The paradox of tragedy engendered by the difficulty of how aesthetic pleasure

and enjoyment can be derived from, and experienced at the same time as the
pain and sadness elicited by tragic drama. To the extent that it is tragic, the work
bears properties that produce painful feelings most people prefer to avoid in real
life, such as shock, horror, pity and sadness. But at the same time readers and
viewers of tragedy find these experiences enjoyable and go as far as paying
money for the opportunity to have these emotions. An important question raised
by these observations is that how a drama can simultaneously produce the
contrary feelings of pain and pleasure at the same time in the same reader and
viewer.

In his Poetics, which was written in 330 B.C. as Vincent B. Leitch has noted,
Aristotle explains how representation in the art of poetry can be both pleasing
and instructive at the same time: “Two causes seem to have been generated the
art of poetry as a whole, and these are natural ones. Representation is natural to
human beings from childhood. They differ from the other animals in this: man
tends most towards representation and learns his first lessons through
representation. Also everyone delights in looking at the most detailed images of
things which in them we see with pain, e.g. the shapes of the most despised wild
animals even when dead. The cause of this is that learning is most pleasant, not
only for philosophers but for others likewise. ... For this reason they delight in
seeing images, because it comes about that they learn as they observe, and infer
what each thing is, e.g. that this person [represents] that one. For if one has not
seen the thing [that is presented] before, [its image] will not produce a pleasure
as a representation, but because of its accomplishment, colour, or some other
such cause.”

Therefore by nature, human beings are interested in representation, and through

art they are delighted and instructed by what is presented in front of them.
Stressing the difference between the epic and the dramatic, Aristotle regards
comedy and tragedy as the best of the poetic kinds because they are “greater and
more honourable in their forms”. Subordinating comedy to tragedy, he defines
the rules for writing tragedy in a formalist way. However, an implicit emphasis
that is put on the emotional aspect of a tragic play is found in his definition of
“tragedy”: “Tragedy is a representation of a serious, complete action which has
magnitude, in embellished speech, with each of its elements [used] separately in
the [various] parts [of the play]; [represented] by people acting and not by
narration; accomplishing by means of pity and terror the catharsis of such
emotions” . Thus, tragedy can be helpful in purifying the feelings of pity and terror
[that is, catharsis], when the audience has seen what has happened to the tragic
hero, a man “who neither is superior [to us] in virtue and justice, nor undergoes a
change to misfortune because of vice and wickedness, but because of some error,
and who is one of those people with a great reputation and a good fortune”.
From the audience’s point of view, the pleasure of what is represented on the
stage comes through experiencing the feeling of pity and terror with the tragic
hero and a kind of relief that such a misfortune has not fallen on them. The hero
is important in terms of producing pity and fear in the audience because if he is a
wicked man passing from misfortune to good fortune, this will be “neither morally
satisfying nor pitiable nor terrifying (100). “Since the poet should use
representation to produce the pleasure [arising from pity and terror]” (101), the
pleasure that comes from tragedy is mostly dependent on “the structure of the
incidents”; the plot “the soul of tragedy” , “in accordance with probability or
necessity”; “This is superior and belongs to a better poet. For the plot should be
constructed in such a way that, even without seeing it, someone who hears about
the incidents will shudder and feel pity at the outcome. ... Since the poet should
use representation to produce the pleasure [arising] from pity and terror, it is
obvious that this must be put into the incidents” . The poet “should put what is
amazing into his tragedies. … What is amazing is pleasant” .

Departing from Plato who censored poetic pleasure in his reasonable vision,
Aristotle makes use of “pleasure” through catharsis, which exists with the goal of
instructing. Although he does not discuss the moral effect of drama explicitly, he
seems to point out that the moral effect is a part of dramatic structure, not a
result of mere imitation of a moral action. Pleasure is a special insight that begins
with the “complex” plot of tragedy and comes to an end with the purgation of the
feeling of pity and fear. It seems to be paradoxical at first sight and one may ask
how a man is pleased and instructed through the purgation of pity and terror. The
fact of purgation of such feelings is directly related with the idea of gaining a new
perspective psychologically. Pity, terror, suffering and misfortune lead the
audience to feel pity for the others while they are terrorized with the truth that
this misfortune might have fallen on them. These feelings and insights, which are
personal, come to the surface of consciousness with the aid of pleasure.
Therefore, catharsis is important in the sense that one experiences a moment
that enlightens him emotionally. Considering “catharsis” as a key word, an
emphasis is put on the union of emotional purgation and intellectual clarification,
which comes to the foreground with the action of a tragic play.

. Tragic catharsis has been interpreted as a process of either (or some

combination of) (1) purgation, (2) purification, or (3) cognitive stimulation.

On the purgation view of tragic catharsis, observing a tragedy can assist in

removing unhealthy emotions or pathological conditions. Specifically, it is the
emotions of pity and fear that are purged. By way of the medical-homeopathic
analogy, pity and fear are used to remove pity-and-fear-type emotions and
related pathological states in much the same way that illness-causing agents can
be removed from a physically ill person by micro-doses of the same illness-causing
agents. From this perspective, scholars argue that Aristotle held the view that
tragic catharsis is the removal of unhealthy emotional and pathological states and
tragic pleasure is the psychological relief or renewal brought about by the
removal of such emotions. Meager promotes the purgation reading of catharsis
and tragic pleasure since he thinks that Aristotle’s view about the imitation of
action “must move us, deeply and consciously, to an intensity of pity and fear
which mounts to an emotional climax in us, permitting a sudden and controlled
release from tension and restoration of a state of emotional freshness and
readiness.”

In contrast to the purgation account, some scholars insist on a purification

interpretation. According to this reading, tragic catharsis is the cleansing of the
emotions of pity and fear such that the emotions of pity and fear are modified.
Tragic pleasure, then, is the enjoyment of the cleansed emotions of pity and fear.
So, when the audience comes to understand the honest mistakes made by
Oedipus, the audience expresses both pity and fear in the right way and toward
the appropriate set of circumstances. In this way, the confusion and pain that
frequently accompany pity and fear are cleansed away by the focus of those
emotions on a fully comprehensible set of tragic events (e.g., Oedipus). Butcher
states the purification view (as a response to the purgation interpretation) by
noting that tragedy provides “an outlet for pity and fear, but to provide for them
a distinctively aesthetic satisfaction, to purify and clarify them by passing them
through the medium of art.”

Katharsis is read in still another way - the cognitive stimulation/clarification

reading. According to this reading, catharsis is the process by which observers of a
tragedy are better able to realize the nature of particular actions of a protagonist
and human actions more generally. Tragic pleasure, moreover, is the
accompanying cognitive pleasure of this better understanding, which is
illuminated by pitiable and fearful events.

It is implicit in the Poetics that the catharsis is itself pleasurable, that the delight
arises from the resulting calm of mind, all passion spent. But here and elsewhere
he also wrote of the delight men take in learning and in perceiving imitations.
These two also came to be explanations of the problem; but nowhere did
Aristotle directly face the dilemma, and in his analysis of pleasure in the Rhetoric
he supplied a large number of causes, any one of which could be attributed to
tragedy. However, through the history a number of scholars and critics attributed
a considerable amount of time in dissolving the paradox of tragedy. The concept
of Katharsis itself is subjected to a number of interpretations and thereby the
question of tragedy found a number of solutions in the hands of innumerous
critics. Minturno, for example, claimed that the tragic dramatist arouses delight
partially by his artistry, and that through the delightful artistry he moves the
passions of pity and fear. Others arrived at approximately this same conclusion by
other routes. According to Scaliger, man delights in learning: " pleasure does not
reside in joy alone, but in everything fitted to instruct "; and tragedy teaches the
highest moral truths. Vossius made the prudence that tragedy inculcates a
secondary source of the pleasure. And Castelvetro, though he was inclined to
believe that tragedy exists for pleasure and not for its moral utility, and though he
attributed much of the pleasure of tragedy to the delight one finds in the
marvelous (arising from both the fable and the skill of the poet in overcoming the
difficulties of imitation), nevertheless made the ethical satisfaction that tragedy
affords the spectator the essential reason why it pleases. Vossius, with Poetics 4
clearly in mind, attributed the pleasure, not to the calamities of the tragic hero,
but to the art of the poet, just as in observing pictures of monsters we delight, not
in the subjects, but in the painter's skill. Finally, Milton interpreted Aristotle as
having written that the purpose of tragedy is to temper and reduce pity and fear "
to just measure with a kind of delight, stirr'd up by reading or seeing those
passions well imitated."

The great Scottish philosopher David Hume also attempted to resolve the paradox
of tragedy in his essay “Of tragedy”. According to Hume, by increasing one’s
sensitivity to artistic style, what in ordinary life would cause sadness and pain
becomes an object of delight and enjoyment in virtue of the form of artistic
presentation. Susan L. Fleagin describes tragic feelings as an emotion that is
produced by reflection on the direct painful responses of the readers or viewers
to tragic personages, and the judgment that this emotions are those that are felt
by morally sensitive people. Although the doctrine of sympathy helped create a
new type of drama, it did not long remain the explanation of tragic pleasure.
Lamb found the delight in artistry; Hazlitt reverted to the theme of emotional
agitation; Shelley invoked the Platonic principle that " tragedy delights by
affording a shadow of that pleasure which exists in pain." Meanwhile in Germany,
Kant and, following his lead, Schiller and Augustus William Schlegel were
developing a theory of tragic pleasure that was at the same time being
promulgated in England by Joanna Baillie and Richard Payne Knight: tragedy, by
opposing the spiritual aspirations of man, reveals the dignity of human nature and
its divine origin as it resists, struggles, and endure. The debate is still ongoing and
is one of the greatest point discussions in the world of literary criticism. However,
a concrete and definite final answer is still at large.