2.3.1. The Poetics (Peri poiletikes – On the Art of Poetic Creation, ca. 335 BC): Chapters48 1-5:
preliminaries
For Aristotle, the essence (usia) of poetry is mimesis (imitation) and poetry as a species belongs to the genos of ‘imitative art’. Art (‘techné’) here means ‘being well-versed in a field’, ‘capability’, ‘expertise’, ‘know-how’; it is technical (and not scientific) knowledge, it is not épistemé. With respect, now, to the genos of poetry, there are the following species: epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, and dythirambic poetry49. Poetry can be divided according to the means used in composition (language, tune, rhythm, harp-playing, etc.), or according to the different objects it represents (good or inferior people doing or experiencing something), or according to the manner in which the objects are represented: in epic poetry (the chief example is Homer), there is narrative and, in the performance, the singer may assume (personify, cf. 2.2 above) certain characters; drama represents characters carrying out actions themselves. Then Aristotle gives a very brief history of poetry: its origin has to do with man’s instinct for representation (imitation) in childhood, his joy in accurate likeness (learning) and in technique. Here tragedy is defined for the first time in order to distinguish it from comedy:
imitating fine doings of fine men is tragedy, while imitating inferior (base and ugly people) gives rise to comedy, since for Aristotle a part of ugliness is the ‘laughable’ (cf. 2.5).
2.3.2 The definition and the parts of tragedy
In 1449b Aristotle contrasts tragedy with epic poetry; they differ in length: “tragedy tends to fall within a single revolution of the sun or slightly exceed that”50, while an epic piece is unlimited. It is also for this reason that epics is inferior to tragedy. And here we find the famous, lengthiest definition of tragedy – practically every word here has given rise to endless debates:
tragedy is, then, a representation (imitation, mimesis) of an action (praxis) that is heroic (spudaios) and complete (teleios) and of certain magnitude – by means of language enriched with all kinds of ornament [‘spiced language, spiced with rhythm and tune’], each used separately in the different parts of the play: it represents man in action (praxis) and
46 Else, op. cit., p. 101
47 Else, op. cit., p. 44
48 Chapter numbers were not given by Aristotle but by the humanists in the Renaissance
49 In 49a10 of The Poetics, Aristotle talks about dythirambic poetry as the ancestor of tragedy, a song sung and danced by the chorus at the Dyonysia.
50 This is one of the formulations which has given rise to endless debates: what does Aristotle mean by the
‘single revolution of the sun’? Twelve hours? Twenty-four hours? And what does it mean that tragedy may
‘slightly’ exceed that? That it may take place within, say, thirty-six hours? (cf. 2.4.2).
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does not use narrative, and through pity (eleos) and fear (phobos) it effects relief (catharsis) to these and similar emotions.
Aristotle goes on to distinguish between the six parts of tragedy:
1. spectacular effect (opsis): the manner of representation; Aristotle surprisingly says here that “it has nothing to do with poetry” (1450b), “Indeed the effect of tragedy does not depend on its performance by actors” (1450b).
The means of representation are:
2. song-making (melopoiia): this is the most important element to ‘enrich’ (spice) tragedy 3. diction (lexis): the expression of meaning in words.
Then comes the most important element, the plot, the “soul of tragedy” for Aristotle (1450b, and cf. 2.2 above):
4. the imitation (mimesis) of action (praxis) is the plot (muthos): “the arrangement (susthasis–a medical term, also used to describe the human constitution, organism) of the incidents” (pragma, of ‘what happens’).
Since men are represented in action, each of these men have
5. a certain character (ethos: the quality of agents, their custom, habit). Character reveals choice (prohairesis)51; ethos is the pre-requisite of sound judgement, motivated by unemotional and mature thinking (dianoia), while prohairesis is the human will, the deliberate adoption of a course of conduct or line of action. It is not the deed but the choice that determines the goodness or the badness of a character.
6. Men also have a mode of speech or thought (dianoia), here mode or way of speech taken from a rhetorical, persuasive point of view. Dianoia is “when in the dialogue the character puts forward an argument or deliver an opinion”, “saying what is possible and appropriate”, Aristotle says. The meaning of dianoia is here closer to ‘argumentation’ than to
‘thought’ (the original meaning of dianoia), since in drama thinking gets revealed through the speeches of the characters.
2.3.3. The plot
As we saw in 2.2., for Aristotle mimesis is plot-making by the poet, the poet is thus the maker of plots. The action imitated must be whole and complete, the arrangement of the incidents should be orderly, and the plot should have magnitude, since beauty consists in two things: magnitude and ordered arrangement. The definition of plot runs as follows:
the plot being the representation (imitation) of a piece of action must represent (imitate) a single piece of action and the whole of it; and the component incidents must be so arranged that if one of them is transposed or removed, the unity of the whole is dislocated and destroyed [medical terms!]. For if the presence or the absence of a thing makes no visible difference, then it is not an integral part of the whole.
What is, however, the relationship between the plot and ‘reality’? The poet’s task is not to tell what actually happened but what could and would happen either probably or inevitably (necessarily). The historian says what happened, the poet what might happen. History gives particular facts, poetry general truths, so poetry is closer to philosophy. General truth is “the sort of thing that a certain type of man will do or say either probably or necessarily.”
Aristotle then talks about the structure of the plot: the worst is the episodic plot, where the incidents are loosely connected or not connected at all. The plot is complex (muthos paplegmenos) when the change of fortune coincides with reversal (peripeteia) and with
51 Both ethos and prohairesis are technical terms from Aristotle’s ethical theory (especially in the Nichomachian Ethics).
discovery (anagnorisis), or both. Finally, there is the simple plot (muthos haplo), where there is neither peripeteia, nor anagnorisis.
Reversal is the changing of the situation into its opposite probably or inevitably; here Aristotle’s example is Sophocles’ Oedipus. Discovery is the change from ignorance to knowledge (and, as Aristotle remarks, in Oedipus Rex discovery coincides with reversal; this is one of the most effective dramatic devices). These two will evoke pity and fear, to be treated in more detail later.
The third element which might occur as a structural ingredient of the plot is very briefly treated by Aristotle; this is calamity (pathos), a destructive or painful occurrence, e.g. death on the stage, acute suffering, wounding, etc. Pathos is defined as what happens to someone, what befalls on somebody, what one suffers (cf. 2.4.3.)
2.3.4 Tragedy quantitatively divided
It is curious that at this point Aristotle disrupts his discussion of the plot of tragedy (perhaps Theophrastus really had a hand in the arrangement of the argument here) and starts to talk about the various parts of tragedy itself, which are (1) the prologue; (2) the episode (something like ‘act’ today, or a longer dialogue); (3) the exode (sung by the chorus going out), (4) the choral song, the latter divided into (4a) parode (sung by the chorus coming in) and (4b) stasimon (sung by the chorus while standing up in the orchestra).
2.3.5. The plot according to structure continued; pity and fear
It is only here that Aristotle returns to the problem of pity (eleos) and fear (phobos) and asks what arouses them. There are several alternatives, yet only the fourth one is plausible. It is obvious that the spectators do not feel either pity or fear if a worthy man passes from good fortune to bad fortune. And definitely not, either, when wicked people pass from bad to good fortune. The case when a thoroughly bad man passes from good to bad fortune is interesting but the effect it has is still not pity and fear.
Pity and fear are incurred only when a man is not pre-eminently virtuous and just, yet it is not through badness or villainy of his own that he falls into the misfortune, but rather through some flaw (hamartia) in him. Hamartia, also a hotly debated term, is definitely not sin or guilt for Aristotle; it is rather an intellectual or a moral error or imperfection. Perhaps we might interpret this as follows: the wrong decision is an inevitable outcome of the character and the wrong decision results in disaster, yet the hero is still not totally responsible because it is rather the plot which has ‘found’ and has ‘poked out’ a particular flaw in the character; the plot, the action, the story is the ‘circumstance’ under which something which otherwise might have remained hidden suddenly comes to the surface as a flaw in the character and destroys him. Imperfection in character and plot ‘work’ together.
Then Aristotle talks, in detail, about character, about various methods of composition, and about thought and diction (lexis); it is within the discussion of lexis that we find the first definition of metaphor (Chapter 21, 1457b).
In later chapters (chapters 23-26) Aristotle will once more examine, in detail, the differences between epic poetry and tragedy and will try to prove that tragic imitation is better than the epic one. This section also contains a philosophical discussion of the probable, the unbelievable (unlikely) and the inevitable.
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