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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  
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BIBLIOGRAPHY

The exposition of the meaning of catharsis is concentrated
on Aristotelian catharsis and its different interpretations.
A more detailed argument is to be found in Teddy Brunius,
Inspiration and Katharsis (Uppsala, 1966), together with
references to the literature. The interpretation of M. D.
Petrusevski is in Ziva Antika, Antiquité Vivante, 4, 2
(Skoplje, Yugoslavia, 1954). A detailed summary is given in
French. Petrusevski's arguments are partly derived from
Heinrich Otte, Kennt Aristoteles die sogenannte tragische
Katharsis?
(Berlin, 1912). The latest text of the Poetics of
Aristotle is edited by Rudolf Kassel (Oxford, 1965). For the
Nicomachean Ethics, see the Oxford translation by W. D.
Ross (Oxford, 1925), Vol. 9. A good bibliography and com-
mentary is given in D. W. Lucas, Aristotle's Poetics. Intro-
duction, Commentary and Appendixes
(Oxford, 1968). The
interpretation of Gerald F. Else is to be found in his Aris-
totle's Poetics: The Argument
(Cambridge, Mass., 1957). The
relation between Platonic and Aristotelian catharsis is dis-
cussed in G. Finsler, Platon und die aristotelische Poetik
(Berlin, 1900). Cathartic traditions are described and dis
cussed in Louis Moulinier, Le Pur et l'impur dans la pensée
des Grecs
(Paris, 1952). Theodore Waechter discussed early
cathartic ritual in Religionsgeschichtliche Versuchen und
Vorarbeiten
(1910), Vol. X. Asclepian therapy is found in
Rudolf Herzog, Die Wunderheilungen von Epidauros, Philo-
logus,
Supplementband 22 (Leipzig, 1931), and by Emma
and Ludwig Edelstein in Asclepius, Vols 1 and 2 (Baltimore,
1945). Important contributions to the interpretation of
Aristotelian catharsis have been made by E. P. Papanoutsos,
La Catharsis des Passions d'après Aristote (Athens, 1953),
by Wolfgang Schadewaldt, Hellas und Hesperien (Zürich
and Stuttgart, 1960), pp. 346-88, and H. D. F. Kitto,
“Catharsis,” in The Classical Tradition, Studies in Honor of
Harry Caplan,
ed. L. Wallach (Ithaca, 1966), pp. 133-47.
The connection between psychoanalysis and Aristotelian
catharsis is discussed by Eva Berczeller in “The Aesthetic
Feeling and Aristotle's Catharsis Theory,” The Journal of
Psychology,
65 (1967), 261-71.

TEDDY BRUNIUS

[See also Harmony or Rapture in Music; Health and Dis-
ease;
Pythagorean...; Religion, Ritual in.]