Performing Catharsis

Enacting An Ancient Therapy

What is catharsis and how exactly do pity (eleos) and fear (phobos) and other emotions achieve it? Rather than examining catharsis as described in Aristotles Poetics, this book instead places it within the context of performance in ancient Greece from the Palaeolithic to the fourth century BCE.

What is catharsis and how exactly do pity (eleos) and fear (phobos) and other emotions achieve it? Rather than examining catharsis as described in Aristotles Poetics, this book instead places it within the context of performance in ancient Greece from the Paleolithic to the fourth-century BCE.

Over the course of history, theorists and philosophers have explored catharsis using Aristotle as their starting point. Meineck takes a novel approach here; embedding Aristotle within the cathartic culture that was around him, the book
traces how and why cathar