Contents introduction 1 I chapter 5

2.3. Catharsis , Sylvia Beach

catharsis, the purification or purgation of the emotions (especially pity and fear) primarily through art. In criticism, catharsis is a metaphor used by Aristotle in the Poetics to describe the effects of true tragedy on the spectator. The use is derived from the medical term katharsis (Greek: “purgation” or “purification”). Aristotle states that the purpose of tragedy is to arouse “terror and pity” and thereby effect the catharsis of these emotions. His exact meaning has been the subject of critical debate over the centuries. The German dramatist and literary critic Gotthold Lessing (1729–81) held that catharsis converts excess emotions into virtuous dispositions. Other critics see tragedy as a moral lesson in which the fear and pity excited by the tragic hero’s fate serve to warn the spectator not to similarly tempt providence. The interpretation generally accepted is that through experiencing fear vicariously in a controlled situation, the spectator’s own anxieties are directed outward, and, through sympathetic identification with the tragic protagonist, his insight and outlook are enlarged. Tragedy then has a healthful and humanizing effect on the spectator or reader.
Sylvia Beach
Sylvia Beach, in full Sylvia Woodbridge Beach, (born March 14, 1887, Baltimore, Md., U.S. died Oct. 5, 1962, Paris, France), bookshop operator who became important in the literary life of Paris, particularly in the 1920s, when her shop was a gathering place for expatriate writers and a centre where French authors could pursue their newfound interest in American literature.
Beach was educated mainly at home. In 1901 she accompanied her father, a Presbyterian clergyman, to Paris, where he served an American church. She did volunteer relief work in France during World War I and in 1918–19 served with the American Red Cross in Serbia.

In 1919 Beach opened Shakespeare and Company, a bookshop on the Rue Dupuytren in the St.-Germain-des-Prés quarter of Paris. Operating a lending library from her shop, she specialized in books published in Great Britain and the United States. The large American expatriate community, combined with a growing interest in American literature among the French, soon made her shop a gathering place; among those who frequented it were André Gide, Paul Valéry, Jules Romains, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

In 1922 Beach published James Joyce’s monumental Ulysses, segments of which had already been judged obscene in England and the United States and which had been rejected by several established publishers. She worked closely with Joyce in the exceedingly difficult task of reading and correcting proofs and with the French typesetters, who were generally unfamiliar with standard English, much less Joyce’s complex wordplay and portmanteau words. The 1,000-copy first printing was sold exclusively by her shop, and over the next 11 years she sold some 28,000 copies of 14 further printings. She also published Joyce’s Pomes Penyeach (1927) and Samuel Beckett’s Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (1929).
Her shop remained a literary mecca until it closed in 1941 during the German occupation of Paris. In 1943 Beach was interned by the Germans for several months. Her memoir, Shakespeare and Company, was published in 1959.