abstract depiction of a human fall rather than in connection with recent history. Both views seem to be extreme. The former eliminates pity, the emotion of tragedy par excellence, as a possible response to the Persians, while the latter emphasizes the emotional effect of the play without considering the complex historical circumstances.
Contents
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Chapter 7 - Prometheus Bound
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Context and interpretations: modern reactions
Prometheus Bound raises different problems than the Persians for the assessment of the audience responses. The internal structure of the play constantly presents the spectators’ various attitudes toward the suffering Prometheus. My analysis particularly examines how these internal attitudes may have intrigued contemporary audiences, through challenging the ethical, political, and religious ideas of the time.
Most critics agree that the Prometheus must have aroused compassion for the Titan, who redeems the human race. As G. Murray rightly notes, the characters appeal to fellow suffering in such a manner as almost to anticipate the Stoic doctrine of sympatheia, in which the pain of one individual affects the whole universe. Following Lessing's theory, Friedrich has argued that sympathy (Mitleid), in the sense of sharing suffering, best explains the nature of Aristotelian pity. He concludes that such feeling is prevalent in the Prometheus Bound, but I have to disagree with this view. Even though Aristotle's eleos presupposes involvement, as Friedrich states, it is also characterized by detachment, both personal and temporal. The one who pities relates to the sufferer by imagining that he (or his dear ones) might have endured in the past or endure in the future a similar misfortune. In the play, however, Prometheus’ pity for humans leads to self-sacrifice, not to imaginative reflection on the self. Pity compels the chorus to join the Titan in his final ordeal. Thus, pity in the play appears to require direct participation in a sufferer's misfortune rather than involvement mediated by imagination, which Aristotle prefers.
Chapter 8 - Sophocles: Ajax
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A review of interpretations
To effect emotional arousal, the Persians and the Prometheus Bound use different dramatic techniques, which appear to have presented unique cognitive and ethical challenges to the audience. The Persians contains a dynamic plot, with a major change of fortune, but not much variety of internal voices (exclusively Persian, though with an interesting twist in the speech of Darius) that interpret the misfortune. Despite a static dramatic structure, conversely, the Prometheus Bound offers diverse internal views about tragic suffering. The Ajax combines an eventful plot with several internal perspectives on the fall of the hero. My study appraises reactions to this tragedy by examining ways in which the internal models of response could have shaped the spectators’ emotions as well as their understanding of the dramatic action.
Scholars often note that the fall of Ajax, as represented in Sophocles’ tragedy, must have driven the ancient audience to pity. One particular detail likely caused surprise and, perhaps, intense emotion: Sophocles’ representation of Ajax's suicide violates an established tragic convention, according to which deaths are reported by messenger, and thus the audience hears directly the painful reasoning that precedes the death of the hero. Nevertheless, some argue that the spectators could not have felt pity for Ajax, who acts foolishly and, therefore, deserves his fate. Even though certain scenes in the Ajax, such as those involving Tecmessa, may have been conducive to pity, some scholars insist, Ajax does not deserve the audience's sympathy for two main reasons. One argument is that the hero has committed hybris and, therefore, is justly punished by Athena. There is, however, no clear dramatic development in the play to support this interpretation. Indeed, Athena notes that humans ought to avoid hybris (Aj. 127–33) in connection with the hero's plight, but she does so in rather general terms. The other argument is that Ajax acted unethically in the play, and this was obvious to the members of the original audience.