Poetics 1 1- 1 Curtis Perry Otto 11 November 2002 all rights reserved Aristotles Poetics I propose to treat of Poetry itself

and 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. (7) So Aristotle begins what is arguably the most influential literary treatise in the history of Western thought. Aristotles approach to the topic was consistent with his method incorporating thorough research when studying other areas. Oscar Brockett states that when writing the Poetics, the first systematic treatise on drama, the philosopher compiled a record of plays and winners at all the festivals (39-40). As at the time the treatise was written Athens had staged several dramatic festivals yearly for over a hundred years, this was a prodigious feat. Barrett Clark states that the work is the earliest critical treatise extant dealing with dramatic practice and theory []. There are few if any important contributions to dramatic theory and criticism which fail to take account of the work, but owing to its obviously incomplete form, the many corrupt portions of the text, it compact and elliptical style, it has been constantly misinterpreted, misquoted, and misunderstood (5). Examination will show that the Poetics, at times scintillatingly clear and direct and at other times meandering and haphazard, addresses such important ideas with such cogency that it remains influential to this day

Poetics 2 2- 2 Origins As a polymath, Aristotle wrote on many different topics. Whereas practical sciences, such as ethics and politics, are concerned with human action, and productive sciences with making things, theoretical sciences such as theology, mathematics, and the natural sciences aim at truth and are pursued for their own sake. Aristotle was unique in pursuing all three. His Rhetoric and Poetics, which provide the foundation for the study of speech and literary theory, are his contributions to the productive sciences (Cohen, para. 10). The connection of the Poetics with the productive sciences is literally correct. The English word poet derives from the Greek poietes or maker. Approximately 2000 pages of text by Aristotle remain extant. Cohen cites this figure as a quarter to a fifth of his total writings, most of which were probably written during the period he was at the Lyceum, approximately 335-323 (para. 3-7). Consensus exists that the Poetics was written during this time. If so, it was composed nearly a century after the great classical playwrights, and so was backward looking rather than oriented toward the future (Gerould, 44). The ideas that Aristotle expounds in the Poetics are consistent with the ideas he expresses in his other works. Malcolm Heath finds links between emotion, virtue, music and katharsis (sic) as discussed in Nichomachean Ethics, Politics and Poetics (xxxviii-xxxix). Jones finds a parallel between the way Aristotle describes soul in De Anima and action provides a similar quickening benefit to the form of tragedy. His work Concerning the Poets is no longer extant. Aristotle, Plato and Poets Plato, in the Republic, and Aristotle, in the Poetics, write about poets. Both adapted for their own aesthetic theories currents of thought that had evolved in Greek culture over a considerable period of time (Golden, para.1). Many writers find that Aristotles first cause to

Poetics 3 3- 3 write the Poetics was in response to Platos condemnation of art found in the Republic, however. Plato challenged the role of the poet where Aristotle defended it. Plato bans Homer from his Republic, holding poetry to be demoralizing because it shows divine immorality and human baseness (Golden, para. 3). John Jones states Plato held it against poetry that its emotional appeal is a threat to the authority of reason, that it tells lies (simply, the stories told by poets are untrue, that these things never happened), and that works of imaginative literature are remote from reality remote in a special philosophical sense. (21). Do artists have right to depict world as they see it? Aristotle makes no issue with the content of the Homeric epics, but rather faults the expansive narrative structure of epic which, in contrast with the compact, unified form of tragedy, dilutes its meaning and effect. (Golden, para. 3) In the Poetics, Aristotle examines poetic concerns in a literary context; in the Republic, Plato examines them in an ethical context. It is true that in stressing the pleasure-giving feature of art, this dispassionate thinker broke with the moralistic attitudes of Plato and asserted the freedom of the arts from moral censorship (Gassner, xl). Observations on the Text The text that has come to us is incomplete. Frederick Copleston writes, for example, that the understanding of catharis is rendered difficult because the second book of the Poetics is missingin which, it is conjectured, Aristotle explained what he meant by catharsis (and probably also treated of Comedy) (366). The extant text is commonly divided into 26 parts or chapters. Chapters 1-5 are introductory, revealing the essential nature of poetry, its origins and types. Excepting chapter 12, commonly thought an interpolation, chapters 6 through 19 mainly address the components of tragedy, with detours to first contrast history and poetry and then to address dramatic narrative.

Poetics 4 4- 4 Parts 20 and 21 on words and language are frequently cited as interpolations. Chapters 24 through 26 discuss epic poetry and compare it to tragedy. Significant Concepts in the Poetics Aristotle defines tragedy as an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude (23). From this, plot becomes the primary component of tragedy. He goes to make the point that most important of all is the structure of the incidents. For Tragedy (sic) 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 (25-6). The connection between incidents must be causal, with the result that the story has a fixed beginning, middle, and end. He identifies other components as character, thought, diction (language), song, and spectacle. He distinguishes between comedy and tragedy in that comedy concerns imitation of characters of a lower typenot, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the Ludicrous (sic) being merely a subdivision of the ugly (21). One may think of the television characters Archie Bunker or George Jefferson to see that this distinction remains useful to this day. Aristotle distinguishes comedy and tragedy from other written imitative art, being epic poetry. Epic, owing to the tendency to diffuse the focus of the action, is seen as the lesser form. He offers Sophocles Oedipus the model for the perfect tragic poem and the Odyssey as the model for the perfect epic. Of the two, he cites the tragedy as perfect as possible in structure...in the highest degree attainable, an imitation of a single action (111). Aristotle distinguishes imitative works from non-imitative works. Neither physics nor history are poetry, even if written in verse. Furthermore, poetry is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular (35). It is in the form of action, not of narrative (23)

Poetics 5 5- 5 A central issue to tragedy is one of catharsis. Tragedy is an imitation which through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions (23). He states pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves (45). Joe Sachs contrasts tragedy with other dramatic forms, including tear-jerker, horror story and vengence story. He argues that these arouse passions in a destructive way (para. 10). However, Tragedy seems always to involve testing or finding the limits of what is human. This is no mere orgy of strong feeling, but a highly focussed way of bringing our powers to bear on the image of what is human as such. (para. 12) Aristotle is frequently cited as delineating the qualities of the tragic hero or requiring the hero to possess a tragic flaw. He does not use either of those terms, but he does specify a need for a character who has a change of fortune [...] from good to bad [...] come about at the result not of vice, but of some great error or frailty (46-7). However, his specification that the man be illustrious like Oedipus seems contrary to the specification for the eliciting of fear, where the character is to be more like his audience, as discussed above. Later Influence Raymond Nighan writes that Although the poetics of Aristotle was not generally known in the Greek or in translation until the Renaissance, its importance as the founding document of western literary criticism has made it the standard against which the success or failure of drama written in every age has been measured. Such is not without risk, in that misinterpretations abound. (para. 1) The question of merit is an historically complicated one because the Poetics has exerted more influence through the ideas people have read into it than through those it contains. The

Poetics 6 6- 6 Poetics must be distinguished by almost total failure of contact between Aristotles argument and the successive traditions of exegesis (Jones, 11) The Poetics was lost for more than 1500 years, then reintroduced in1498 in a Latin translation. Lodivico Castelvetro published a translation and interpretation of text for his contemporaries in 1570, after which the Poetics became the supreme authority on literary matters in Europe (Brockett, 126). Castlevetro emphasized realism in drama, clarified the difference between rhetoric and poetry, and opposed the earlier opinion that poetry had obligation to teach. This last obligation was founded in Horaces Ars Poetica, which had never been lost to Europe (35). Horaces ideas, including the stricture for decorum in the behavior of characters in plays, were conflated with those of Aristotle to set rigid guidelines for playwrights that were to last for centuries. It was Castlevestro who first stated the unities of time, place, and action as essential rules (Brockett, 127). To Aristotles citing unity of action as an ideal, Renaissance interpreters added the idea of unity of time (implied in the Poetics) and unity of place. However, the Italian scholar makes no attempt to explicate the Poetics, but rather advances his own views that flatly contradict Aristotle (Gould, 108) The degree to rules ascribed to Aristotle came control drama in Europe is exemplified in the controversy over Le Cid in 1637. French playwright Pierre Corneille, in his reworking of an earlier Spanish play, staged an entire war and its resolution while observing the unites of time, place, and action. Audiences loved it, critics howled and the imbroglio grew to the point that Cardinal Richelieu had the French Academy adjudicate the matter. After the resulting censure, Corneille, one of Frances most accomplished playwrights, did not write again for 3 years.

Poetics 7 7- 7 While writing in accord with the unities made plays acceptable to theorists, Spanish Golden Age Playwright Lope De Vega specifically rejected the rules. The most popular writer of his time, he held that art speaks truth which the ignorant crowd gainsays. (90). John Gassner notes that Aristotles objective treatment of creative work can be contrasted with more modern views. Romanticists have stressed the element of self-expression in art, whereas Aristotle defines it as an imitation. [...] At what point, too, does self-expression lead to private or coterie art as incommunicable to the average intelligent man as, let us say, Finnegans Wake? To what degree this is artistically and socially defensible became, in fact, the main issue in the arts of the twentieth century, a controversy as keen as was the battle between the ancients and the moderns in the eighteenth century (il-l) While the specifics Aristotle expounded were derived from ancient Attic sources, the issues he raised are still with us today. It would be incorrect to say that all modern writers gainsay the value of the Poetics. In a speech he gave in 1999, playwright and screenwriter Adam Sorkin advised modern writers to heed the practical wisdom it contains when problem solving their own work. The sponsoring organization then posted a copy of the text on their web site, noting: Modern critics of Aristotles Poetics maintain they are effective only for linear work, while today we are creating and working with multi-dimensional, multiimagery dramatic media. Yet the fact is that before we can execute a program for any present or future medium, no matter how multi-layered or multi-faceted, we must start with the age-old process of writing. That linear writing form can then be

Poetics 8 8- 8 translated into any type of dramatization through formats created specifically for the medium on which you are working. (para. 1) An ongoing debate exists as to whether Arthur Millers modern classic Death of a Salesman fits the Aristotelian model of tragedy. While not a tragedy in the classic Greek form, the use of Aristotles criteria suggest that it does fit the criteria of tragedy. A central issue usually centers on the nature of the tragic hero. The central figure in Millers play is Willie Lowman, the eponymous salesman. Aristotle states that he must be a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty (45).. In no sense can he be read as other than misguided he has a tragic flaw of an axiological nature. Willie Lowman is a character who spent his life convince that material things and popularity were important. The tragic flaw is not one of character, but of judgement. The [action] that art seeks to reproduce is mainly an inward process [...]. Everything that expresses the mental life [...] will fall within this larger sense of action (Butcher, 123). Willie LowmanThe final moment where he come to this realization, he has what Aristotle termed the moment of recognitionthis is his moment. The best form of recognition is coincident with a reversal of the situation (41). When Willie is finally at the end of his rope, he makes the only act he sees available to provide for his family: he drives into a bridge embankment so they can get the insurance money

Poetics 9 9- 9 Conclusion It is only through the particularity of our feelings that our bonds with [tragic characters] emerge. What we care for and cherish makes us pity them and fear for them, and thereby the reverse also happens: our feelings of pity and fear make us recognize what we care for and cherish. In the Poetics, Aristotle provided a map of the process of dramatic art in his time. Because of the clarity of his vision, his representation feature principles which have endured through time and may be seen to be usefully applied today.