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Pity, Terror, and Peripeteia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

D. W. Lucas
Affiliation:
King's College, Cambridge

Extract

In an article (C.Q. xli [1947], 73 ff.) based on an unpublished paper by Professor Cornford, Mr. I. M. Glanville returned to the suggestion that the words at the beginning of Chapter 11 of the Poetics (1452a23), which are part of the definition of peripeteia, refer back to the phrase (52a4), thereby raising the question whose expectation it is to which events turn out contrary, that of the audience or of the characters in the play.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1962

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References

page 52 note 1 It was made, if not before, by Twining, , Aristotle's Treatise on Poetry, 2nd ed. (London, 1812), ii. 78Google Scholar, and it is so understood by Rostagni in his edition, Torino, 1945, and, apparently, by Butcher in his essay on A.'s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (London, 1907), p. 279Google Scholar. I have not seen A. Micev's article, Assoc. I'Univ. de Sofia, Fac. Phil. 1955, pp. 451–87Google Scholar, but from the summary in Rev. Ét. Grec. lxviii (1957), 543, his approach appears to be entirely different.Google Scholar

page 52 note 2 Aristotle's Poetics: the Argument (Harvard, 1957). P. 330, n. 103, and p. 345.Google Scholar He calls the sentence in question ‘one of the most pregnant remarks in the whole Poetics” (p. 329). The same interpretation in Turner, P., ‘The Reverse of Vahlen’, C.Q. N.S. ix (1959) 207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 52 note 3 Sitzb. Wien, lii (1866), 90 ffGoogle Scholar. He takes as part of the definition of peripeteia, but gives another explanation of (loc. cit., p. 93).Google Scholar

page 52 note 4 Refs. in Else, , op. cit., p. 344.Google Scholar Add House, H., Aristotle's Poetics (London, 1956), p. 96.Google Scholar

page 53 note 1 It is worth remembering that the ‘hero’ is the victim of an hamartia (?misapprehension), and a natural consequence of this at the end of a causally connected series of events is a surprise. This is not to say that an hamartia must result in a peripeteia.

page 53 note 2 Cf. Kühner-Gerth 488 a (a), Goodwin, Moods and Tenses, p. 864, ‘what is stated in the participle is stated as the thought or assertion of the subject of the leading verb, or as that of some other person prominent in the sentence’. The audience are not in the sentence, but it could be argued that they are prominent in the thought. Else translates ‘when it seems that he will make Oedipus happy’, and similarly Turner, , loc. cit., p. 208. Else reads in an attempt to evade the difficulty that the Messenger did not come from Corinth in order to relieve Oedipus of his fears.Google Scholar

page 53 note 3 P. 346.

page 53 note 4 Aesch. Choephoroe; Soph. O.T., Electra; Eur. Alcestis, Electra, Iphigeneia in Tauris, Ion, and, more dubiously, Helen, in which the main recognitions are between characters who, in fact, know each other by sight. Cf. Perrin, B. in A. J. Phil. xxx. (1909), 371 ff.; hedoes not count the Alcestis as a recognition play.Google Scholar

page 53 note 5 Cf. the prologue to Euripides' Antigone, frs. 157, 158. It is not known how his Oedipus began.

page 53 note 6 Cf. Else, , p. 343.Google Scholar

page 54 note 1 p. 346.

page 54 note 2 Süss, , Ethos (Leipzig, 1910), pp. 84 ffGoogle Scholar. He goes too far in claiming Gorgias as the inventor of the katharsis theory. Cf. Pohlenz, , Grött. Nachr. (1920), pp. 159 ff.Google Scholar

page 54 note 3 Ap. Plutarch, , Mot. 348 c (De Glor. Ath. 5).Google Scholar

page 54 note 4 Gorgias, , Helen 10Google Scholar. is a very strong word, cf. Soph, . O.T. 1306, Plato, Rep. 387 c.Google Scholar

page 54 note 5 533 d; for the violence of the emotion experienced by rhapsode and audience see 535 c–e.

page 55 note 1 As at its only other occurrence in Plato, Charm. 169 c: one person yawning sets off another.

page 55 note 2 Quoted by Süss in connexion with Gorgias and the tragic emotions, op. cit., p. 86.

page 55 note 3 Cf. Politics 1340a23–37.

page 55 note 4 e.g. Susemihl, and Hicks, , ed. Politics (London, 1894), P. 652, notes 4 and 5.Google Scholar

page 55 note 5 Most discussion of emotion in the Poetics is a preliminary to an attack on the problem of katharsis. Schadewaldt in a valuable article devoted to this end, Hermes lxxxiii (1955) 129Google Scholar, complains that in conventional translation the words and are emasculated; they mean Schrecken and Jammer, not Furcht and Mitleid. He speaks of the ‘Mitgestimmtheit des Zuschauers’, p. 132. Pohlenz, in Hermes lxxxiv (1956), 49 ff.Google Scholar, denies the general applicability of these terms, but in his Griechische TragSdie, 2nd ed. (1954), i. 486Google Scholar, he too speaks of the ‘Miterleben’ which is part of the experience of the audience, also in Gött. Nachr., loc. cit., p. 168, ‘sie bewirkt auch, dass wir die Affekte der handelnden, leidenden Personen wie eigne miterleben’.Google Scholar

page 56 note 1 Else, , p. 374.Google Scholar

page 56 note 2 Especially Bk. 2, Chs. 5 and 8. It is generally agreed that the ideas of the Rhetoric cannot be imported straight into the Poetics. In the former fear is said to drive out pity, in the latter they clearly exist side by side. The Rhetoric is naturally concerned with the indirect appeal to the emotions, which are ‘dependent on calculation’ and ‘selfregarding’ (Else, , p. 371).Google Scholar

page 56 note 3 Cf. Gudeman’s commentary on 55a30, p. 306.

page 56 note 4 See Schadewaldt, , loc. cit., p. 130.Google Scholar

page 56 note 5 So Döring, , Die Kunstlehre des A. (Jena, 1876), pp. 306 ff.Google Scholar

page 56 note 6 Stuart, D. C. in A. J. Phil, xxxix (1918), 268Google Scholar reduces pity and terror to sympathy and suspense. Cf. Philippart, H., ‘La thème aristotélienne de l'anagnorisis’, Rev. Ét. Grecs xxxviii (1925), 171.Google Scholar

page 57 note 1 Those who do not regard as referring to peripeteia are free to deny that suddenness is part of the definition. Cf. Gudeman, on 52a15, op. cit., p. 220.Google Scholar

page 57 note 2 This is not to accept Else's conclusion that hamartia is confined to complex plays, p. 384.

page 57 note 3 Twice, for example, in the Trachiniae. Deianeira realizes that she has charged her gift to Heracles with deadly poison, and Heracles realizes that his affliction comes from the long-dead Nessus, and that his own imminent death is the consequence. Possibly Aristotle does not deal further with this kind of anagnorisis because it can be regarded as part of the peripeteia. Philippart, , loc cit., p. 178, note 2, is of course right in saying that anagnorisis proper (of persons) is not inseparable from peripeteia; but a moment of realization is inseparable, whether or not A. called it anagnorisis.Google Scholar

page 58 note 1 For Eur. Hel. see above, p. 53, n. 4.

page 58 note 2 The anagnorisis of Electra and Orestes of course puts the complexity of the play beyond question.

page 58 note 3 Else, 531, the only commentator, so far as I know, to take this point.

page 58 note 4 The Trügrede begins at 646, the body is discovered in the next episode at 898. It might be objected that the peripeteia of the O.T. extends over two episodes, from the news of Polybus at 942 to the exit of Oedipus at 1185. But there are two separate realizations here, and that of Jocasta at 1071 falls within the first episode. It is far from clear how long before the climax Aristotle considers a peripeteia to start. Bywater, in Festscrift Gomperz (Wien, 1902), p. 171 restricts the peripeteia to O.T. 1110–85.Google Scholar

page 58 note 5 The O.C. is not easy to classify; a play so full of oracles whose fulfilment is recognized cannot be entirely simple.

page 59 note 1 Gudeman, who makes more effort than most to apply the Poetics to Greek drama, numbers the Hec. and, with hesitation, the Phil, among simple plays. But Hec. can be claimed as complex, if not on account of Polymestor, on account of 658–87, the discovery of Polydorus’ death.

page 59 note 2 54a32.