Tragedy "before" pity and fear
pp. 391-412
in: Thomas Blake (ed), The Palgrave handbook of affect studies and textual criticism, Berlin, Springer, 2017Abstract
This essay proposes an affective approach to the genre of tragedy through what it calls "tragic affects." Tragic affects are the somatic and emotional feelings that tragedies incite but that classical theory of tragedy hides by emphasizing the social productivity of emotions like pity and fear. As I demonstrate in brief readings of Aristotle, Aeschylus, Seneca, Shakespeare, and Chekhov, the tragic tradition as given in various delineations of its genre conceals a history of affect. This essay draws attention to the ways that tragic drama traffics—sometimes overtly—wayward emotions in the forms of character, spectacle, and thought, drawing attention to the gratuitousness and autonomy of tragic affects.
