Whereas Aristotle had limited the evocation of fear and sympathy strictly to the cathartic effect of tragedy, a dissolution can be observed of the boundaries of concepts of catharsis following on from Bernays, Freud and Nietzsche, as the possibilities and limits of catharsis as an emotional abreaction are redrawn. What led to the break with the Aristotelian tradition, what transformations of catharsis can be observed in modern theories of art and in modern art?

The literature of the Wiener Moderne exhibits biting social satire and other related aspects, first emanating from Karl Kraus (1874-1936), a prolific writer, difficult to classify, who reminds people of Jonathan Swift. Novelists and essayists Hermann Broch (1886-1951) and Elias Canetti (1905-94), who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981, were likewise marginalized, to a large extent as Jews. Robert Walser (1878-1956) is Swiss, and to a large extent like the other three authors in this collection, had no less a desire to upset the social applecart. Among the works included are substantive selection from Krauss's "The Last Days of Mankind and Aphorisms", Bloch's "The Anarchist," selections from Canetti's "Crowds and Power and Auto-da-Fe", and Walser's "Jakob von Gunten".