In classical
tragedies, the catastasis (pl. catastases) is the fourth part of an ancient
drama, in which the intrigue or action that was initiated in the
epitasis, is supported and heightened, until ready to be unravelled in the
catastrophe. It also refers to the
climax of a drama.[1]
In
rhetoric, the catastasis is that part of a speech, usually the
exordium, in which the orator sets forth the subject matter to be discussed.[2]
The term is not a classical one; it was invented by
Scaliger in his Poetics (published posthumously in 1561).[3] It "is more or less equivalent to the summa epitasis of Donatus and Latomus and to what Willichius sometimes called the extrema epitasis,"[4] and was first used in 1616 in England.[5]
^John Lewis Walker, Shakespeare and the Classical Tradition: An Annotated Bibliography, 1961-1991 (Taylor & Francis, 2002:
ISBN0-8240-6697-9), p. 639; Scaliger wrote: "catastasis est vigor ac status fabulae, in qua res miscetur in ea fortunae tempestate, in quam subducta est."
^Marvin T. Herrick, Comic Theory in the Sixteenth Century (University of Illinois Press, 1950), p. 119.
^Frank N. Magill, Critical Survey of Literary Theory: Authors, A-Sw (Salem Press, 1987:
ISBN0-89356-393-5), p. 1284.