Pathos and Katharsis in Samson Agonistes

Abstract

The Aristotelian critics of Samson Agonistes have never succeeded in freeing themselves from the influence of Dr. Johnson. For two hundred years critics have either followed his complaint that the play lacked a middle or they have attempted to prove that Samson Agonistes is a psychological drama and that it is foolish to expect a probable or necessary sequence of outward events in a drama of this kind. Such criticism has been useful, but it has not answered Dr. Johnson's complaint: it has merely declared it irrelevant. In this paper I shall once more apply the critical terms of the Poetics to Samson Agonistes, but I shall argue that the crucial problem lies not in the and of the play but in its pathos, the deed of violence which constitutes the catastrophe. Milton's tragedy differs from those Greek tragedies which one might call Aristotelian in that the catastrophe has no immediate bearing on any human relations but is only meaningful as the final event in the relationship of Samson and God. For this reason the probability and of the play cannot be the laws that govern human events; we must instead discover the necessity that connects the events of the tragedy under the aspect of that relationship. In Aristotle's theory the pathos-if it is tragic-arouses pity and fear and effects a katharsis of these emotions. We may expect that the tragic quality of Samson Agonistes-and with it Milton's concept of katharsis-will not remain unaffected by the play's peculiar pathos. Aristotle discusses pathos in chapter XIV of the Poetics: