Profit, Pleasure, and Purgation - Catharsis in Aristotle, Paolo Beni and Italian Late Renaissance Poetics

Abstract

The Cinquecento has seen an unprecedented flourishing of literary theory. While many other issues are disputed, nearly all critics agree that poetry should entertain and delight, but also produce some kind of moral benefit. When Aristotle’s Poetics enters the debate, interpreters seek and find in his work a confirmation of their view. In his celebrated notorious catharsis clause, Aristotle seems to hint at the moral effect that should be obtained by tragedy. Since he does not explain the term in the transmitted Poetics text, interpreters fill in what they regard as its missing parts. The way in which they do this also reveals their own preconceptions of what should be classed as moral profit. This paper describes the range of the different meanings which are attached to Aristotelian catharsis in the secondo Cinquecento. After having explored the relationship between pleasure and profit in Aristotle, it deals with Renaissance theorists, using Paolo Beni’s commentary on the Poetics as a starting point. Beni’s commentary is the last substantial contribution to the Cinquecento debate, and his critical review of the different readings of catharsis that had been developed in the preceding decades provides us with a useful overview. Employing Beni’s criticism as a guideline, the article further characterizes the various Renaissance approaches to catharsis and traces their origins.