Catharsis: Early to Modern

Since Aristotle, tragic drama has been understood in terms of catharsis—as the purging of pity and terror—a therapeutic process that later becomes central to Freud’s talking cure. Yet, what happens when drama involving pain resists catharsis and even cure? Why do some plays seem to feel too much, or too little, and what demands do action and genre make on emotion? How do some dramas show characters and situations that are stuck in a loop? What is estrangement, and what is absorption? In this class, we will explore plays whose affects are incommensurable with the action that elicits them, troubling the therapeutic definitions of tragedy and psychoanalysis alike. With 2/3 early modern literature, and 1/3 modern, readings include Shakespeare’s Titus, Macbeth, and Winter’s Tale, Beckett’s Happy Days, Sarah Kane’s Blasted, and Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play.