Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-18T20:56:40.120Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Empathic understanding’: emotion and cognition in classical dramatic audience-response

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Ismene Lada
Ismene Lada
Affiliation:
St John's College, Cambridge
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the closing chapter of his Greek tragedy in action Oliver Taplin writes:

Understanding, reason, learning, moral discrimination – these things are not, in my experience, incompatible with emotion (nor presumably in the experience of Gorgias and Aristotle): what is incompatible is cold insensibility […] our emotions in the theatre, far from driving out thought and meaning, are indivisible from them: they are simultaneous and mutually dependent.

On the other hand, Malcolm Heath's work inveighs against Taplin's suggestion of a balance between reason and emotion, and proposes

a third possibility: intense but ordered emotion, controlled not by intellectual interests, but by the coherence of the whole simply as an emotional experience, by the aesthetic satisfaction which the audience receives through its experience of the emotions as an ordered sequence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 39 , 1994 , pp. 94 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anderson, G. (1978) ‘Lucian's Nigrinus: the problem of form’, GRBS 19, 367–74Google Scholar
Arrowsmith, W. (1963) ‘A Greek theater of ideas’, Arion 2:3, 32–56Google Scholar
Baer, M. (1992) Theatre and disorder in late Georgian London, OxfordCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bain, D. (1977) Actors and audience: a study of asides and realted conventions in Greek drama, OxfordGoogle Scholar
Barthes, R.S/Z (transl. Miller, R.), London 1975Google Scholar
Barthes, R. (1982) ‘The death of the author’ in (transl. Miller, R.), Image music text, essays selected and translated by Heath, S., London, 142–8Google Scholar
Bate, W. J. (1945) ‘The sympathetic imagination in eighteenth-century English criticism’, English Literary History 12, 144–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beattie, J. M. (1986) Crime and the courts in England 1660–1800, OxfordGoogle Scholar
Beckerman, B. (1970) Dynamics of drama: theory and method of analysis, N. YorkGoogle Scholar
Belfiore, E. (1983) ‘Plato's greatest accusation against poetry’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy suppl. 9, 39–62Google Scholar
Belfiore, E. (1992) Tragic pleasures: Aristotle on plot and emotion, PrincetonCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boucher, J. D. (1979) ‘Culture and emotion’ in Marsella, A. J., Tharp, R. G. and Ciborowski, T. J. (eds.), Perspectives on cross-cultural psychology, N. York, S. Francisco and London, 159–78Google Scholar
Bowie, A. M. (1993) Aristophanes: myth, ritual and comedy, CambridgeCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bullough, E. (1912) ‘“Psychical distance” as a factor in art and an aesthetic principle’, in British Journal of Psychology 5, 87–118Google Scholar
Brecht, B. (1964) Brecht on theatre: the development of an aesthetic (ed. and transl. by Willett, J.), LondonGoogle Scholar
Brecht, B. (1965) The Messingkauf dialogues (transl. Willett, J.), LondonGoogle Scholar
Burkert, W. (1962) ‘Γόης: Zum griechischen “Schamanismus”’ RhM 105, 36–55Google Scholar
Burkert, W. (1983) Homo necans: the anthropology of ancient Greek sacrificial ritual and myth (Engl. transl. by Bing, P.), Berkeley, Los Angeles and LondonGoogle Scholar
Campos, J. J. and Caplovitz Barrett, K. (1984) ‘Toward a new understanding of emotions and their development’, in Izard, E. et al. (eds.), 229–63Google Scholar
Cataudella, Q. (1931) ‘Sopra alcuni concetti della poetica antica’ RFIC n.s. 9, 382–90Google Scholar
Charlton, W. (1984) ‘Feeling for the fictitious’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 24:3, 206–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crosman, R. (1980) ‘Do readers make meaning?’, in Suleiman, S. R. and Crosman, I. (eds.), The reader in the text: essays on audience and interpretation, Princeton, N. Jersey, 149–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D'Andrade, R. G. (1984) ‘Cultural meaning systems’, in Shweder, R. A. and Le Vine, R. A. (1984), 88–119Google Scholar
Denzin, N. K. (1984) On understanding emotion, USA and LondonGoogle Scholar
Diderot, D. (1936) ‘Paradoxe sur le comédien’, in Green, F. C. (ed), Diderot's writings on the theatre, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
Eisenberg, N. and Strayer, J. (eds.) (1987) Empathy and its development, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
Eisenberg, N. and Strayer, J. (1987b) ‘Critical issues in the study of empathy’, in Eisenberg, and Strayer, (eds.), 3–13Google Scholar
Ekman, P. (1977) ‘Biological and cultural contributions to body and facial movement’ in Blacking, J. (ed.), The anthropology of the body, ASA Monograph 15, New York, San Francisco, London, 39–84Google Scholar
Eliade, M. (1959) Initiation, rites, sociétés, secrètes, naissances mystiques: essai sur quelques types d'initiation, ParisGoogle Scholar
Else, G. F. (1957) Aristotle's Poetics: the argument, Cambridge, Mass.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emigh, J. (1979) ‘Playing with the past: visitation and illusion in the mask theatre of Bali’, The Drama Review 23:2, 11–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engell, J. (1981) The creative imagination: enlightenment to romanticism, Cambridge, Mass, and LondonCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foley, H. P. (1980) ‘The Masque of Dionysus’, TAPA 110, 107–33Google Scholar
Foley, H. P. (1988) ‘Tragedy and politics in Aristophanes’ Acharnians', JHS 108, 33–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fortenbaugh, W. W. (1970) ‘On the antecedents of Aristotle's bipartite psychology’, GRBS 11, 233–50Google ScholarPubMed
Fortenbaugh, W. W. (1975) Aristotle on emotion: a contribution to philosophical psychology, rhetoric, poetics, politics, and ethics, LondonGoogle Scholar
Fortenbaugh, W. W. (1979) ‘Aristotle's Rhetoric on emotions’, in Barnes, J., Schofield, M. and Sorabji, R. (eds.), Articles on Aristotle, 4: Psychology and aesthetics, London, 133–53Google Scholar
Geertz, C. (1973) The interpretation of cultures, Selected Essays, USAGoogle Scholar
Ghiron-Bistagne, P. (1976) Recherches sur les acteurs dans la Grèce antique, ParisGoogle Scholar
Gilmore, D. D. (ed.) (1987) Honor and shame and the unity of the Mediterranean (a special publication of the American Anthropological Association: no. 22).Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1974) Frame analysis, HarmondsworthGoogle Scholar
Goldhill, S. (1986) Reading Greek tragedy, CambridgeCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldhill, S. (1988) ‘Doubling and recognition in the Bacchae’, Metis 3:1–2, 137–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldhill, S. (1990) ‘Character and action, representation and reading: Greek tragedy and its critics’, in Pelling, C. (ed.), Characterization and individuality in Greek literature, Oxford, 100–27Google Scholar
Goldhill, S. (1991) The poet's voice: essays on poetics and Greek literature, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
Gombrich, E. H. (1977) Art and illusion: a study in the psychology of pictorial representation, 5th edn, LondonGoogle Scholar
Grimaldi, W. M. A. (1972) Studies in the philosophy of Aristotle's Rhetoric, Wiesbaden (Hermes Einzelschriften, 25)Google Scholar
Grimaldi, W. M. A. (1980) Aristotle, Rhetoric I: a commentary, N. YorkGoogle Scholar
Halliwell, S. (1984) ‘Plato and Aristotle on the denial of tragedy’, PCPS 30, 49–71Google Scholar
Halliwell, S. (1986) Aristotle's Poetics, LondonGoogle Scholar
Halliwell, S. (1988) Plato: Republic 10, Warminster, Wilts.Google Scholar
Halliwell, S. (1992a) ‘Pleasure, understanding, and emotion in Aristotle's Poetics’, in Rorty, A. O. (1992a) 241–60Google Scholar
Halliwell, S. (1992b) ‘Aristotelian Mimesis reevaluated’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 28, 487–510CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, M. (1987) The poetics of Greek tragedy, LondonGoogle Scholar
Henrichs, A. (1982) ‘Changing Dionysiac identities’, in Meyer, B. F. and Sanders, E. P. (eds.), Jewish and Christian self-definition, volume three: self-definition in the Graceo-Roman world, London, 137–60Google Scholar
Hinde, R. A. (ed.) (1972) Non-verbal communication, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
Hoffman, M. L. (1982) ‘Development of prosocial motivation: empathy and guilt’, in Eisenberg, N. (ed.), The development of prosocial behavior, London, 281–313CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunter, V. (1986) ‘Thucydides, Gorgias, and mass psychology’, Hermes 114, 412–29Google Scholar
Ionesco, E. (1964) Notes and counter-notes, (transl. by Watson, D.), LondonGoogle Scholar
Izard, C. E. (1980) ‘Cross-cultural perspectives on emotion and emotion communication’ in Triandis, H. C. and Lonner, W. (eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology, vol. 3: Basic processes, Boston, Mass, and London, 185–221.Google Scholar
Izard, C. E. (1984) ‘Emotion–cognition relationships and human development’, in Izard, C. E. et al. (1984b), 17–37Google Scholar
Izard, C. E. (1992) ‘Basic Emotions, relations among emotions, and emotion–cognition relations’, Psychological Review, 99: 3, 561–5CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Izard, C. E. (1993) ‘Four systems for emotion activation: cognitive and non-cognitive processes’, Psychological Review 100: 1, 68–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Izard, C. E., Kagan, J. and Zajonc, R. B. (1984a) ‘Introduction’, in Izard, C. E. et al. (1984b), 1–14Google Scholar
Izard, C. E., Kagan, J. and Zajonc, R. B. (eds.) (1984b) Emotions, cognition, and behavior, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
Jauss, H. R. (1970) ‘Literary history as a challenge to literary theory’, New Literary History 2:1, 7–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jauss, H. R. (1974) ‘Levels of identification of hero and audience’, New Literary History 5:2, 283–317CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kennedy, G. A. (1963) The art of persuasion in Greece, PrincetonGoogle Scholar
Kennedy, G. A. (1991) Aristotle, On Rhetoric: a theory of civic discourse, newly translated with introduction, notes and appendixes, New York and OxfordGoogle Scholar
Kohut, H. (1971) The analysis of the self, LondonGoogle Scholar
Kohut, H. (1977) The restoration of the self, N. YorkGoogle Scholar
LaBarre, W. (1947–1948) ‘The cultural basis of emotions and gestures’, Journal of Personality 16, 49–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Lacy, P. (1974) ‘Plato and the intellectual life of the second century A.D.’, in Bowersock, G. W. (ed.), Approaches to the second sophistic, Pennsylvania 1974Google Scholar
Lada, I. (1992) ‘Initiating Dionysus: ritual and theatre in Aristophanes' Frogs’, Cambridge PhD. dissertation (forthcoming) ‘ “Weeping for Hecuba”: is it a Brechtian act?’, ArethusaGoogle Scholar
Lang, P. J. (1984) ‘Cognition in emotion: concept and action’, in Izard, C. E. et al. (1984b), 192–226Google Scholar
Lazarus, R. S., Averill, J. R. and Opton, E. M. (1970) ‘Towards a cognitive theory of emotion’, in Arnold, M. B. (ed.), Feelings and emotions, N. York and London, 207–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lazarus, R. S., Kanner, A. D. and Folkman, S. (1980) ‘Emotions: a cognitive-phenomenological analysis’, in Plutchik, R. and Kellerman, H. (1980), 189–217Google Scholar
Lear, J. (1992) ‘Katharsis’, in Rorty, A. O. (1992a) 315–40Google Scholar
Leventhal, H. and Scherer, K. (1987) ‘The relationship of emotion to cognition: a functional approach to a semantic controversy’, in Cognition and Emotion 1:1, 3–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levy, R. I. (1984) ‘Emotion, knowing, and culture’, in Shweder, R. A. and LeVine, R. A. (1984), 214–37Google Scholar
Lewis, M., Sullivan, M. W. and Michalson, L. (1984) ‘The cognitive-emotional fugue’, in Izard, C. E. et al. (eds.), 264–88Google Scholar
Longo, O. (1990) ‘The theater of the Polis’ in Winkler, J. J. and Zeitlin, F. I. (1984b), 12–19Google Scholar
Loraux, N. (1986) The invention of Athens: the funeral oration in the classical city (transl. Sheridan, A.), Cambridge, Mass, and LondonGoogle Scholar
Lucas, D. W. (1962) ‘Pity, terror, and peripeteia’, CQ n.s. 12, 52–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mannison, D. (1985) ‘On being moved by fiction’, Philosophy 60, 71–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Marinis, M. (1987) ‘Dramaturgy of the spectator’, The Drama Review 31:2, 100–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, D. (1986) The figure of theater: Shaftesbury, Defoe, Adam Smith, and George Eliot, N. YorkGoogle Scholar
Marshall, D. (1988) The surprising effects of sympathy: Marivaux, Diderot, Rousseau, and Mary Shelley, Chicago and LondonGoogle Scholar
Nagel, T. (1974) ‘What is it like to be a bat?’, The Philosophical Review 83, 435–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nussbaum, M. C. (1986) The fragility of goodness: luck and ethics in Greek tragedy and philosophy, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
Nussbaum, M. C. (1992) ‘Tragedy and self-sufficiency: Plato and Aristotle on fear and pity’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 10, 107–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oatley, K. and Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1987) ‘Towards a cognitive theory of emotions’, Cognition and Emotion 1:1, 29–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ober, J. (1989) Mass and elite in democratic Athens: rhetoric, ideology, and the power of the people, PrincetonCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortony, A., Clore, G. L. and Collins, A. 91990) The cognitive structure of emotions, Cambridge, Mass.Google Scholar
Paskins, B. (1977) ‘On being moved by Anna Karenina and Anna Karenina’, Philosophy 52, 344–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peristiany, J. G. (ed.) (1965) Honour and shame: the values of Mediterranean society, LondonGoogle Scholar
Pfister, F. ‘Ekstase’, in Reallexicon für Antike und Christentum, vol. 4, cols. 944–84Google Scholar
Plutchik, R. (1980) ‘A general psychoevolutionary theory of emotion’, in Plutchik, R. and Kellerman, H. (1980), 3–33Google Scholar
Plutchik, R. and Kellerman, H. (eds.) (1980) Emotion: theory, research, and experience, vol. 1: theories of emotion, N. YorkGoogle Scholar
Pohlenz, M. (1965) ‘Die Anfänge der griechischen Poetik’, in Kleine Schriften II, hersg. Dorrie, v. H., Hildesheim, 436–72Google Scholar
Radford, C. and Weston, M. (1975) ‘How can we be moved by the fate of Anna Karenina?’, The Aristotelian Society, suppl. 49, 67–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robert, L. (1930) ‘Pantomimen im griechischen Orient’, Hermes 65, 106–22Google Scholar
Rohde, E. (1966) The cult of souls and belief in immortality among the Greeks (transl. by Hillis, W. B.), N. York (reprint of first English edition published in 1925)Google Scholar
De Romilly, J. (1973) ‘Gorgias et le pouvoir de la poésie’, JHS 93, 155–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Romilly, J. (1975) Magic and rhetoric in ancient Greece, Cambridge, Mass, and LondonCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, A. O. (ed.) (1992a) Essays on Aristotle's Poetics, PrincetonGoogle Scholar
Rorty, A. O. (1992b) ‘The psychology of Aristotelian tragedy’ in Rorty, (ed.), 1–22Google Scholar
Rosaldo, M. Z. (1984) ‘Toward an anthropology of self and feeling’, in Shweder, R. A. and LeVine, R. A. (1984), 137–57Google Scholar
Rosenmeyer, T. G. (1955) ‘Gorgias, Aeschylus and Apate’, AJP 76, 255–60Google Scholar
Schaper, E. (1978) ‘Fiction and the suspension of disbelief, The British Journal of Aesthetics 18:1, 31–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schechner, R. (1977) ‘From ritual to theatre and back: the structure/process of the efficacy-entertainment dyad’, in Essays on performance theory 1970–1976, N. York, 63–98Google Scholar
Schechner, R. (1985) ‘Performers and spectators transported and transformed’, in Between theater and anthropology, University of Pennsylvania Press, 117–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schechner, R. (1990) ‘Magnitudes of performance’, in Schechner, R. and Appel, W. (1990), 19–49Google Scholar
Schechner, R. and Appel, W. (eds.) (1990) By means of performance: intercultural studies of theatre and ritual, CambridgeCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheff, T. J. (1979) Catharsis in healing, ritual, and drama, Berkeley, Los Angeles and LondonGoogle Scholar
Segal, C. P. (1962) ‘Gorgias and the psychology of the Logos’, HSCP 66, 99–155Google Scholar
Segal, C. P. (1982) Dionysiac poetics and Euripides’ Bacchae, PrincetonCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shweder, R. A. and LeVine, R. A. (eds.) (1984) Culture theory: essays on mind, self, and emotion, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
Siewert, P. (1977) ‘The ephebic oath in fifth-century Athens’, JHS 97, 102–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solmsen, F. (1968) ‘Aristotle and Cicero on the orator's playing upon the feelings’ in, Kleine Schriften II, Hildesheim, 216–30Google Scholar
Solomon, R. S. (1984) ‘Getting angry: the Jamesian theory of emotion in anthropology’ in Shweder, R. A. and LeVine, R. A. (1984), 238–54Google Scholar
Sourvinou-Inwood, C. (1989) ‘Assumptions and the creation of meaning: reading Sophocles' Antigone’, JHS 109, 134–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperber, D. (1975) Rethinking symbolism (transl. by Morton, A. L.), CambridgeGoogle Scholar
Stafford, W. (1987) Socialism, radicalism, and nostalgia: social criticism in Britain 1775–1830, CambridgeCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Staub, E. (1987) ‘Commentary on Part I’, in Eisenberg, N. and Strayer, J. (1987), 103–15Google Scholar
Stein, E. (1964) On the problem of empathy (transl. by Stein, W.), The Hague, Netherlands 1964Google Scholar
Taplin, O. (1977) The stagecraft of Aeschylus: the dramatic use of exists and entrances in Greek tragedy, OxfordGoogle Scholar
Taplin, O. (1978) Greek tragedy in action, LondonCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taplin, O. (1986) ‘Fifth-century tragedy and comedy: a synkrisis’, JHS 106, 163–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Triandis, H. C. (1980) ‘Introduction to handbook of cross-cultural psychology’, in Triandis, H. C. and Lambert, W. Wilson (eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology, vol. 1, USA, 1–14Google Scholar
Tsantsanoglou, K. and Parássoglou, G. M. (1987) ‘Two gold lamellae from Thessaly’, Ἑλληνιϰά 38, 3–16Google Scholar
Turner, V. (1982) From ritual to theatre: the human seriousness of play, N. YorkGoogle Scholar
Vendler, Z. (1984) ‘Understanding people’, in Shweder, R. A. and Le Vine, R. A. (1984), 200–13Google Scholar
Verdenius, W. J. (1981) ‘Gorgias' doctrine of deception’, in Kerferd, G. B. (ed.), The Sophists and their legacy: Hermes Einzelschriften 44, Wiesbaden, 116–28Google Scholar
Walsh, G. B. (1984) The varieties of enchantment: early Greek views of the nature and function of poetry, Chapel Hill and LondonGoogle Scholar
Wasserman, E. R. (1947) ‘The sympathetic imagination in eighteenth-century theories of acting’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 46, 264–72Google Scholar
Wilson, P. J. (1991) ‘Demosthenes 21 (Against Meidias): democratic abuse’, PCPS 37, 164–95Google Scholar
Winkler, J. J. (1990) ‘The ephebes' song: tragôidia and polis’, in Winkler, J. J. and Zeitlin, F. I. (1990), 20–62Google Scholar
Winkler, J. J. and Zeitlin, F. I. (eds.) (1990) Nothing to do with Dionysos? Athenian drama in its social context, PrincetonCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winnington-Ingram, R. P. (1980) Sophocles: an interpretation, CambridgeCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wispé, L. (1987) ‘History of the concept of empathy’, in Eisenberg, N. and Strayer, J. (eds.), 17–37Google Scholar
Worthen, W. B. (1984) The idea of the actor: drama and the ethics of performance, PrincetonCrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Zoete, B. and Spies, W. (1973) Dance and drama in Bali, Oxford (first published 1938)Google Scholar