September 23, 2008

Aristotle on Comedy

Category: lectures,profnotes — theprof @ 12:26 pm

Here are the two quotations we discussed in class:

From The Poetics:
“Comedy is the imitation of people who are rather inferior [in the sense that they are laughable], for the laughable is a sort of error and ugliness that is not painful and destructive”

From The Tractatus Coislinianus (argued to be a summary of The Poetics II):
“Comedy is a imitation of an action that is laughable and lacking in magnitude…accomplishing by means of pleasure and laughter the catharsis of such emotions”

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