The Three Unities
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The unity of action: a play should have one single plot or action to sustain the interest of the spectators and it can also lead him to proper purgation.
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The unity of time: the action in a play should not exceed the single revolution of the sun.
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The unity of place: a play should cover a single physical space and should not attempt to compress geography, nor should the stage represent more than one place.
These three principles are called unities, and the Three unities were unity of action, place and time.
The Functions of Tragedy
Aristotle indicates that the function of tragedy is to arouse ‘pity and fear’ in the spectator for both moral and aesthetic purpose. One has to remember in this context that he had Plato’s famous charge against the immoral effects of poetry on people’s minds. Aristotle uses the word in his definition of tragedy in chapter –VI of Poetics, and there has been much debate on exactly what he meant. The key sentence is: ‘Tragedy through pity and fear effects a purgation of such emotions.’ So, in a sense, the tragedy, having aroused powerful feelings in the spectator, has also a salubrious effect; after the storm and climax there comes a sense of release from tension, of calm. His theory of Catharsis consists in the purgation or purification of the excessive emotions of pity and fear. Witnessing the tragedy and suffering of the protagonist on the stage, such emotions and feelings of the audience are purged. The purgation of such emotions and feelings make them relieved, and they emerge as better human beings than they were. Thus, Aristotle’s theory ofCatharsis has moral and ennobling function.
CATHARSIS
A Catharsis is an emotional discharge through which one can achieve a state of moral or spiritual renewal or achieve a state of liberation from anxiety and stress. Catharsis is a Greek word and it means cleansing. In literature it is used for the cleansing of emotions of the characters. It can also be any other radical change that leads to emotional rejuvenation of a person.
Catharsis established tragedy as a drama of balance. Sorrow alone would be ugly and repulsive. Beauty pure would be imaginative and mystical. These together constitute what may be called tragic beauty. Pity alone would be sentimentality. Fear alone would make us cowards. But pity and fear, sympathy and terror together constitute the tragic feeling which is most delightful though it is tearfully delightful. Such tragic beauty and tragic feeling which it evokes constitutes the aesthetics of balance as propounded for the first time by Aristotle in his theory of Catharsis. Therefore, we feel, the reverence which Aristotle has enjoyed through ages has not gone to him undeserved. His insight has rightly earned it.
