Abstract
This paper examines the tragic sense permeating ancient Greek drama as a product of a special type of conceptual integration between two antithetic mental spaces, which prompts the simultaneous generation of two mutually exclusive emergent structures. The special tragic sense generated carries along the inferences of two equally impossible situations. The key-difference between this type of blend and other counterfactuals is argued to be found in the lack of reference scenario in the blend. In the context of theatrical enactment, the realisation of this special type of antithetic blend is based on the frame-clash between conceived and enacted space, matched by the emotions of pity and fear, respectively. The feeling of catharsis that follows the end of the play is analysed as a second level blend within the emergent structure that leads to the restoration of a single common space of cognitive compatibility between actors and audience.
References
Arens, Hans. 1984. Aristotle’s theory of language and its tradition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.10.1075/sihols.29Search in Google Scholar
Aristotle, Poetics, Translated by Stephen Halliwell. The Loeb Classics Library, 1995, Harvard University Press.10.4159/DLCL.aristotle-poetics.1995Search in Google Scholar
Aristotle, Art of rhetoric, Translated by J. H. Freese. The Loeb Classics Library, 1959, Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Campbell, Peter A. 2010. Postdramatic Greek tragedy. Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 25. 55–74. https://doi.org/10.1353/dtc.2010.0017.Search in Google Scholar
Cook, Amy. 2016. King of shadows: early modern characters and actors. In Paul, Budra & Clifford Werier (eds.), Shakespeare and consciousness, 99–118. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/978-1-137-59541-6_5Search in Google Scholar
Coulson, Seana & Oakley, Todd. 2005. Blending and coded meaning: Literal and figurative meaning in cognitive semantics. Journal of Pragmatics 37. 1510–1536. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2004.09.010.Search in Google Scholar
di Maria, Salvatore. 2002. The Italian tragedy in the Renaissance. Cultural realities and theatrical innovations. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Dodds, Eric Robertson. 1966. On misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex. Greece and Rome 13(1). 37–49. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500016144.Search in Google Scholar
Else, Gerald F. 1957. Aristotle’s Poetics: the argument. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.10.4159/harvard.9780674288089Search in Google Scholar
Fauconnier, Gilles & Eve Sweetser (eds.). 1996. Spaces, worlds, and grammar. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Fauconnier, Gilles & Mark Turner. 2002. The way we think. Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities. New York: Basic Books.Search in Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles. 1975. An alternative to checklist theories of meaning. In Cathy Cogen et al.. (eds.), Proceedings of the first annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 123–131. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.10.3765/bls.v1i0.2315Search in Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles. 1977. Scenes-and-frames semantics. In A. Zampolli (ed.), Linguistics structures processing, 55–81. Amsterdam and New York: North Holland Publishing Company.Search in Google Scholar
Gallop, David. 1999. Aristotle’s aesthetics and philosophy of mind. In David J. Furley (ed.), The Routledge history of philosophy: From Aristotle to Augustine, vol. 2, 88–90. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Geeraerts, Dirk. 1997. Diachronic Prototype Semantics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780198236528.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Gibson, Colin (ed.). 1997. Six Renaissance tragedies. New York: Macmillan.10.1007/978-1-349-25800-0Search in Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele. 2016. Compositionality. In Nick Riemer (ed.), Routledge handbook of semantics, 419–433. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Golden, Leon. 1992. Aristotle on tragic and comic mimesis. Atlanta: Scholar’s Press.Search in Google Scholar
Golden, Leon. 2017. Aristotle and the arc of tragedy. New York: Radius Book Group.Search in Google Scholar
Goldhill, Simon. 2012. Sophocles and the language of tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199796274.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Grady, Joseph Edward. 1997. Foundations of meaning: primary metaphors and primary scenes. PhD Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.Search in Google Scholar
Grady, Joseph Edward, Todd, Oakley & Seana Coulson. 1997. Blending and metaphor. In Raymond W. GibbsJr. & Gerard J. Steen (eds.), Metaphor in cognitive linguistics, 101–124. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.10.1075/cilt.175.07graSearch in Google Scholar
Gutzwiller, Kathryn. 2007. A guide to Hellenistic literature, Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.10.1002/9780470690185Search in Google Scholar
Halliwell, Stephen. 1986. Aristotle’s Poetics. London: Duckworth.Search in Google Scholar
Holland, John Henry. 1998. From chaos to order. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780198504092.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Keesey, Donald. 1979. On some recent interpretations of catharsis. The Classical World 72. 193–205.10.2307/4349034Search in Google Scholar
Kott, Jan. 1965. Shakespeare, our contemporary. UK: Methuen.Search in Google Scholar
Kretzschmar, William A.Jr. 2015. Language and complex systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781316179017Search in Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1993. The contemporary theory of metaphor. In Andrew Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and Thought, 202–251. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139173865.013Search in Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the flesh. The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York: Basic Books.Search in Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 2008. Cognitive grammar. A basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331967.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Liddell, Henry George, Robert Scott, Henry Stuart Jones & Roderick McKenzie. 1843. A Greek–English dictionary, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Lucas, Frank Laurence. 1968. Greek tragedy and comedy. USA/Canada: Penguin Books.Search in Google Scholar
McConachie, Bruce & F. Elizabeth Hart (eds.). 2006. Performance and cognition. Theatre studies and the cognitive turn. London and New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Meineck, Peter. 2017. Theatrocracy. Greek drama, cognition, and the imperative for theatre. London and New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781315466576Search in Google Scholar
Minati, Gianfranco & Eliano Pessa (eds.). 2012. Emergence in complex, cognitive, social, and biological systems. Berlin: Springer.Search in Google Scholar
Nelson, Stephanie. 2016. Aristophanes and his tragic muse. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.10.1163/9789004310919Search in Google Scholar
Nicolis, Gregoire & Catherine Nicolis. 2012. Foundations of complex systems. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Company.10.1142/8260Search in Google Scholar
Pálinkás, István. 2014. Blending and folk theory in an explanation of irony. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 12(1). 64–98. https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.12.1.03pal.Search in Google Scholar
Plato. 2013. Republic. Translated by C. E. Jones & W. Preddy. Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press.10.4159/DLCL.plato_philosopher-republic.2013Search in Google Scholar
Protevi, John. 1994. Time and exteriority: Aristotle, Heidegger, Derrida. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Reeve, C. D. C. 2018. Aristotle, Rhetoric. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.Search in Google Scholar
Rosch, Eleanor. 1975. Cognitive representations of semantic categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 104(3). 192–233. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.104.3.192.Search in Google Scholar
Rosch, Eleanor. 1977. Human categorization. In: Neil Warren (ed.), Studies in cross–cultural psychology I, 1–49. New York: Academic Press.Search in Google Scholar
Scodel, Ruth. 2010. An introduction to Greek tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511781230Search in Google Scholar
Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus. Translated by H. Lloyd Jones, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 20, 1994, Harvard University Press.10.4159/DLCL.sophocles-oedipus_tyrannus.1994Search in Google Scholar
Spring, Evelyn. 1917. A study of exposition in Greek tragedy. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 28. 135–224. https://doi.org/10.2307/310642.Search in Google Scholar
Sweetser, Eve. 1991. From etymology to pragmatics: Metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511620904Search in Google Scholar
Taylor, John R. 2002. Linguistic categorization, 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Taylor, John R. 2002. Cognitive grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Tredell, Nicolas. 2015. Shakespeare. The tragedies. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1007/978-1-137-40490-9Search in Google Scholar
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Foreword
- Articles
- The status of the narrator in Modernist fiction
- Perceptual relevance and art: Some tentative suggestions
- Is the truthfulness of a proposition verifiable through access to reference corpora?
- Literary meaning as character conceptualization: Re-orienting the cognitive stylistic analysis of character discourse and Free Indirect Thought
- The tragic in Greek drama and conceptual blending
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Foreword
- Articles
- The status of the narrator in Modernist fiction
- Perceptual relevance and art: Some tentative suggestions
- Is the truthfulness of a proposition verifiable through access to reference corpora?
- Literary meaning as character conceptualization: Re-orienting the cognitive stylistic analysis of character discourse and Free Indirect Thought
- The tragic in Greek drama and conceptual blending