Literaturespeaking topic
'Catharsis': watching tragedy, we feel pain and fear yet come away strangely cleansed. Why does watching someone else's catastrophe relieve us, even heal us?
— Aristotle, Poetics, catharsis
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- In ancient tragedy, 'hamartia' is the fatal flaw or error that drives the hero to ruin. Oedipus fulfills his fate precisely by trying to escape it: why do prophecies fulfill themselves?
- Everything wearies me, even those things that don't.
- Professors report students arriving at university unable to read a full book. What happens to a generation that loses deep reading?
- When we are unhappy we feel the unhappiness of others more; feeling is not destroyed but concentrated.
- In Wilde's novel, Dorian stays young while his portrait grows ugly and old in his place. If our faces hid our sins, would morality shrink to the question of not getting caught?