Aristotle, a Greek philosopher has defined tragedy as “through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation”. Using a play by Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy that can express the defined oikeia hedone, meaning the “proper pleasure” in Greek by Aristotle’s Poetics, which achieves the proper purgation or in other words, catharsis as its final cause.
Tragedy can be defined as an event of great suffering, however Aristotle also mentioned that “a real tragedy was all encompassing, larger than life, and incredibly dramatic”(350 B.C.E, 1994). In the play Romeo and Juliet, the “star-crossed lovers”(Shakespeare, 2008) are fated to be together, but both the Montague and Capulet family have deep hatred for each other, causing many feuds and resulting in another fated moment of heartbreak and tragedy that leads to the “proper purgation”. “My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me, That I must love a loathed enemy”(Shakespeare, 2008) explains the …show more content…
That describing the shocking events of the young lovers both ending up dead and notwithstanding by the obligatory direction both families impressions lent on to.
The “proper pleasure” is contemporarily thought of as the state of feeling or being pleased, however, Aristotle believed that there always needed to be an outside factor to affect the mind directly, which included an outcome of doing an “excellent activity”. Hence, by viewing Shakespeare’s tragedy as the “excellent activity”, the end product is the “proper pleasure” that takes place after the tragic event in the play. The “proper pleasure” helps the audience that is experiencing the tragedy to convey their emotions, which in this context, is catharsis or the “proper purgation”.
Catharsis originates as a Greek word that is a form of cleansing from intense or repressed feelings. Aristotle’s definition also regards the cleansing of feelings and emotions, having said that of
Tragedy can be defined as an event of great suffering, however Aristotle also mentioned that “a real tragedy was all encompassing, larger than life, and incredibly dramatic”(350 B.C.E, 1994). In the play Romeo and Juliet, the “star-crossed lovers”(Shakespeare, 2008) are fated to be together, but both the Montague and Capulet family have deep hatred for each other, causing many feuds and resulting in another fated moment of heartbreak and tragedy that leads to the “proper purgation”. “My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me, That I must love a loathed enemy”(Shakespeare, 2008) explains the …show more content…
That describing the shocking events of the young lovers both ending up dead and notwithstanding by the obligatory direction both families impressions lent on to.
The “proper pleasure” is contemporarily thought of as the state of feeling or being pleased, however, Aristotle believed that there always needed to be an outside factor to affect the mind directly, which included an outcome of doing an “excellent activity”. Hence, by viewing Shakespeare’s tragedy as the “excellent activity”, the end product is the “proper pleasure” that takes place after the tragic event in the play. The “proper pleasure” helps the audience that is experiencing the tragedy to convey their emotions, which in this context, is catharsis or the “proper purgation”.
Catharsis originates as a Greek word that is a form of cleansing from intense or repressed feelings. Aristotle’s definition also regards the cleansing of feelings and emotions, having said that of