The pleasures of documentary tragedy

British Journal of Aesthetics 47 (2):184-198 (2007)
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Abstract

Two assumptions are common in discussions of the paradox of tragedy: (1) that tragic pleasure requires that the work be fictional or, if non-fiction, then non-transparently represented; and (2) that tragic pleasure may be provoked by a wide variety of art forms. In opposition to (1) I argue that certain documentaries could produce tragic pleasure. This is not to say that any sad or painful documentary could do so. In considering which documentaries might be plausible candidates, I further argue, against (2), that the scope of tragic pleasure is limited to works that possess certain thematic and narrative features.

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Stacie Friend
University of Edinburgh

References found in this work

Imagining and believing: The promise of a single code.Shaun Nichols - 2004 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62 (2):129-39.
The Pleasures of Tragedy.Susan L. Feagin - 1983 - American Philosophical Quarterly 20 (1):95 - 104.
Pity and Fear in the Rhetoric and the Poetics.Alexander Nehamas - 2015 - In David J. Furley & Alexander Nehamas (eds.), Aristotle's Rhetoric: Philosophical Essays. Princeton University Press. pp. 257-282.
Tragedy anbd Self-Sufficiency: Plato and Aristotle on Fear and Pity.Martha Nussbaum - 1992 - Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 10:107-159.
Tragedy.Aaron Ridley - 2003 - In Jerrold Levinson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics. Oxford University Press.

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