poetics

Plato (427–347 B.C.E.) is notorious for attacking art in Book 10 of his Republic . According to Plato's Theory of Forms, objects in this world are imitations or approximations of ideal Forms that are the true reality. A chair in this world is just an imitation or instantiation of the Form of Chair. That being the case, art is twice removed from reality, as it is just an imitation of an imitation: a painting of a chair is an imitation of a chair which is in turn an imitation of the Form of Chair. Further, Plato argues that art serves to excite the emotions, which can detract from the balanced reasoning that is essential to virtue.

Aristotle's Poetics can be read as a response to Plato's attack on art. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) was a student at Plato's Academy from the time he was seventeen until Plato's death some twenty years later. He spent the next twelve years engaging in scientific research and serving as tutor to the then teenaged Alexander the Great. He returned to Athens in 335 B.C.E., and founded his own school on the steps of the Lyceum. He remained there until 323 B.C.E., when he was forced to leave as a result of his associations with Alexander. He died a year later of natural causes. The Lyceum remained open until 525 C.E., when it was closed by the emperor Justinian.

None of the works of Aristotle that we have today were actually published by Aristotle. He wrote a number of treatises and dialogues, but these have all been lost. What survives are collections of notes, possibly from lecture courses Aristotle gave at the Lyceum, which are often unclear or incomplete. The Poetics, in true form, was likely a much longer work than the one we have today. Aristotle supposedly wrote a second book on comedy, which is now lost.

The main focus of the Poetics is on Greek tragedy. Though there were thousands of tragedies and scores of playwrights, we only have thirty-three extant tragedies, written by the three great tragedians: Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.E.), Sophocles (496–405 B.C.E.), and Euripides (485–406 B.C.E.). Tragedies were performed in Athens twice annually at festivals in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine and excess. Though the tragedies likely evolved out of religious ceremonies celebrating the cycle of the seasons, they became increasingly secular. The dramatic festivals were immensely important events, and the winning playwrights achieved great fame.

The Poetics also discusses epic poetry, using the example of Homer (eighth century B.C.E.) almost exclusively. Homer wrote two great epics, the Iliad and theOdyssey , which deal with the fall of Troy and Odysseus's subsequent wanderings respectively. These epics are the source of a great number of Greek tragedies and are considered among the earliest great works of world literature.

Though the Poetics is not one of Aristotle's major works, it has exercised a great deal of influence on subsequent literary theory, particularly in the Renaissance. Later interpreters unfortunately turned many of Aristotle's suggestions into strict laws, restricting the flexibility of drama in ways that Aristotle would not have anticipated. The tragedies of Racine and Corneille in particular are formed according to these demands. Even though such great playwrights as Shakespeare often went against these laws, they were held as the model for writing tragedy well into the nineteenth century.

Chapters 1–3

Summary

Aristotle proposes to approach poetry from a scientific viewpoint, examining the constituent parts of poetry and drawing conclusions from those observations. First, he lists the different kinds of poetry: epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry, and most flute-playing and lyre-playing. Next, he remarks that all of these kinds of poetry are mimetic, or imitative, but that there are significant differences between them.

The first kind of distinction is the means they employ. Just as a painter employs paint and a sculptor employs stone, the poet employs language, rhythm, and harmony, either singly or in combinations. For instance, flute-playing and lyre-playing employ rhythm and harmony, while dance employs only rhythm. He also addresses the question of non-poetic language, arguing that poetry is essentially mimetic, whether it is in verse or in prose. Thus, Homer is a poet, while Empedocles, a philosopher who wrote in verse, is not. While Empedocles writes in verse, his writing is not mimetic, and so it is not poetry. In tragedy, comedy, and other kinds of poetry, rhythm, language, and harmony are all used. In some cases, as in lyric poetry, all three are used together, while in other cases, as in comedy or tragedy, the different parts come in to play at different times.

The second distinction is the objects that are imitated. All poetry represents actions with agents who are either better than us, worse than us, or quite like us. For instance, tragedy and epic poetry deal with characters who are better than us, while comedy and parody deal with characters who are worse than us.

The final distinction is with the manner of representation: the poet either speaks directly in narrative or assumes the characters of people in the narrative and speaks through them. For instance, many poets tell straight narratives while Homer alternates between narrative and accounts of speeches given by characters in his narrative. In tragedy and comedy, the poet speaks exclusively through assumed characters.

Analysis

The very first paragraph of the Poetics gives us 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.

This is the same scientific method that Aristotle employs so successfully in examining natural phenomena: careful observation followed by tentative theories to explain the observations. The immediate and pressing question, then, is whether Aristotle is right in applying his scientific method to poetry. Physical phenomena are subject to unchanging, natural laws, and presumably a careful study of the phenomena matched with a little insight might uncover what these natural laws are. Aristotle seems to be proceeding with the assumption that the same is true for poetry: its growth and development has been guided by unchanging, natural laws, and the Poetics seeks to uncover these laws.

The results are mixed. In some cases, what Aristotle says seems quite right, while in others his conclusions seem very limiting. We will examine this question further when Aristotle delves deeper into the elements of tragedy.

Before going any further, we might do well to clarify some terms. When Aristotle talks about "art" or "poetry" he is not talking about what we might understand by these words. "Art" is the translation of the Greek word techne and is closely related to "artifice" and "artificial." Art for Aristotle is anything that is made by human beings as opposed to being found in nature. Thus, poetry, painting, and sculpture count as "art," but so do chairs, horseshoes, and sandals.

Our conception of "art" is more closely (but not exactly) approximated by what Aristotle calls "mimetic art." The Greek word mimesis defies exact translation, though "imitation" works quite well in the context of the Poetics. A chair is something you can sit in, but a painting of a chair is merely an imitation, or representation, of a real chair.

Paintings use paint to imitate real life, and sculptures use stone. Poetry is distinguished as the mimetic art that uses language, rhythm, and harmony to imitate real life, language obviously being the most crucial component.

This raises the question of in what way poetry imitates, or "mimics," real life. The events in Oedipus Rex did not actually happen in real life. In fact, it is important that tragedy be fictional and that there be an understanding that the events taking place on stage are not real: no one should call the police when Hamlet kills Polonius. Still, tragedy deals with humans who speak and act in a way that real humans conceivably could have spoken and acted. It is important that there be an understanding that the account is fictional, but it must also be close enough to reality that it is plausible.

There are significant differences between the kind of poetry discussed here and our conception of poetry. In modern times, the definition of poetry is closely linked to its being written in verse. Aristotle directly contradicts that definition, pointing out that Empedocles' philosophical verses are not poetry; they present ideas rather than imitate life.

Further, narrative is essential to Aristotle's definition of poetry. Not only comedy and tragedy, but also the epic poetry of the Greeks tells stories, as we find in the Iliadand the Odyssey . Both drama and epic poetry are fictional accounts that imitate real life in some way. On the other hand, a great deal of poetry in the modern world does not imitate life in any obvious way. For instance, the Robert Burns line, "My love is like a red, red rose" may be said to "imitate" or represent the poet's love for a woman, but by that token, Empedocles' verses might be said to "imitate" or represent certain philosophical concepts.

Aristotle is not trying to condemn Robert Burns for writing love poems; he is simply trying to catalog the different kinds of poetry that existed in his time. They all employ language, rhythm, and harmony in some way or another, they all deal with people who are engaging in certain kinds of action, and they all involve some sort of direct or indirect narrative. Whether something is an epic poem, a comedy, or a tragedy depends on how it fits within these categories. For instance, a tragedy is a composite of language, rhythm, and harmony that deals with agents who are on the whole better than us, and the poet speaks directly through these agents.

Chapters 4–5

Summary

Aristotle suggests that it is human nature to write and appreciate poetry. We are by nature imitative creatures that learn and excel by imitating others, and we naturally take delight in works of imitation. As evidence of the claim that we delight in imitation, he points out that we are fascinated by representations of dead bodies or disgusting animals even though the things themselves would repel us. Aristotle suggests that we can also learn by examining representations and imitations of things and that learning is one of the greatest pleasures there is. Rhythm and harmony also come naturally to us, so that poetry gradually evolved out of our improvisations with these media.

As poetry evolved, a sharp division developed between serious writers who would write about noble characters in lofty hymns and panegyrics, and meaner writers who would write about ignoble characters in demeaning invectives. Tragedy and comedy are later developments that are the grandest representation of their respective traditions: tragedy of the lofty tradition and comedy of the mean tradition.

Aristotle stops short of saying that tragedy has achieved its complete and finished form. He lists four innovations in the development from improvised dithyrambs toward the tragedies of his day. Dithyrambs were sung in honor of Dionysus, god of wine, by a chorus of around fifty men and boys, often accompanied by a narrator.Aeschylus is responsible for the first innovation, reducing the number of the chorus and introducing a second actor on stage, which made dialogue the central focus of the poem. Second, Sophocles added a third actor and also introduced background scenery. Third, tragedy developed an air of seriousness, and the meter changed from a trochaic rhythm, which is more suitable for dancing, to an iambic rhythm, which is closer to the natural rhythms of conversational speech. Fourth, tragedy developed a plurality of episodes, or acts.

Next, Aristotle elaborates on what he means when he says that comedy deals with people worse than us ourselves, saying that comedy deals with the ridiculous. He defines the ridiculous as a kind of ugliness that does no harm to anybody else. Aristotle is able only to give a very sketchy account of the origins of comedy, because it was not generally treated with the same respect as tragedy and so there are fewer records of the innovations that led to its present form.

While both tragedy and epic poetry deal with lofty subjects in a grand style of verse, Aristotle notes three significant differences between the two genres. First, tragedy is told in a dramatic, rather than narrative, form, and employs several different kinds of verse while epic poetry employs only one. Second, the action of a tragedy is usually confined to a single day, and so the tragedy itself is usually much shorter than an epic poem. Third, while tragedy has all the elements that are characteristic of epic poetry, it also has some additional elements that are unique to it alone.

Analysis

Aristotle further elaborates on the value of the mimetic arts with his assertion that we are naturally imitative creatures who delight in imitation. Aristotle relates this claim to our ability to learn and reason: we exercise our reason when seeing something as an imitation of something else. It takes a certain level of recognition to see a bunch of men dancing and singing in masks as imitations of characters from ancient myths, to see stylized gestures as imitations of real action, or to see the emotional intensity generated both by actors and audience as an imitation of the emotional intensity that would have been felt if the action on stage were transpiring in real life. Aristotle defines humans as rational animals, suggesting that our rationality is what distinguishes us from other creatures. If the ability to recognize an imitation and understand what it is meant to represent requires reasoning, then we are delighting in that very faculty that makes us human.

Aristotle's account of the origin of tragedy seems on the whole quite sound. The sparseness of archaeological and other evidence has long frustrated scholars, but it seems that Aristotle's suggestion that tragedy evolved from the dithyramb is as good as any we have. Dionysus is the Greek god of vegetation and wine, and the dithyrambs in honor of him are thought to have been part of festivals celebrating the harvest and the changing of the seasons. These songs were thus part of religious ceremonies, and the speaker that accompanied the large chorus was probably a priest of some sort. Though initially improvised, these dithyrambs developed a more rigid structure, and the speaker often engaged in dialogue with the chorus. Aeschylus is generally credited with the innovation of adding a second actor, which transformed choral singing into dialogue, ritual into drama. In short, Aeschylus invented tragedy and is the first great playwright of the Western tradition.

Near the end of Chapter 5, Aristotle mentions that one of the differences between tragedy and epic poetry is that the action of a tragedy usually unfolds in the space of a single day. This is often interpreted as one of the three "unities" of tragic drama. In fact, the three unities—unity of action (one single plot with no loose threads), unity of time (action takes place within a single day), and unity of place (action takes place in a single location)—were not invented by Aristotle at all. The Italian theorist Lodovico Castelvetro formalized these unities in 1570. This formalization was inspired by the Poetics, but it is far more restrictive than anything Aristotle says. The only unity he insists upon, as we shall see, is the unity of action. His reference here to the unity of time seems to be a general guideline and not one that must be followed strictly, and there is even less evidence to suggest that Aristotle demanded unity of place. The fact is, Aristotle's formulas were all drawn from Greek tragedy, and these tragedies frequently violated the unities of time and place.

Chapter 6

Summary

Aristotle now narrows his focus to examine tragedy exclusively. In order to do so, he provides a definition of tragedy that we can break up into seven parts: (1) it involves mimesis; (2) it is serious; (3) the action is complete and with magnitude; (4) it is made up of language with the "pleasurable accessories" of rhythm and harmony; (5) these "pleasurable accessories" are not used uniformly throughout, but are introduced in separate parts of the work, so that, for instance, some bits are spoken in verse and other bits are sung; (6) it is performed rather than narrated; and (7) it arouses the emotions of pity and fear and accomplishes a katharsis(purification or purgation) of these emotions.

Next, Aristotle asserts that any tragedy can be divided into six component parts, and that every tragedy is made up of these six parts with nothing else besides. There is (a) the spectacle, which is the overall visual appearance of the stage and the actors. The means of imitation (language, rhythm, and harmony) can be divided into (b) melody, and (c) diction, which has to do with the composition of the verses. The agents of the action can be understood in terms of (d) character and (e) thought. Thought seems to denote the intellectual qualities of an agent while character seems to denote the moral qualities of an agent. Finally, there is (f) the plot, or mythos, which is the combination of incidents and actions in the story.

Aristotle argues that, among these six, the plot is the most important. The characters serve to advance the action of the story, not vice versa. The ends we pursue in life, our happiness and our misery, all take the form of action. That is, according to Aristotle, happiness consists in a certain kind of activity rather than in a certain quality of character. Diction and thought are also less significant than plot: a series of well-written speeches have nothing like the force of a well-structured tragedy. Further, Aristotle suggests, the most powerful elements in a tragedy, theperipeteia and the anagnorisis, are elements of the plot. Lastly, Aristotle notes that forming a solid plot is far more difficult than creating good characters or diction.

Having asserted that the plot is the most important of the six parts of tragedy, he ranks the remainder as follows, from most important to least: character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle. Character reveals the individual motivations of the characters in the play, what they want or don't want, and how they react to certain situations, and this is more important to Aristotle than thought, which deals on a more universal level with reasoning and general truths. Melody and spectacle are simply pleasurable accessories, but melody is more important to the tragedy than spectacle: a pretty spectacle can be arranged without a play, and usually matters of set and costume aren't the occupation of the poet anyway.

Analysis

Aristotle's definition of tragedy at the beginning of this chapter is supposed to summarize what he has already said, but it is the first mention of the katharsis. The Greek word katharsis was usually used either by doctors to talk about purgation, the flushing of contaminants out of the system, or by priests to talk about religious purification. In either case, it seems to refer to a therapeutic process whereby the body or mind expels contaminants and becomes clean and healthy. Determining exactly what role katharsis is meant to play in tragedy is somewhat more difficult.

First, we might ask what exactly katharsis is in reference to tragedy. The idea, it seems, is that watching a tragedy arouses the emotions of pity and fear in us and then purges these emotions. But, by virtue of mimesis, we aren't feeling real pity or real fear. I may feel pity for Oedipus when he learns that he has killed his father and married his mother, but this is a different kind of pity than the pity I feel for the homeless or for those living in war zones. I know that Oedipus is not a real person and that no one is really suffering when I watch Oedipus suffer. As a result, I can empathize with the character of Oedipus without feeling any kind of guilt or obligation to help him out. Watching tragedy has a cathartic effect because I can let go of the emotional tension built up in me as I leave the theater. I am able to experience profound emotion without having its consequences stay with me and harden me to subsequent emotional shocks.

Second, we might ask to what extent katharsis is the purpose of tragedy, and to what extent it is an occasional effect of tragedy. The question of in what way art may be good for us is a very difficult question to answer. The best art (and this applies to Greek tragedy) is not didactic: it does not try to tell us outright how we ought or ought not to behave. At the same time, there is definitely a lot we can learn from a subtle appreciation of art. The value of art, on the whole, seems to stem more from its ability to arouse emotion and awareness on an abstract, general level, rather than to teach us particular truths. Oedipus Rex is valuable because it engenders a certain state of mind, not because it teaches us to avoid marrying older women whose family histories are uncertain.

Though katharsis may be an important effect of tragedy, it is hardly the reason for which poets write tragedies. If that were so, poets would be little more than emotional therapists. Again, Aristotle is writing as an observer more than as a theorist. He has observed that tragedy has a cathartic effect on its viewers, but he is not trying to enunciate this as the end goal of all tragedy.

The other important concept we encounter in this chapter is that of mythos. While "plot" is a pretty good translation of this word in reference to tragedy, mythos can be applied to sculpture, music, or any other art form. The mythos of a piece of art is the way it is structured and organized in order to make a coherent statement. Thus, when Aristotle speaks about the "plot" of a tragedy, he is not just referring to who did what to whom, but is speaking about how the events in the story come together to bring out deeper, general themes.

Plot, then, is central to a tragedy, because that is where, if at all, its value lies. If character were central to tragedy, we would be watching Oedipus Rex in order to learn something about Oedipus, about what makes him tick, or how he reacts in different situations. The character of Oedipus in itself is uninteresting: why should we care about the personality of someone who never existed? The value of Oedipus lies in what we can learn about ourselves and our world from observing his fate. What we learn from a tragedy—the effect it has on us—results from the way it is structured to draw our minds toward general truths and ideas; that is, from its mythos.