Poetry and Psychology

Abstract

Interest in the psychological effect of poetry is certainly not a new phenomenon. It is traceable back to the first-century Greek writer Longinus, who emphasized the power of poetry to arouse and gratify the emotions of the audience, and farther back still, to Aristotle (fourth century B.C.), who explained the overwhelming impact of tragic drama as the purging of emotions of pity and fear. Both assumed what all subsequent critics concerned with poetry and psychology do: that when we respond to poetry, it is not simply at the intellectual level; a full response draws upon depths of self that we may not, as readers, fully understand or significantly control. Poetry is obviously not alone among the arts in eliciting such response, but it seems especially empowered in that direction.