Fear and pity of poetics by Aristotle, Chapter-15

Chapter-15

Fear and Pity

Fear and pity related to spectacle depend on performance on the stage to audience feelings. Aristotle says spectacle can raise fear and pity in the spectator.

Fear and pity concern with emotion associate with event in tragedy are felt by the audience. It is probable that Aristotle understood fear and pity to be quality of the action that purify of this emotional quality.

Fear anticipate the performance of horrible act by someone who does not fully understand what he or she is doing or is compelled to do those act against his or her volition,

Pity depends on the audience’s empathy with the doer of those act.

According to Aristotle, “for the plot should be so ordered that even without seeing it performed anyone merely hearing what is afoot will shudder as a result what is happening” in Oedipus audience feel fear besides concerned what is going to be happened next. According to Aristotle, fear and pity associated with tragic pleasure.

Let us know what kinds of incident are to be regarded as fearful and pitiable, deeds that of course involve people who are either friend to one another or enemies or not. Now if a man injures his enemies there is nothing pitiable. But when the suffering involves those who are near and dear to one another like brother kills brother, son father, mother son or son mother. We feel pity most when friend or family harm one another.

This act may be done knowingly or unknowingly. Knowingly or consciously, when media kills her children, Orestes kills his mother Clytemnestra on the other hand unknowingly, when Oedipus kills his father. According to Aristotle these knowingly unknowingly or consciously unconsciously deeds that may be part of tragedy otherwise not, According to him “when someone in possession of the facts is on the point of acting but fails to do so, for this merely shocks us, and, since no suffering is involved, it is not tragic”. “however the best method is the last, when, for example, in the Cresphontes, Merope intends to kill her son, but recognizes him and does not do so..”.