Why Does Tragedy Give Pleasure? - Hardcover

"This delightful little book not only attracts the reader with its enigmatic title, it ensnares her into following its argument like a detective story, whose solution is not disclosed before its final pages. In a style more reminiscent of poetry than a philological treatise it deserves to be handled with care...."--Bryn Mawr Classical Review "This delightful little book not only attracts the reader with its enigmatic title, it ensnares her into following its argument like a detective story, whose solution is not disclosed before its final pages. In a style more reminiscent of poetry than a philological treatise it deserves to be handled with care...."--Bryn Mawr Classical Review "This delightful little book not only attracts the reader with its enigmatic title, it ensnares her into following its argument like a detective story, whose solution is not disclosed before its final pages. In a style more reminiscent of poetry than a philological treatise it deserves to be handled with care...."--Bryn Mawr Classical Review "This delightful little book not only attracts the reader with its enigmatic title, it ensnares her into following its argument like a detective story, whose solution is not disclosed before its final pages. In a style more reminiscent of poetry than a philological treatise it deserves to be handled with care...."--Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Why does tragedy give pleasure? Why do people who are neither wicked nor depraved enjoy watching plays about suffering or death? It is because we see horrific matter controlled by majestic art? Or because tragedy actually reaches out to the dark side of human nature? This work offers a fresh 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; and people can enjoy potentially horrible events controlled and disposed in sequence by art. In the 19th century, Nietzche suggested that Greek tragedy is involved with darkness and unreason and Freud asseted that we are all, at the unconscious level, quite wicked enough to rejoice in death.