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The pleasure derived from tragedy is peculiar to it, Aristotle said, and results from our confrontation with our own potential pain and destruction. This confrontation is neither malicious nor masochistic; it is courageous, rather. We explore the significance of the suffering that may lie ahead of us, and of the death that assuredly does. A work which does not afford its pleasure through such an encounter is not a tragedy. The more purely, the more completely, a work confronts its reader with his potential destruction, the more purely and completely is that work a tragedy. This encounter may not of itself make tragedy, but it is an indispensable ingredient.
This discussion of tragedy will resolve, therefore, around the interaction between the dynamics of tragedy and the dynamics of the reader's psyche. Aristotle's catharsis, the purging of emotions through their expression, is conceived of here as an attempt to specify this interaction, which I wish to examine from a psychoanalytic viewpoint, particularly the relationship between catharsis, recognition, peripety, and hamartia.
What is striking about many important interpretations of Aristotle, even those from different schools of thought, is the way in which they agree on one major concern. Whether it be Milton reducing the emotions to just measure; or Bernay, Bywater,4 and Grube1 purging them; Butcher3 refining and directing them; House18 training them toward wisdom's response; Else6 purifying the incidents; or Hardi-son17a clarifying them, these commentators agree that the reader's