Why Does Tragedy Give Pleasure?Why does tragedy give pleasure? Why do people who are neither wicked nor depraved enjoy watching plays about suffering and death? Is it because we see horrific matter controlled by majestic art? Or because tragedy actually reaches out to the dark side of human nature? A. D. Nuttall's wide-ranging, lively, and engaging book offers a new answer to this perennial question. The classical answer to the question is rooted in Aristotle, and rests on the unreality of the tragic presentation: no one really dies; we are free to enjoy watching potentially horrible events controlled and disposed in majestic sequence by art. In the nineteenth century, Nietzsche dared to suggest that Greek tragedy is involved with darkness and unreason, and Freud asserted that we are all, at the unconscious level, quite wicked enough to rejoice in death. But the problem persists: how can the conscious mind assent to such enjoyment? Strenuous bodily exercise is pleasurable. Could we, when we respond to a tragedy, be exercising our emotions, preparing for real grief and fear? King Lear actually destroys an expected majestic sequence. Might the pleasure of tragedy have more to do with possible truth than 'splendid evasion'? |
Contents
Aristotle and After | 1 |
Enter Freud | 29 |
The Game of Death | 57 |
Copyright | |
2 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
actually anagnorisis Apollo argued Aristotle Aristotle's Poetics artist audience begin Berowne Birth of Tragedy Cambridge catharsis century Christian Clarendon Press clarification Complete Psychological consciousness Cordelia D. H. Lawrence Defence of Poetry delight Dionysus drama earlier Edgar element Eliot emotions essay ethical fact feel formal Frazer Freud Freudian game of death Genealogy of Morals Golden Greek tragedy grief Hamlet heroes human hypothetical Ibid idea imitation Johnson kind King Lear libidinal literary London look mean Milton mimesis mind Miscellaneous Prose Nicomachean Ethics Nietzsche Nietzsche's notion Nussbaum once Oxford passage passion pathemata person philosopher pity and fear Plato play pleasure of tragedy poem poet protagonist Psychoanalysis purgation reader reality religion Renaissance Samson Agonistes Schopenhauer seems sense sentence Shakespeare Sidney Sidney's simply Sophocles speak story suffering suspect term theatre theory things thought tion tragic pleasure translation Unconscious University Press word writes wrote
References to this book
Jonathan Swift and Popular Culture: Myth, Media, and the Man Ann Cline Kelly No preview available - 2002 |