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1 Chapter 1 : SparkNotes: Aristotle (â B.C.): Poetics Poetics: The Art of Poetry Poetics refers generally to the theory of literary forms and literary discourse. It may refer specifically to the theory of poetry, although some speakers use the term so broadly as to denote the concept of "theory" itself. Works on poetics and rhetoric Aristotle. Bilingual edition Greek and English. In The Great Critics. Bilingual edition Greek and Spanish. In Sobre lo Sublime. Trilingual edition Greek, Latin and Spanish. In Saintsbury, Loci Critici. Aristotle on the Art of Poetry. In Introduction to Aristotle. On the Art of Poetry. In Classical Literary Criticism. In Perspectives on Drama. Wayne State UP, In Critical Theory since Plato. On Poetic Art, A Translation. Journal of General Education 7 A Translation and Commentary for Students of Literature. In Literary Criticism and Theory. Russell and Michael Winterbottom. In The Narrative Reader. Le Livre de Poche. Les Belles Lettres, Rosalyne Dupont-Roc y Jean Lallot. Universidad Central de Venezuela, Ediciones de la Biblioteca, Centro de Estudios Constitucionales, In The Works of Aristotle. Brief of the Art of Rhetoric. The Art of Rhetoric. U of North Carolina, The Middle Commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle. Albany NY, In Aristotelis poeticam Commentarii. Bobes, Carmen, et al. Die Rezeption des aristotelischen Begriffs in den Poetiken des Cinquecento. Kronberg Scriptor Verlag, Heidegger, Aristotle, Veyne, history. Theories of the Theatre: In Critical Theory since Plato, ed. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, From Plato to Dryden. Castelvetro on the Art of Poetry. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, An Aristotelian Theory of Comedy. The Poetics of Aristotle. Cooper, Lane, and Alfred Gudeman. A Bibliography of the Poetics of Aristotle. U of Toronto P, The Conception of Reader Response. U of Nebraska P, Universidad de Salamanca, Dupont-Roc, Roselyne and Jean Lallot, eds. Theories of Fictionality, Narratology, and Poetics. Calin Andrei Mihailescu and Walid Hamarneh. Poetic and Legal Fiction in the Aristotelian Tradition. Princeton NJ, Die Rhetorik des Aristoteles: Landmark Essays on Aristotelian Rhetoric. Vita Latina 67 Analecta Malacitana 1 Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia 38 The Problem of Conflict Since Aristotle. Rhetorica Aristotelica cum Egidii de Roma commentariis. In Goethe, Kleine Schriften. Temps physique et temps tragique chez Aristote. From Plato to the Present. New York UP, Harris, Roy, and Talbot J. The Western Tradition from Socrates to Saussure. The Age of Criticism: The Late Renaissance in Italy. Polestar of the Ancients: Associated University Presses, The Poetics of Aristotle in England. Questions of Time and Space. Rhetoric and Philosophy in Postmodern Discourse. Ian Angus and Leonore Langsdorf. Southern Illinois UP, Towards a Reconstruction of Poetics II. The Classical World 72 The Influence of the Poetics on the Middle Ages. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, Eine Neuformulierung des Zeichenmodells von Aristoteles. Studia linguistica in honorem Eugenio Coseriu Geschichte der Sprachphilosophie und der Sprachwissenschaft. Georges Van Den Abbeele. U of Minnesota P; Manchester: Analecta Orientalia ad Poeticam Aristotelis. U of Chicago P, U of Oklahoma P, De arte poetica, cum Averrois expositione. Corpus philolophorum medii aevi: Linguistica e stilistica di Aristotele. Its Powers and Limitations. Aristotle on the Art of Fiction. Marginal comments on Aristotle. In Lectures in Criticism: The Johns Hopkins University. The First Treatise on the Arts: Page 1

2 Chapter 2 : Aristotle: Poetics Aristotle gives his views on tragedy, the plot, the characters and the content, and then it is compared to epic poetry. Content wise, I think this book is great, but it was just so very boring! I found the parts with the ancient Greek language particularly difficult to read and analyse. The lost second part addressed comedy. The reason is that Aristotle says three times in the treatise that the protagonist can go from fortune to misfortune or misfortune to fortune; also in Chapter 14 the best type of tragoidos is that which ends happily, like Cresphontes and Iphigenia presumably "in Tauris"! Preliminary discourse on tragedy, epic poetry, and comedy, as the chief forms of imitative poetry. Definition of a tragedy, and the rules for its construction. Definition and analysis into qualitative parts. Rules for the construction of a tragedy: Tragic pleasure, or catharsis experienced by fear and pity should be produced in the spectator. The characters must be four things: Discovery must occur within the plot. Narratives, stories, structures and poetics overlap. It is important for the poet to visualize all of the scenes when creating the plot. Aristotle believed that all of these different elements had to be present in order for the poetry to be well-done. However, starting in with a Macedonian classicist, M. Possible criticisms of an epic or tragedy, and the answers to them. Tragedy as artistically superior to epic poetry: Tragedy has everything that the epic has, even the epic meter being admissible. The reality of presentation is felt in the play as read, as well as in the play as acted. The tragic imitation requires less space for the attainment of its end. If it has more concentrated effect, it is more pleasurable than one with a large admixture of time to dilute it. There is less unity in the imitation of the epic poets plurality of actions and this is proved by the fact that an epic poem can supply enough material for several tragedies. Aristotle distinguishes between the genres of "poetry" in three ways: Matter language, rhythm, and melody, for Aristotle, make up the matter of poetic creation. Where the epic poem makes use of language alone, the playing of the lyre involves rhythm and melody. Some poetic forms include a blending of all materials; for example, Greek tragic drama included a singing chorus, and so music and language were all part of the performance. These points also convey the standard view. Recent work, though, argues that translating rhuthmos here as "rhythm" is absurd: This correctly conveys what dramatic musical creation, the topic of the Poetics, in ancient Greece had: Also, the musical instrument cited in Ch 1 is not the lyre but the kithara, which was played in the drama while the kithara-player was dancing in the chorus, even if that meant just walking in an appropriate way. Aristotle differentiates between tragedy and comedy throughout the work by distinguishing between the nature of the human characters that populate either form. Aristotle finds that tragedy treats of serious, important, and virtuous people. Comedy, on the other hand, treats of less virtuous people and focuses on human "weaknesses and foibles". This latter is the method of tragedy and comedy: Having examined briefly the field of "poetry" in general, Aristotle proceeds to his definition of tragedy: Tragedy is a representation of a serious, complete action which has magnitude, in embellished speech, with each of its elements [used] separately in the [various] parts [of the play] and [represented] by people acting and not by narration, accomplishing by means of pity and terror the catharsis of such emotions. By "embellished speech", I mean that which has rhythm and melody, i. By "with its elements separately", I mean that some [parts of it] are accomplished only by means of spoken verses, and others again by means of song b It should imitate an action evoking pity and fear. The plot involves a change from bad towards good, or good towards bad. Complex plots have reversals and recognitions. These and suffering or violence are used to evoke the tragic emotions. The most tragic plot pushes a good character towards undeserved misfortune because of a mistake hamartia. Plots revolving around such a mistake are more tragic than plots with two sides and an opposite outcome for the good and the bad. Violent situations are most tragic if they are between friends and family. Threats can be resolved best last by being done in knowledge, done in ignorance and then discovered, almost be done in ignorance but be discovered in the last moment. Actions should be follow logically from the situation created by what has happened before, and from the character of the agent. This Page 2

3 goes for recognitions and reversals as well, as even surprises are more satisfying to the audience if they afterwards are seen as a plausible or necessary consequence. It is revealed when the agent makes moral choices. In a perfect tragedy, the character will support the plot, which means personal motivations and traits will somehow connect parts of the cause-and-effect chain of actions producing pity and fear. Main character should be goodâ Aristotle explains that audiences do not like, for example, villains "making fortune from misery" in the end. It might happen though, and might make the play interesting. In this case it would be good to explain such change, otherwise the audience may be confused. If character changes opinion a lot it should be clear he is a character who has this trait, not a real life person - this is also to avoid confusion thought dianoia â spoken usually reasoning of human characters can explain the characters or story background diction lexis Lexis is better translated according to some as "speech" or "language. Speeches should reflect character, the moral qualities of those on the stage. The expression of the meaning of the words. This is arguably more sensible because then Aristotle is conveying what the chorus actually did. It should be an integral part of the whole, and share in the action. Should be contributed to the unity of the plot. It is a very real factor in the pleasure of the drama. Aristotle calls spectacle the "least artistic" element of tragedy, and the "least connected with the work of the poet playwright. Even though that "beauty" may save the play it is "not a nice thing". He offers the earliest-surviving explanation for the origins of tragedy and comedy: Anyway, arising from an improvisatory beginning both tragedy and comedyâ tragedy from the leaders of the dithyramb, and comedy from the leaders of the phallic processions which even now continue as a custom in many of our cities [ This manuscript, translated from Greek to Syriac, is independent of the currently-accepted 11th-century source designated Paris The Syriac-language source used for the Arabic translations departed widely in vocabulary from the original Poetics and it initiated a misinterpretation of Aristotelian thought that continued through the Middle Ages. Page 3

4 Chapter 3 : Poetics Open Library ON THE ART OF By Aristotle Scarcely one in ten of the nouns on the first few pages of the Poetics has an exact English equivalent. Every proposition has to. Readings poetics Traditionally, the term poetics has been interpreted as an inquiry into the laws and principles that underlie a verbal work of art and has often carried normative and prescriptive connotations. This tradition of analyzing the mechanics of the work of art has persisted into the twentieth century in the work of the Russian Formalists, New Criticism, and structuralism until challenged by post-structuralist approaches to language where writing becomes an all-pervasive metaphor not structured by distinctions literary vs. Any discussion of the term poetics will also have to come to terms with the question of intermedialityâ that is, with the relationship between the different media and genres in a diachronic and synchronic manner. Technological advances in the last two hundred years have called into question the primacy of the written medium and have gradually brought to the fore not only the problem of the interaction between the different media novel, photography, radio, film, type writer, phonograph, computer but also of their influence on the human sensorium leading, in some accounts, to a re-evaluation of the concept of the subject. This development reflects a shift from the study of specifically poetic features How does a work of art mean? Thus, while for a literary historian the word medium would most likely be associated with the concept of genre, for media theorists, language itself will become just one of the possible forms of data storage and transmission. The results are neither representative nor conclusive, they are rather analytical and open ended. According to Aristotle, all three genresâ epic, drama, and dithyrambic poetryâ are defined by mimesis, but the type of mimesis varies in each of them. Thus Chapter I, in accordance with its stated purpose of beginning with first principles, introduces the fundamental concept of mimesis common to all the arts in the following way: But they differ from one another in three respects: Mimesis, then, can vary with respect to the media language, rhythm, melody, or the object people superior of inferior to us and, finally, the mode narrative or dramatic impersonation and their alternations. Even though he does not use the term poetics in Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry, Lessing examined the limitations of the semiotic natures of poetry and painting arguing against their indiscriminate mixingâ poetry is best suited for representing actions in time while paintingâ actions in space. The Romantics were deeply concerned with the relationship between form and content particularly in the works of Schiller and the Schlegel brothers, and with morphology in the case of Goethe, but postulated feeling, the imagination, and genius as superior to form and rationality. In a manner typical of nineteenth century historicism, Brunetiere and Veselovsky attempted to correlate formal features of the work with social conditions. In the twentieth century, Russian Formalism, the Prague Linguistic Circle, and New Criticism, as well as structuralism after WWII, have continued the tradition of elaborating principles that account for the coherence and specifically literary quality of a work of art. One could trace similar developments in other countries e. This autonomy, however, soon came under attack. In his book The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism Jameson attempts to historicize the preoccupation with language without grasping the full implications of the development of technology and its effect on the culture of print. The view that was slowly but surely being superseded was that of Roman Jakobson, as the main exponent of poetics in the US. De Man articulated a view of literary criticism in his books Aesthetic Ideology and The Resistance to Theory that in many ways was instrumental in ousting narrowly linguistic approaches to the interpretation of literature and making way for his own rhetorical and deconstructive readings which emphasized the opacity of language. It was in France, as a result of the insights developed by structuralism and post-structuralism, that the major inroads were made toward an engagement with the physicality of the media at our disposal. The Extensions of Man, and in The Gutenberg Galaxy, uses the metaphor of a global nervous system to describe the role that technology has come to play today 3. A further shift in critical attitudes has been made possible by the pioneering work of Friedrich Kittler whose Page 4

5 Discourse Networks, and Gramophone, Film, Typewriter demote the importance of reading literature as a hermeneutic experience and offer a genealogy of the constitution of discourse networks that privilege certain ways of processing and storing data. Recent edited collections, like that of Hans Gumbrecht and Ludwig Pfeiffer, titled Materialities of Communication also draw attention to the physical aspects of literary production. This claim has enormous implications not only for the study of literary criticism, as a more general category, but a fortiori for a discipline called poetics. For most of its long history, the term poetics subsumed attempts to reveal the inner logic of a work of art in an examination of its formal and constituent features while inevitably raising problems of intention, meaning, and interpretationâ a practice that Paul de Man criticized as riven with contradictions. With the advent of new technologies and an increasing differentiation of media, the medium of print has lost some of its status while other technologies vie for acceptance alongside it. Accordingly, in critical discourse, new media studies have gained ascendancy over poetics. Poetics, broadly understood, takes as its subject matter a hermeneutic process productive of meaning and responsive to communication, even where this process is intentionally made difficult for artistic purposes, a view that has been hotly contested as a result of the emergence of new technologies of inscription. The Poetics of Aristotle. Translation and commentary by Stephen Halliwell. The University of North Carolina Press, Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. The Johns Hopkins University Press, University of North Carolina Press, The Prison-House of Language: Translated by Michael Metteer, with Chris Cullens. Foreword by David E. Stanford University Press, Page 5

6 Chapter 4 : The Poetics - Aristotle on the Art of Poetry: 1 (Aristotle on the Art of Poetry) In particular, Averroes added a moral dimension to the Poetics by interpreting tragedy as the art of praise and comedy as the art of blame. Averroes' interpretation of the Poetics was accepted by the West, where it reflected the "prevailing notions of poetry" into the 16th century. Poetics Summary Aristotle proposes to study poetry by analyzing its constitutive parts and then drawing general conclusions. The portion of the Poetics that survives discusses mainly tragedy and epic poetry. We know that Aristotle also wrote a treatise on comedy that has been lost. He defines poetry as the mimetic, or imitative, use of language, rhythm, and harmony, separately or in combination. Poetry is mimetic in that it creates a representation of objects and events in the world, unlike philosophy, for example, which presents ideas. Humans are naturally drawn to imitation, and so poetry has a strong pull on us. It can also be an excellent learning device, since we can coolly observe imitations of things like dead bodies and disgusting animals when the real thing would disturb us. Aristotle identifies tragedy as the most refined version of poetry dealing with lofty matters and comedy as the most refined version of poetry dealing with base matters. He traces a brief and speculative history of tragedy as it evolved from dithyrambic hymns in praise of the god Dionysus. Dithyrambs were sung by a large choir, sometimes featuring a narrator. Aeschylus invented tragedy by bringing a second actor into dialogue with the narrator. Sophocles innovated further by introducing a third actor, and gradually tragedy shifted to its contemporary dramatic form. Aristotle defines tragedy according to seven characteristics: A tragedy consists of six component parts, which are listed here in order from most important to least important: A well-formed plot must have a beginning, which is not a necessary consequence of any previous action; a middle, which follows logically from the beginning; and an end, which follows logically from the middle and from which no further action necessarily follows. The plot should be unified, meaning that every element of the plot should tie in to the rest of the plot, leaving no loose ends. This kind of unity allows tragedy to express universal themes powerfully, which makes it superior to history, which can only talk about particular events. Episodic plots are bad because there is no necessity to the sequence of events. The best kind of plot contains surprises, but surprises that, in retrospect, fit logically into the sequence of events. The best kinds of surprises are brought about by peripeteia, or reversal of fortune, and anagnorisis, or discovery. A good plot progresses like a knot that is tied up with increasingly greater complexity until the moment of peripeteia, at which point the knot is gradually untied until it reaches a completely unknotted conclusion. For a tragedy to arouse pity and fear, we must observe a hero who is relatively noble going from happiness to misery 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 an anagnorisis that reveals the family connection. 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. Aristotle 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 verse presented in a narrative form. 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 determining that tragedy is on the whole superior. Page 6

7 Chapter 5 : poetics Definition of poetics in English by Oxford Dictionaries Greek philosopher Aristotle, born BCE, was a student of Plato's for about 20 years at the Academy in Athens. After Plato's death, Aristotle was invited by Philip of Macedonia to tutor his 13 year old son Alexanderâ the future Alexander the Great. Aristotle BCE BCE Preface In the tenth book of the Republic, when Plato has completed his final burning denunciation of Poetry, the false Siren, the imitator of things which themselves are shadows, the ally of all that is low and weak in the soul against that which is high and strong, who makes us feed the things we ought to starve and serve the things we ought to rule, he ends with a touch of compunction: For we shall be gainers, I take it, if this can be proved. Few of the great works of ancient Greek literature are easy reading. They nearly all need study and comment, and at times help from a good teacher, before they yield up their secret. And the Poetics cannot be accounted an exception. For one thing the treatise is fragmentary. It originally consisted of two books, one dealing with Tragedy and Epic, the other with Comedy and other subjects. We possess only the first. For another, even the book we have seems to be unrevised and unfinished. The style, though luminous, vivid, and in its broader division systematic, is not that of a book intended for publication. Even to accomplished scholars the meaning is often obscure, as may be seen by a comparison of the three editions recently published in England, all the work of savants of the first eminence, [1] or, still more strikingly, by a study of the long series of misunderstandings and overstatements and corrections which form the history of the Poetics since the Renaissance. Butcher, and ; Prof. Bywater, ; and Prof. But it is of another cause of misunderstanding that I wish principally to speak in this preface. The great edition from which the present translation is taken was the fruit of prolonged study by one of the greatest Aristotelians of the nineteenth century, and is itself a classic among works of scholarship. In the hands of a student who knows even a little Greek, the translation, backed by the commentary, may lead deep into the mind of Aristotle. But when the translation is used, as it doubtless will be, by readers who are quite without the clue provided by a knowledge of the general habits of the Greek language, there must arise a number of new difficulties or misconceptions. To understand a great foreign book by means of a translation is possible enough where the two languages concerned operate with a common stock of ideas, and belong to the same period of civilization. But between ancient Greece and modern England there yawn immense gulfs of human history; the establishment and the partial failure of a common European religion, the barbarian invasions, the feudal system, the regrouping of modern Europe, the age of mechanical invention, and the industrial revolution. In an average page of French or German philosophy nearly all the nouns can be translated directly into exact equivalents in English; but in Greek that is not so. Scarcely one in ten of the nouns on the first few pages of the Poetics has an exact English equivalent. Every proposition has to be reduced to its lowest terms of thought and then re-built. This is a difficulty which no translation can quite deal with; it must be left to a teacher who knows Greek. And there is a kindred difficulty which flows from it. Where words can be translated into equivalent words, the style of an original can be closely followed; but no translation which aims at being written in normal English can reproduce the style of Aristotle. I have sometimes played with the idea that a ruthlessly literal translation, helped out by bold punctuation, might be the best. Begin in order of nature from first principles. Epos-making, tragedy-making also comedy, dithyramb-making and most fluting and harping, taken as a whole, are really not Makings but Imitations. They differ in three points; they imitate a different objects, b by different means, c differently i. Some artists imitate i. Similarly the above arts all imitate by rhythm, language, and tune, and these either 1 separate or 2 mixed. Dancers imitate characters, emotions, and experiences by means of rhythms expressed in form. Language alone whether prose or verse, and one form of verse or many: For example, there i. He made an imitation Fall of Troy. As a rule, no doubt, the difficulty, even though merely verbal, lies beyond the reach of so simple a tool as literal translation. It would be nearer perhaps to say that, relatively speaking, you look up to the characters of tragedy, and down upon those of comedy. High or low, serious or Page 7

8 trivial, many other pairs of words would have to be called in, in order to cover the wide range of the common Greek words. By water, with most editors, emends the text. But one must not draw the line too bluntly. I should doubt whether a classical Greek writer was ordinarily conscious of the distinction between the two meanings. The fact is that much misunderstanding is often caused by our modern attempts to limit too strictly the meaning of a Greek word. Greek was very much a live language, and a language still unconscious of grammar, not, like ours, dominated by definitions and trained upon dictionaries. The word is not so precise. There is another series of obscurities or confusions in the Poetics which, unless I am mistaken, arises from the fact that Aristotle was writing at a time when the great age of Greek tragedy was long past, and was using language formed in previous generations. The words and phrases remained in the tradition, but the forms of art and activity which they denoted had sometimes changed in the interval. If we date the Poetics about the year B. When we remember that a training in music and poetry formed a prominent part of the education of every wellborn Athenian, we cannot be surprised at finding in Aristotle, and to a less extent in Plato, considerable traces of a tradition of technical language and even of aesthetic theory. But no writer, certainly no ancient writer, is always vigilant. Sometimes Aristotle analyses his terms, but very often he takes them for granted; and in the latter case, I think, he is sometimes deceived by them. Thus there seem to be cases where he has been affected in his conceptions of fifth-century tragedy by the practice of his own day, when the only living form of drama was the New Comedy. For example, as we have noticed above, true Tragedy had always taken its material from the sacred myths, or heroic sagas, which to the classical Greek constituted history. But the New Comedy was in the habit of inventing its plots. The real reason was that the drama and the myth were simply two different expressions of the same religious kernel p. Again, he says of the Chorus p. He had lost the sense of what the Chorus was in the hands of the great masters, say in the Bacchae or the Eumenides. He mistakes, again, the use of that epiphany of a God which is frequent at the end of the single plays of Euripides, and which seems to have been equally so at the end of the trilogies of Aeschylus. Having lost the living tradition, he sees neither the ritual origin nor the dramatic value of these divine epiphanies. He thinks of the convenient gods and abstractions who sometimes spoke the prologues of the New Comedy, and imagines that the God appears in order to unravel the plot. As a matter of fact, in one play which he often quotes, the Iphigenia Taurica, the plot is actually distorted at the very end in order to give an opportunity for the epiphany. This strikes a modern reader as a very arbitrary assumption. Reversals of Fortune of some sort are perhaps usual in any varied plot, but surely not Recognitions? The clue to the puzzle lies, it can scarcely be doubted, in the historical origin of tragedy. In any tragedy which still retained the stamp of its Dionysiac origin, this Discovery and Peripety might normally be expected to occur, and to occur together. I have tried to show elsewhere how many of our extant tragedies do, as a matter of fact, show the marks of this ritual. The name of Dionysus must not be openly mentioned in connexion with mourning ib. This may help to explain the transference of the tragic shows to other heroes. It has all the appearance of being an old word which is accepted and re-interpreted by Aristotle rather than a word freely chosen by him to denote the exact phenomenon he wishes to describe. It is worth remembering that in the year B. One cannot but suspect that in his account of the purpose of tragedy Aristotle may be using an old traditional formula, and consciously or unconsciously investing it with a new meaning, much as he has done with the word mythos. Apart from these historical causes of misunderstanding, a good teacher who uses this book with a class will hardly fail to point out numerous points on which two equally good Greek scholars may well differ in the mere interpretation of the words. Are they, as our translator takes them, 1 that man is imitative, and 2 that people delight in imitations? Or are they 1 that man is imitative and people delight in imitations, and 2 the instinct for rhythm, as Professor Butcher prefers? It may seem as if the large uncertainties which we have indicated detract in a ruinous manner from the value of the Poetics to us as a work of criticism. But, if the book is properly read, not as a dogmatic text-book but as a first attempt, made by a man of astounding genius, to build up in the region of creative art a rational order like that which he established in logic, rhetoric, ethics, politics, physics, psychology, and almost every department of knowledge that existed in his day, then the uncertainties become Page 8

9 rather a help than a discouragement. They make us, to the best of our powers, try really to follow and criticize closely the bold gropings of an extraordinary thinker; and it is in this process, and not in any mere collection of dogmatic results, that we shall find the true value and beauty of the Poetics. The book is of permanent value as a mere intellectual achievement; as a store of information about Greek literature; and as an original or first-hand statement of what we may call the classical view of artistic criticism. It does not regard poetry as a matter of unanalysed inspiration; it makes no concession to personal whims or fashion or ennui. It tries by rational methods to find out what is good in art and what makes it good, accepting the belief that there is just as truly a good way, and many bad ways, in poetry as in morals or in playing billiards. This is no place to try to sum up its main conclusions. But it is characteristic of the classical view that Aristotle lays his greatest stress, first, on the need for Unity in the work of art, the need that each part should subserve the whole, while irrelevancies, however brilliant in themselves, should be cast away; and next, on the demand that great art must have for its subject the great way of living. These judgements have often been misunderstood, but the truth in them is profound and goes near to the heart of things. Conceptions and attitudes of mind such as these constitute what we may call the classical faith in matters of art and poetry; a faith which is never perhaps fully accepted in any age, yet, unlike others, is never forgotten but lives by being constantly criticized, re-asserted, and rebelled against. For the fashions of the ages vary in this direction and that, but they vary for the most part from a central road which was struck out by the imagination of Greece. This page has been created by Philipp Lenssen. Page last updated on April Page 9

10 Chapter 6 : Poetics. English Aristotle on the art of poetry by Aristotle 'Aristotle separated rhetoric from poetics, treating rhetoric as the art of persuasion and poetics as the art of imitation or representation.' 'I point this out not so much to place Notley in a French, theoretical context (which she rejects), but to give a context for some of the questions I ask her regarding poetry and poetics.'. Part I I propose to treat of Poetry in itself and of its various kinds, noting the essential quality of each, to inquire into the structure of the plot as requisite to a good poem; into the number and nature of the parts of which a poem is composed; and similarly into whatever else falls within the same inquiry. Following, then, the order of nature, let us begin with the principles which come first. Epic poetry and Tragedy, Comedy also and Dithyrambic poetry, and the music of the flute and of the lyre in most of their forms, are all in their general conception modes of imitation. They differ, however, from one another in three respects- the medium, the objects, the manner or mode of imitation, being in each case distinct. There is another art which imitates by means of language alone, and that either in prose or verse- which verse, again, may either combine different meters or consist of but one kind- but this has hitherto been without a name. For there is no common term we could apply to the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogues on the one hand; and, on the other, to poetic imitations in iambic, elegiac, or any similar meter. Even when a treatise on medicine or natural science is brought out in verse, the name of poet is by custom given to the author; and yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common but the meter, so that it would be right to call the one poet, the other physicist rather than poet. On the same principle, even if a writer in his poetic imitation were to combine all meters, as Chaeremon did in his Centaur, which is a medley composed of meters of all kinds, we should bring him too under the general term poet. So much then for these distinctions. There are, again, some arts which employ all the means above mentioned- namely, rhythm, tune, and meter. Such are Dithyrambic and Nomic poetry, and also Tragedy and Comedy; but between them originally the difference is, that in the first two cases these means are all employed in combination, in the latter, now one means is employed, now another. Such, then, are the differences of the arts with respect to the medium of imitation Part II Since the objects of imitation are men in action, and these men must be either of a higher or a lower type for moral character mainly answers to these divisions, goodness and badness being the distinguishing marks of moral differences, it follows that we must represent men either as better than in real life, or as worse, or as they are. It is the same in painting. Polygnotus depicted men as nobler than they are, Pauson as less noble, Dionysius drew them true to life. Now it is evident that each of the modes of imitation above mentioned will exhibit these differences, and become a distinct kind in imitating objects that are thus distinct. Such diversities may be found even in dancing, flute-playing, and lyre-playing. So again in language, whether prose or verse unaccompanied by music. Homer, for example, makes men better than they are; Cleophon as they are; Hegemon the Thasian, the inventor of parodies, and Nicochares, the author of the Deiliad, worse than they are. The same thing holds good of Dithyrambs and Nomes; here too one may portray different types, as Timotheus and Philoxenus differed in representing their Cyclopes. The same distinction marks off Tragedy from Comedy; for Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life. Part III There is still a third difference- the manner in which each of these objects may be imitated. For the medium being the same, and the objects the same, the poet may imitate by narration- in which case he can either take another personality as Homer does, or speak in his own person, unchanged- or he may present all his characters as living and moving before us. These, then, as we said at the beginning, are the three differences which distinguish artistic imitation- the medium, the objects, and the manner. So that from one point of view, Sophocles is an imitator of the same kind as Homer- for both imitate higher types of character; from another point of view, of the same kind as Aristophanes- for both imitate persons acting and doing. For the same reason the Dorians claim the invention both of Tragedy and Comedy. The claim to Comedy is put forward by the Megarians- not only by those of Greece proper, who allege that it originated under their democracy, but also by the Megarians of Page 10

11 Sicily, for the poet Epicharmus, who is much earlier than Chionides and Magnes, belonged to that country. Tragedy too is claimed by certain Dorians of the Peloponnese. In each case they appeal to the evidence of language. The outlying villages, they say, are by them called komai, by the Athenians demoi: This may suffice as to the number and nature of the various modes of imitation. Part IV Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated. We have evidence of this in the facts of experience. Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: The cause of this again is, that to learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general; whose capacity, however, of learning is more limited. Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature. Persons, therefore, starting with this natural gift developed by degrees their special aptitudes, till their rude improvisations gave birth to Poetry. Poetry now diverged in two directions, according to the individual character of the writers. The graver spirits imitated noble actions, and the actions of good men. The more trivial sort imitated the actions of meaner persons, at first composing satires, as the former did hymns to the gods and the praises of famous men. A poem of the satirical kind cannot indeed be put down to any author earlier than Homer; though many such writers probably there were. But from Homer onward, instances can be cited- his own Margites, for example, and other similar compositions. The appropriate meter was also here introduced; hence the measure is still called the iambic or lampooning measure, being that in which people lampooned one another. Thus the older poets were distinguished as writers of heroic or of lampooning verse. As, in the serious style, Homer is pre-eminent among poets, for he alone combined dramatic form with excellence of imitation so he too first laid down the main lines of comedy, by dramatizing the ludicrous instead of writing personal satire. His Margites bears the same relation to comedy that the Iliad and Odyssey do to tragedy. But when Tragedy and Comedy came to light, the two classes of poets still followed their natural bent: Whether Tragedy has as yet perfected its proper types or not; and whether it is to be judged in itself, or in relation also to the audience- this raises another question. Be that as it may, Tragedy- as also Comedy- was at first mere improvisation. The one originated with the authors of the Dithyramb, the other with those of the phallic songs, which are still in use in many of our cities. Tragedy advanced by slow degrees; each new element that showed itself was in turn developed. Having passed through many changes, it found its natural form, and there it stopped. Aeschylus first introduced a second actor; he diminished the importance of the Chorus, and assigned the leading part to the dialogue. Sophocles raised the number of actors to three, and added scene-painting. Moreover, it was not till late that the short plot was discarded for one of greater compass, and the grotesque diction of the earlier satyric form for the stately manner of Tragedy. The iambic measure then replaced the trochaic tetrameter, which was originally employed when the poetry was of the satyric order, and had greater with dancing. Once dialogue had come in, Nature herself discovered the appropriate measure. For the iambic is, of all measures, the most colloquial we see it in the fact that conversational speech runs into iambic lines more frequently than into any other kind of verse; rarely into hexameters, and only when we drop the colloquial intonation. Part V Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type- not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly. It consists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive. To take an obvious example, the comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does not imply pain. The successive changes through which Tragedy passed, and the authors of these changes, are well known, whereas Comedy has had no history, because it was not at first treated seriously. It was late before the Archon granted a comic chorus to a poet; the performers were till then voluntary. Comedy had already taken definite shape when comic poets, distinctively so called, are heard of. Who furnished it with masks, or prologues, or increased the number of actors- these and other similar details remain unknown. Epic poetry agrees with Tragedy in so far as it is an imitation in verse of characters of a higher type. They differ in that Epic poetry admits but one kind of meter and is narrative in form. They differ, again, in their length: This, then, is a second Page 11

12 point of difference; though at first the same freedom was admitted in Tragedy as in Epic poetry. Of their constituent parts some are common to both, some peculiar to Tragedy: All the elements of an Epic poem are found in Tragedy, but the elements of a Tragedy are not all found in the Epic poem. Part VI Of the poetry which imitates in hexameter verse, and of Comedy, we will speak hereafter. Let us now discuss Tragedy, resuming its formal definition, as resulting from what has been already said. Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions. Now as tragic imitation implies persons acting, it necessarily follows in the first place, that Spectacular equipment will be a part of Tragedy. Next, Song and Diction, for these are the media of imitation. Again, Tragedy is the imitation of an action; and an action implies personal agents, who necessarily possess certain distinctive qualities both of character and thought; for it is by these that we qualify actions themselves, and these- thought and characterare the two natural causes from which actions spring, and on actions again all success or failure depends. Hence, the Plot is the imitation of the action- for by plot I here mean the arrangement of the incidents. By Character I mean that in virtue of which we ascribe certain qualities to the agents. Thought is required wherever a statement is proved, or, it may be, a general truth enunciated. Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality- namely, Plot, Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Song. Two of the parts constitute the medium of imitation, one the manner, and three the objects of imitation. And these complete the fist. These elements have been employed, we may say, by the poets to a man; in fact, every play contains Spectacular elements as well as Character, Plot, Diction, Song, and Thought. But most important of all is the structure of the incidents. For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a quality. Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character: Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy; and the end is the chief thing of all. Again, without action there cannot be a tragedy; there may be without character. The tragedies of most of our modern poets fail in the rendering of character; and of poets in general this is often true. It is the same in painting; and here lies the difference between Zeuxis and Polygnotus. Polygnotus delineates character well; the style of Zeuxis is devoid of ethical quality. Again, if you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point of diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents. Besides which, the most powerful elements of emotional interest in Tragedy- Peripeteia or Reversal of the Situation, and Recognition scenes- are parts of the plot. A further proof is, that novices in the art attain to finish of diction and precision of portraiture before they can construct the plot. It is the same with almost all the early poets. The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; Character holds the second place. A similar fact is seen in painting. The most beautiful colors, laid on confusedly, will not give as much pleasure as the chalk outline of a portrait. Page 12

13 Chapter 7 : Poetics The Art of Poetry Poetry Theory Poetics Summary. Aristotle proposes to study poetry by analyzing its constitutive parts and then drawing general conclusions. The portion of the Poetics that survives discusses mainly tragedy and epic poetry. However, recent work is now challenging whether Aristotle focuses on literary theory per se given that not one poem exists in the treatise or whether he focuses instead on dramatic musical theory that only has language as one of the elements. They are similar in the fact that they are all imitations but different in the three ways that Aristotle describes: Differences in music rhythm, harmony, meter and melody. Difference of goodness in the characters. Difference in how the narrative is presented: In examining its "first principles", Aristotle finds two: His analysis of tragedy constitutes the core of the discussion. It was available in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance only through a Latin translation of an Arabic version written by Averroes. The lost second part addressed comedy. The reason is that Aristotle says three times in the treatise that the protagonist can go from fortune to misfortune or misfortune to fortune; also in Chapter 14 the best type of tragoidos is that which ends happily, like Cresphontes and Iphigenia presumably "in Tauris"! Preliminary discourse on tragedy, epic poetry, and comedy, as the chief forms of imitative poetry. Definition of a tragedy, and the rules for its construction. Definition and analysis into qualitative parts. Rules for the construction of a tragedy: Tragic pleasure, or catharsis experienced by fear and pity should be produced in the spectator. The characters must be four things: Discovery must occur within the plot. Narratives, stories, structures and poetics overlap. It is important for the poet to visualize all of the scenes when creating the plot. Aristotle believed that all of these different elements had to be present in order for the poetry to be well-done. However, starting in with a Macedonian classicist, M. Possible criticisms of an epic or tragedy, and the answers to them. Tragedy as artistically superior to epic poetry: Tragedy has everything that the epic has, even the epic meter being admissible. The reality of presentation is felt in the play as read, as well as in the play as acted. The tragic imitation requires less space for the attainment of its end. If it has more concentrated effect, it is more pleasurable than one with a large admixture of time to dilute it. There is less unity in the imitation of the epic poets plurality of actions and this is proved by the fact that an epic poem can supply enough material for several tragedies. Content Aristotle distinguishes between the genres of "poetry" in three ways: Matter language, rhythm, and melody, for Aristotle, make up the matter of poetic creation. Where the epic poem makes use of language alone, the playing of the lyre involves rhythm and melody. Some poetic forms include a blending of all materials; for example, Greek tragic drama included a singing chorus, and so music and language were all part of the performance. These points also convey the standard view. Recent work, though, argues that translating rhuthmos here as "rhythm" is absurd: This correctly conveys what dramatic musical creation, the topic of the Poetics, in ancient Greece had: Also, the musical instrument cited in Ch 1 is not the lyre but the kithara, which was played in the drama while the kithara-player was dancing in the chorus, even if that meant just walking in an appropriate way. Aristotle differentiates between tragedy and comedy throughout the work by distinguishing between the nature of the human characters that populate either form. Aristotle finds that tragedy treats of serious, important, and virtuous people. Comedy, on the other hand, treats of less virtuous people and focuses on human "weaknesses and foibles". This latter is the method of tragedy and comedy: Having examined briefly the field of "poetry" in general, Aristotle proceeds to his definition of tragedy: Tragedy is a representation of a serious, complete action which has magnitude, in embellished speech, with each of its elements [used] separately in the [various] parts [of the play] and [represented] by people acting and not by narration, accomplishing by means of pity and terror the catharsis of such emotions. By "embellished speech", I mean that which has rhythm and melody, i. By "with its elements separately", I mean that some [parts of it] are accomplished only by means of spoken verses, and others again by means of song b It should imitate an action evoking pity and fear. The plot involves a change from bad towards good, or good towards bad. Complex plots have reversals and recognitions. These and suffering or violence are used to Page 13