Aristotle's Poetics

Lamyaa O.Hussien
Dr.Amaal.J Al-Qaisi
Modern Drama
April 18, 2020
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Aristotle's Poetics
Aristotle's Poetics are not known, researchers believe that the work was composed around 330 BCE and was preserved primarily through Aristotle's students' notes. Despite its vague beginning, the Poetics has been a central document in the study of aesthetics and literature for centuries, proving especially influential during the Renaissance; it continues to have relevance in scholarly circles today.
Over the years the Poetics has been both praised and disparaged. Some critics object to Aristotle's theory of poetics and regret that the work has held such sway in the history of Western literature. One contemporary critic argues that Aristotle "reduces drama to its language," and the "language itself to its least poetic element, the story, and then encourages insensitive readers...to subject stories to crudely moralistic readings that reduce tragedies to the childish proportions of Aesop-fables" (Sachs 1). Other critics have argued against such views and reclaimed the Poetics for their own times; often these critics emphasize the importance of reading the Poetics in its historical context - it was, after all, written an awfully long time ago - and stress that despite this historical barrier the insights contained in the work still hold true. Whichever side of the debate you end up on, it is important when studying the Poetics to take time to decode its dense text.
The Poetics is widely considered one of Aristotle's most demanding but rewarding texts, requiring commitment in its study, but offering profound returns to the diligent reader.
The Poetics is Aristotle's attempt to explain the basic problems of art. He both defines art and offers criteria for determining the quality of a given artwork.
The Poetics stands in opposition to the theory of art propounded by Aristotle's teacher,

Plato. In his Republic, Plato argues that "poetry is a representation of mere appearances and is thus misleading and morally suspect" (Critical, 1). In the poetics, Aristotle, Plato's student, attempts to refute his teacher by exploring what unites all poetry: its imitative nature and its ability to bring an audience into its specific plot while preserving a unity of purpose and theme. The tone of the Poetics reflects its argumentative spirit as Aristotle attempts both to explain the "anatomy" of poetry and to justify its value to human society.
Despite its broad goals, however, Aristotle's arguments are quite concrete. He is less interested in the abstract "existence" of art than he is in looking at specific artworks by specific playwrights. Aristotle wants to explain why effective poetry has stayed with audiences for so long. He tends to look for "empirical evidence" - i.e. sensory proof through past observation - that art is both good and useful, no matter how philosophers like Plato try to dismiss it.
Aristotle's Poetics seeks to address the different kinds of poetry, the structure of a good poem, and the division of a poem into its component parts. He defines poetry as a 'medium of imitation' that seeks to represent or duplicate life through character, emotion, or action. Aristotle defines poetry very broadly, including epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry, and even some kinds of music.
According to Aristotle, tragedy came from the efforts of poets to present men as 'nobler,' or 'better' than they are in real life. Comedy, on the other hand, shows a 'lower type' of person, and reveals humans to be worse than they are in average. Epic poetry, on the other hand, imitates 'noble' men like tragedy, but only has one type of meter - unlike tragedy, which can have several - and is narrative in form.
Aristotle lays out six elements of tragedy: plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, and song. Plot is 'the soul' of tragedy, because action is paramount to the significance of a drama, and all other elements are subsidiary. A plot must have a beginning, middle, and end; it must also be universal in significance, have a determinate structure, and maintain a unity of theme and purpose.
Plot also must contain elements of astonishment, reversal (peripeteia), recognition, and suffering. Reversal is an ironic twist or change by which the main action of the story

comes full-circle. Recognition, meanwhile, is the change from ignorance to knowledge, usually involving people coming to understand one another's true identities. Suffering is a destructive or painful action, which is often the result of a reversal or recognition. All three elements coalesce to create "catharsis," which is the engenderment of fear and pity in the audience: pity for the tragic hero's plight, and fear that his fate might befall us.
When it comes to character, a poet should aim for four things. First, the hero must be 'good,' and thus manifest moral purpose in his speech. Second, the hero must have propriety, or 'manly valor.' Thirdly, the hero must be 'true to life.' And finally, the hero must be consistent.
Tragedy and Epic poetry fall into the same categories: simple, complex (driven by reversal and recognition), ethical (moral) or pathetic (passion). There are a few differences between tragedy and epic, however. First, an epic poem does not use song or spectacle to achieve its cathartic effect. Second, epics often cannot be presented at a single sitting, whereas tragedies are usually able to be seen in a single viewing. Finally, the 'heroic measure' of epic poetry is hexameter, where tragedy often uses other forms of meter to achieve the rhythms of different characters' speech.
Aristotle also lays out the elements of successful imitation. The poet must imitate either things as they are, things as they are thought to be, or things as they ought to be.
The poet must also imitate in action and language (preferably metaphors or contemporary words). Errors come when the poet imitates incorrectly - and thus destroys the essence of the poem - or when the poet accidentally makes an error (a factual error, for instance).
Aristotle does not believe that factual errors sabotage the entire work; errors that limit or compromise the unity of a given work, however, are much more consequential.
Aristotle concludes by tackling the question of whether the epic or tragic form is 'higher.' Most critics of his time argued that tragedy was for an inferior audience that required the gesture of performers, while epic poetry was for a 'cultivated audience' which could filter a narrative form through their own imaginations. In reply, Aristotle notes that epic recitation can be marred by overdone gesticulation in the same way as a tragedy; moreover, tragedy, like poetry, can produce its effect without action - its power

is in the mere reading. Aristotle argues that tragedy is, in fact, superior to epic, because it has all the epic elements as well as spectacle and music to provide an indulgent pleasure for the audience. Tragedy, then, despite the arguments of other critics, is the higher art for
Aristotle. pic 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.
For as there are persons who, by conscious art or mere habit, imitate and represent various objects through the medium of colour and form, or again by the voice; so in the arts above mentioned, taken as a whole, the imitation is produced by rhythm, language, or 'harmony,' either singly or combined. 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.
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.
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: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. The cause of this again is, that to learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general.
Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature. Next, there is the instinct for 'harmony' and rhythm, metres being manifestly sections of rhythm. Persons, therefore, starting with this natural gift developed by degrees their special aptitudes, till their rude improvisations gave birth to Poetry.
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
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 medium of imitation. By 'Diction' I mean the mere metrical arrangement of the words: as for 'Song,' it is a term whose sense every one understands.
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 character--are 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.
Again, a beautiful object, whether it be a living organism or any whole composed of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement of parts, but must also be of a certain magnitude; for beauty depends on magnitude and order. Hence a very small animal organism cannot be beautiful; for the view of it is confused, the object being seen in an almost imperceptible moment of time. Nor, again, can one of vast size be beautiful; for as the eye cannot take it all in at once, the unity and sense of the whole is lost for the

spectator; as for instance if there were one a thousand miles long. As, therefore, in the case of animate bodies and organisms a certain magnitude is necessary, and a magnitude which may be easily embraced in one view; so in the plot, a certain length is necessary, and a length which can be easily embraced by the memory.