title: Poetics (Dramatic Contexts)
author: Aristotle Aristotle
description: Text: English (translation)<br /> Original Language: Greek
zlib_text: 1 
  Aristotle’s theory of katharsis 
  in its historical and social 
  contexts
  Edith Hall
  Few words have maintained such a hold over both theatrical practice and 
  classical philology as Aristotle’s term katharsis in his Poetics. In this article 
  I explore fi ve aspects of the cultural background to his brief, compressed 
  and elliptical discussion of katharsis as an objective of tragic theatre. I argue 
  that Aristotelian tragic katharsis, although clearly signalling a useful 
  transformation through an aesthetic experience, must remain enigmatic 
  since the noun had many different metaphorical resonances. Yet the 
  abstraction of the language in which Aristotle discussed the effects of tragic 
  theatre on the people who experienced it marks an epochal shift in the 
  ancient understanding of what the production and consumption of tragedy 
  entailed. This intellectual shift coincided with, and partly resulted from, the 
  transformation of the theatre industry in the fourth century BC. In particular,