![]() ![]() ![]() A Festschrift in his honor ( Ancient and Modern: Essays in Honor of Gerald F. These latter two concepts are usually paraphrased as "literary representation" and "intellectual error" in Else's appraisal of Aristotle's literary aesthetic theory.Įlse was a member of the National Council for the Humanities, appointed by President Lyndon Johnson, and was President of the American Philological Association in 1964. Up to Else's time, Aristotle's concept of catharsis was almost exclusively associated with the reading of Jakob Bernays who defined it as the " therapeutic purgation of pity and fear." In a convincing manner, Else refined this definition to understanding literary catharsis as, "that moment of insight which arises out of the audience's climactic intellectual, emotional, and spiritual enlightenment, which for Aristotle is both the essential pleasure and essential goal of mimetic art." For Else, catharsis is an Aristotelian concept which must be read alongside the literary concepts of mimesis and hamartia as well. Else wrote several other works on Greek literature and philosophy. In this work he argued against the view of tragedy as having arisen from religious ritual. Widely regarded in its time as a central work of literary theory, Else's other important contribution is The Origin and Early Form of Greek Tragedy, which was published in 1965. It is a meticulous, comprehensive reading of Aristotle's treatise that was published in 1957. ![]() During that time he founded the Center for Coordination of Ancient and Modern Studies, seeking to unite the humanities and to show how the study of the ancient world is relevant to modern literature and modern concerns.Įlse's magnum opus is titled, Aristotle's Poetics: The Argument. He was chair of that department from 1957 to 1968. He spent 1956 to 1957 at The American Academy in Rome and in September 1957 went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he remained for the rest of his career. After completing his service, in 1945 he became chair of the University of Iowa Classics Department. He taught at Harvard University until he joined the U.S. Biography Įlse studied classics and philosophy at Harvard University and finished his PhD there in 1934. Else is substantially credited with the refinement of Aristotelian scholarship in aesthetics in the 20th century to expand the reading of catharsis alone to include the aesthetic triad of mimesis, hamartia, and catharsis as all essentially linked to each other. He was professor of Greek and Latin at University of Michigan and University of Iowa. Gerald Frank Else (J– 6 September 1982) was a distinguished American classicist. ![]()
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