 It seems, therefore, that a much more minimalist reading might better suit Aristotle’s texts. One such reading, advocated by John Ferrari, is to take the word katharsis as a way to describe the process of relieving the tension created by the stimulation of the tragic emotions (Ferrari 1999, 2019). The great advantage of this interpretation is that it does not presuppose anything beyond the context of the Poetics, and it does not seem to contradict any other explicit statement of Aristotle’s; but one may wonder if it really explains the phrase, the “katharsis of such emotions”, where the idea of “tension”, or “suspense”, does not seem to be present. Another such reading might look like the following. In his biological works, Aristotle regularly uses the word katharsis to refer to the menstrual blood or bleeding as well as to the male ejaculation: in those cases, katharsis means the flowing itself (or by metonymy, the blood); and the fluid is nothing deleterious (interestingly enough, against Hippocratic views, Aristotle does not take menstrual blood to be “impure”). He holds rather only that keeping such fluid inside the body without discharge can be unhealthy, and so a discharge is needed from time to time. As Aristotle knew very well, ancient theater audiences showed their emotional reactions in a very physical way by screaming and weeping loudly. So, the katharsis of the emotions of pity and fear could be meant to name that sort of physical expression or outlet of such emotions. This last reading might perhaps not appear worthy of Aristotle’s philosophical genius. But it would fit the aim Aristotle has himself proposed: to explain how a tragedy accomplishes its function, which is to produce the emotions of pity and fear, and the pleasure accompanying them. Saying that a tragedy is a mimesis which “by stirring up pity and fear, brings about a katharsis of such emotions” might simply mean that tragedy should indeed aim to allowing spectators to express and unleash their emotions in the  theater.[6]