Aristotle's Poetics

Aristotle's Poetics aims to clarify the different kinds of poetry, the structure of an
acceptable poem, and the division of a poem into its component parts. He defines
poetry as a 'medium of imitation' which always aims hard to represent life through
character, emotion, or action. He defines poetry in a broad way, including epic poetry,
tragedy, comedy, and even some kinds of music.

Aristotle was a scientist with a strong leaning on Biology and Physics. Aristotle’s
background as a scientist and son of a medical doctor inspired in him a new
philosophy that stood as a sort of counterbalancing force to Plato’s idealism. To
be clear, Aristotle was well versed in Platonic philosophy, especially Plato’s Theory
of Forms, which contends that the objects of experience are just shadows of a
higher world of forms that lie beyond sensory experience. Aristotle’s constant
emphasis on Biology led him to favour close observation of natural phenomena
and careful classification of the data that were available to him, as the keys to
making sense out of things. Aristotle wrote on a wide range of subjects including
the arts and humanities. Most of his works did not survive. But among his
surviving works, particularly on arts, the Poetics (335 BC) is generally regarded as
the most significant. It is the earliest surviving detailed study of tragic theory and
practice. According to Dukore (1974 p.1), it has been suggested by many that
the Poetics is more of an outline of a book or perhaps notes for a lecture. In the
first paragraph of the Poetics, Aristotle gives a hint as to how we should
approach the work: it is meant to be descriptive rather than prescriptive. That is,
Aristotle is not so much interested in arguing that poetry or tragedy should be
one thing or another. Rather, he wants to look at past examples of poetry—
tragedy in particular—and by dissecting them and examining their constituent
parts to arrive at some general sense of what poetry is and how it works. In the
Poetics, Aristotle approaches poetry with the same scientific exactitude with which
he treats Physics and Biology. This of course, as we have noted is one of the
telling influences of his science background on his works. He begins Poetics by
collecting and categorizing data available to him, and draws conclusions while
advancing certain theses in accordance with his analysis. From the classical era to
date, the Poetics has arguably remained the hub around which most critical
discourses on tragic drama rotate. It has to be stated that to a large extent, the
Poetics is sketchy in its treatment of certain subjects and this has lent it to
various often conflicting interpretations, generating an almost infinite body of
literature in the process.
Basic Concepts in Aristotle’s Poetics Mimesis: Mimesis is the act of creating in
an individual’s mind, through artistic representation, an idea or ideas that the
person will associate with real past experience. Roughly translated as "imitation";
mimesis in poetry is the act of telling stories that are set in the real world. The
events in the story need not have taken place (fictional realism), but the telling
of the story will help the listener or viewer to imagine the events taking place in
the real world.

Hamartia: This word translates almost directly as "error," though it is often

explained more elaborately as "tragic flaw." Tragedy, according to Aristotle,
involves the downfall of a hero, and this downfall is caused by some error of
judgment on the part of the hero. This error need not be an overarching moral
failing- not a vice: it could be a simple matter of not knowing something or
forgetting something.

Anagnorisis: Translated as "recognition" or "discovery", it describes the moment

where the hero, or some other character, passes from ignorance to knowledge.
This could be recognition of a long lost acquaintance or relation, or it could be
a sudden recognition of some fact about oneself, as is the case with Creon in
Sophocle’s Antigone. Anagnorisis often occurs at the climax of a tragedy in
tandem with peripeteia.

Peripeteia: A reversal in fortune, either from good to bad or bad to good.

Peripeteia often occurs at the climax of a story, often prompted by antagonises.
Indeed, we might say that the peripeteia is the climax of a story: it is the
turning point in the action, where things begin to move toward a conclusion.

Mythos: In tragedy, this word is usually translated as "plot," but unlike "plot",
mythos can be applied to all works of art. Not so much a matter of what
happens and in what order, mythos deals with how the elements of a tragedy or
the five arts come together to form a coherent and unified whole. The overall
message or impression that we come away with is what is conveyed to us by
the mythos of a piece.

Catharsis: This word was normally used in ancient Greece by doctors to mean
"purgation" or by priests to mean "purification." In the context of tragedy,
Aristotle uses it to talk about a purgation or purification of emotions. We
presume this means that katharsis is a release or expulsion of built up emotional
energy. After katharsis, the audience reach a more stable and neutral emotional
state.
 Desis: Literally it implies "tying", the desist is all the action in a tragedy
leading up to the climax. Plot threads are craftily woven together to form a
more and more complex mess. At the peripatetic, or turning point, these plot
threads begin to unravel in what is called the denouement. Aristotle states further
that as poetry evolved, a sharp chasm developed between serious writers who
would write about noble characters in lofty hymns and panegyrics, and less noble
writers who would write about ignoble characters in demeaning invectives.
Tragedy and comedy are later developments that are the grandest representations
of these respective traditions: tragedy of the lofty tradition and comedy of the
mean tradition. Much of Aristotle’s focus in Poetics is on tragedy. Aristotle defines
tragedy according to seven characteristics: (1) it is mimetic, (2) it is serious, (3) it
tells a full story of an appropriate length, (4) it contains rhythm and harmony, (5)
rhythm and harmony occur in different combinations in different parts of the
tragedy, (6) it is performed rather than narrated, and (7) it arouses feelings of
pity and fear and then purges these feelings through catharsis. According to him,
tragedy consists of six component parts, which are listed here in order from most
important to least important: plot, character, thought, diction, melody, and
spectacle. Aristotle explains that for a tragedy to arouse pity and fear, we must
observe a hero who is relatively noble going from happiness to perdition as a
result of error on the part of the hero. Our pity and fear is aroused most when
it is family members who harm one another rather than enemies or strangers. In
the best kind of plot, one character narrowly avoids killing a family member
unwittingly thanks to a discovery that reveals the filial relationship. The hero must
have good qualities appropriate to his or her station and should be portrayed
realistically and consistently. Since both the character of the hero and the plot
must have logical consistency, Aristotle concludes that the untying of the plot
must follow as a necessary consequence of the plot and not from stage artifice,
like a deus ex machina (a machine used in some plays, in which an actor playing
one of the gods was lowered onto the stage at the end) as we find in Euripedes’
Medea. He discusses thought and diction and then moves on to address epic
poetry. Whereas tragedy consists of actions presented in a dramatic form, epic
poetry consists of verses presented in a narrative form, the most popular example
being Homer’s Iliad. Tragedy and epic poetry have many common qualities, most
notably the unity of plot and similar subject matter. However, epic poetry can be
longer than tragedy, and because it is not performed, it can deal with more
fantastic action with a much wider scope. By contrast, tragedy can be more
focused and takes advantage of the devices of music and spectacle. Epic poetry
and tragedy are also written in different meters. After defending poetry against
charges that it deals with improbable or impossible events, Aristotle concludes by
weighing tragedy against epic poetry and declares that tragedy is on the whole
superior.
Summary Plot Overview

Aristotle proposes to discuss poetry, which he defines as a means of mimesis, or imitation, by

means of language, rhythm, and harmony. As creatures who thrive on imitation, we are naturally
drawn to poetry.
In particular, Aristotle focuses his discussion on tragedy, which uses dramatic, rather than
narrative, form, and deals with agents who are better than us ourselves. Tragedy serves to arouse
the emotions of pity and fear and to effect a katharsis (catharsis) of these emotions. Aristotle
divides tragedy into six different parts, ranking them in order from most important to least
important as follows: (1) mythos, or plot, (2) character, (3) thought, (4) diction, (5) melody, and
(6) spectacle.
The first essential to creating a good tragedy is that it should maintain unity of plot. This means
that the plot must move from beginning to end according to a tightly organized sequence of
necessary or probable events. The beginning should not necessarily follow from any earlier
events, and the end should tie up all loose ends and not produce any necessary consequences.
The plot can also be enhanced by an intelligent use of peripeteia, or reversal, and anagnorisis, or
recognition. These elements work best when they are made an integral part of the plot. A plot
should consist of a hero going from happiness to misery. The hero should be portrayed
consistently and in a good light, though the poet should also remain true to what we know of the
character. The misery should be the result of some hamartia, or error, on the part of the hero. A
tragic plot must always involve some sort of tragic deed, which can be done or left undone, and
this deed can be approached either with full knowledge or in ignorance. Aristotle discusses a
number of genres, some of which are obscure ancient performance genres (such as
dithyrambs and nomes). He seems to include instrumental music and dance as poetry. He
ultimately focuses on four kinds—epic tragedy and comedy and dramatic tragedy and comedy.
Poetry has three kinds of differentiae—traditionally translated as medium, object, and mode
(“in which,” ”what,” and “how”). Some of the details of these are obscure, but the main
ideas are that: Medium is the sensory characteristic in terms of which the imitation is
made. Analogy with other imitative arts: color and figure for painting and sculpture. The three
media of poetry are rhythm, discourse (speech), and harmony or music. The objects of
poetry are kinds of moral character—good, bad, and intermediate. The modes are methods
of exposition of the story—narration or enactment or mixed. Examples of applying these
differentiae: flute playing involves rhythm and harmony, whereas dancing involves rhythm
alone. The genre of tragedy is seen by Aristotle as the culmination or perfection of the
poetic art. The so-called “parts” of tragedy: Story or plot Character Thought Language
Spectacle Song The story is the series of episodes. It ought to have causal unity and
completeness. The character is the moral quality of the agent. Thought is the viewpoint of
the agent and how he argues for it. Language is the language of the discourse—it ought
to be elevated and still clear. Spectacle (I think) is the sensory appearance of a dramatic
presentation. Spectacle seems to be thought of by Aristotle as a means of exposition of the
story, and to essentially belong to stagecraft as opposed to poetry. Song—music as used in
drama. By means of some of these elements poetics is connected to other parts of
philosophy— plot and character connects poetics with ethics, thought with logic and rhetoric,
language with grammar. In Aristotle’s ethical theory, happiness is the supreme end of human
life, and happiness is virtuous activity (in a complete life). Happiness is thus a product of
virtue and fortune, and of these two only virtue is within our power. Virtue is of two kinds,
intellectual and moral. Intellectual virtue has three spheres—the theoretical, the productive,
and the practical. Moral virtue is the tendency or inclination towards those actions which
practical reason determines are conducive towards (individual and collective) happiness.
Moral virtue is the product of training in the youth and the cumulative effect of one’s
history of choices as an adult. All action is for ends, and choice is “deliberate desire,” that
is what one desires to do as a result of calculating the means to an end. Aristotle evaluates
everything in poetry based on the tragic effect—the purgation of the emotions of pity and
fear—about which he says very little. Thus he relegates what some might think of as the
existential or theological meaning of the tragedy to the element of thought (that is, which
the characters think the meaning of the events is). According to Aristotle the most essential
element is story.