POETICS: Aristotle's Observation on Poetry

• Aristotle’s work on aesthetics consists of the Poetics, Politics and Rhetoric.
• The Poetics is specifically concerned with drama.
• It is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory.
• Poetics contains twenty six small chapters.
• Chapter I, II, III, IV and the XXV are devoted to poetry.
• Chapter V in general way to comedy, epic, and tragedy.
• Chapter VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII and XIX are exclusively to tragedy.
• Chapter XX, XXI and XXII to poetic diction.
• Chapter XXIII to epic poetry.
• Chapter XXIV, XXVI to a comparison of epic poetry and tragedy.
• According to Aristotle the poet imitates things ‘as they were or are’, ‘as they are said or thought to be’ or ‘as they ought to be’.
• Unlike Plato, Aristotle does not consider the poet’s imitations of life as twice removed from reality.
• To prove this Aristotle makes a comparison between poetry and history. The poet relates what may happen. The historian relates what has happened. Poetry therefore is more philosophical and higher than history.
• Aristotle considers pleasure as the end of poetry. Because it pleases both poet and reader.
• Poetry makes an immediate appeal to the emotions.
• Tragedy arouses the emotions of pity and fear.
• According to him these emotions are aroused with a view to their purgation or catharsis.
• Aristotle says that emotional appeal of poetry is not harmful but health-giving.
• Poetry can also be an excellent learning device.

 

Aristotle’s Observations on Tragedy

• Aristotle says “tragedy 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 kind of 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.”
• Serious action means a tale of suffering exciting pity and fear.
• Action includes all human activities, including deeds, thoughts and feelings.
• It should be complete with proper beginning, middle and end.
• Completeness means organic unity or a natural sequence of events.
• Artistic ornaments are all designed to enrich the language of the play to make it effective.
• A plot should have a certain magnitude or a reasonable length.
• Aristotle finds six constituent parts in tragedy: plot, character, thought, diction, song and spectacle.
• The plot or arrangement of the incidents is the chief part of the tragedy.
• Without action there cannot be a tragedy: there may be tragedy without character.
• Tragedy is written not merely to imitate men but to imitate men in action.
• Character is next only in importance to plot.
• Thought reveals itself in speech. Thought imitates men’s mental and emotional reaction to the circumstances.
• Writer employs the medium of diction or words embellished with each kind of artistic ornament.
• For spectacle or stage representation constitutes the manner in which tragedy is presented to the public.
• According to Aristotle plot is the soul of tragedy.
• Plot should have the unity of action.
• The structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjoined and disturbed.
• By unity of time Aristotle means the conformity between the time taken by the events of the play and that taken in their representation on stage.
• By unity of place Aristotle means the conformity between the scene of the tragic event or events and the time taken by them to happen.
• According to Aristotle for a good plot it is necessary to arouse pity and fear in the spectator or the reader.
• The plot finally is divisible into two parts – Complication and Denouement.
• Complication ties the events into a tangled knot, Denouement unties it.
• The complication includes all the actions from the beginning to the point where it takes a turn for good or ill; the denouement extends from the turning point to the end.
• Complication commonly called the rising action and denouement, falling action.
• The plot may be simple or complex. In a simple plot there are no puzzling situations that enter into a complex plot, in particular Peripeteia and Anagnorisis.
• Peripeteia is generally explained as “reversal of the situation” and Anagnorisis as “recognition or discovery”. Anagnorisis is a “change from ignorance to knowledge”.
• Both Peripeteia and Anagnorisis please because there is an element of surprise in them.
• According to Aristotle, the ideal tragic hero should be good but neither too bad not too perfect.
• This error in tragic hero’s character is hamartia or the tragic flaw.
• Aristotle concludes by comparing tragedy with epic poetry and determining that tragedy is on the whole superior.

Aristotle’s Observations on Comedy

• In “Poetics” Aristotle devoted Chapter V to comedy, epic, and tragedy.
• Aristotle in his ‘Poetics’ says that comedy is originated from phallic songs and satirical verses.
• The roots of comedy lie deep in satirical verse.
• While the satire, ridicules personalities, comedy ridicules general vices – one the ‘sinner’ and the other the ‘sin’.
• Aristotle disagreeing with Plato, rules out malicious pleasure as the basis of comedy.
• Comedy shares the generalizing power of poetry.
• In comedy characters have some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive. 
• It equally represents not what has happened but what may happen.
• Aristotle divides the object of imitation into superior action and inferior action, within the dramatic genres, comedy imitates inferior action.
• He contrasts comedy with tragedy, which represents humans as “better than they are.”
• The major charactersin a comedy are average people.
• Comedy represents universal and it does not represent individual frailties.