Outline of Aristotle's Work and Thought
Poetics: Attempt to classify and categorize; systematic discussion of genres; answer to Plato, poetry beyond mere imitation; centrality of change; change as creative force with positive direction (telos); reality as a process ruled by principles, underlying form manifested in the concrete; poetic imitation reflects the processes of reality; poet as imitator and creator who discovers the form of actions; principle of order is plot; improvement and bringing to completion of natural processes; tragedy as catharsis of pity and fear.
Book One
inquiry into structure of plot; genres/modes of imitation: epic, tragedy,
comedy, dithyrambic poetry, differing in medium, objects and manner of imitation;
imitation produced by rhtyhm, language, and/or harmony; imitation of character,
emotion, action; poet as maker; mixture of means in tragedy and comedy,
dithyrambic and gnomic poetry
Book Two
character, higher and lower types, goodness and badness; "Homer
... makes men better than they are"; "comedy aims at representing
men as worse, tragedy as better than actual life"
Book Three
imitation by narration or directly; drama, representation of action;
comedy < Dorian 'komai' (outlying villages), comedians as 'wandering
from village to village' (kata komas); drama < Dorian 'dran' ('doing'),
action
Book Four
human nature, instinct of imitation, "the most imitative of living
creatures"; pleasure in imitation; pleasure derived from learning
through imitation; instinct for harmony and rhythm; meters as
sections of rhythm; graver spirits: imitation of noble actions (hymns
to gods, praise of famous men), trivial spirits: imitation of meaner
persons (satires in iambic or lampooning measure); Homer, combination
of dramatic form and excellence of imitation; tragedians succeeded epic
poets, drama as higher art form; tragedy derived from dithyramb,
comedy from phallic songs; stately manner of tragedy; colloquialism of iambic
meter.
Book Five
Comedy as imitation of lower characters, "some defect or ugliness
which is not painful or destructive"; epic and tragedy as imitation
of higher characters; epic is narrative in hexameters, no time limit
to the action; action of tragedy limited to one day, contains all the elements
of epic
Book Six
tragedy: "imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of
a certain magnitude," action rather than narrative, "through
pity and fear effecting the proper purgation [CATHARSIS] of these emotions,"
language embellished with rhtythm, harmony, and song, imitation of an
action, personal agents endowed with character and thought ("the two
natural causes from which actions spring"), plot is imitation
of action, six parts of tragedy: plot, character, diction, thought,
spectacle (stage machinery), song; consequences of character and action:
happiness or the opposite; plot, artistically constructed incidents,
peripeteia or reversal of situation; plot as "soul of a tragedy";
character reveals moral purpose
Book Seven
"beauty depends on magnitude and order"; "an exceedingly
small picture cannot be beautiful"; length of plot should be "easily
embraced by the memory"
Book Eight
unity of plot; centering of action around a unified action
Book Nine
history vs poetry: the poet relates not what actually happened but "what
may happen ... what is possible according to the law of probability
or necessity"; "poetry is a more philosophical and a higher
thing than history [PHILOSOPHOTERON KAI SPOUDAIOTERON]: for poetry
tends to express the universal, history the particular"; "what
is possible is credible"; poet should be "maker of plots rather
than of verses"; effect of fear or pity, "best produced when
the events come on us by surprise"; cause and effect;
"even coincidences are most striking when they have an air of design,"
not due to chance
Book Ten
plots: simple (without reversal of situation or recognition), complex (with
reversal and/or recognition)
Book Eleven
recognition [ANAGNORISIS]: change from ignorance to knowledge; best
recognition coincides with reversal of situation; surprises; scene
of suffering
Book Twelve
parts of tragedy: prologue, episode, exode, choric song (parode and stasimon);
prologue: what precedes parode of chorus; episode: between complete choric
songs; exode: no choric song after it; parode: first undivided utterance
of chorus; stasimon: choric ode without anapests or trochaic tetrameters;
commos: joint lamentation of chorus and actors
Book Thirteen
perfect tragedy should not feature virtuous man falling from prosperity
to adversity or bad man going from adversity to prosperity, nor downfall
of utter villain; "pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune,
fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves"; character between
extremes "not eminently good and just ... whose misfortune is brought
about not by vice and depravity, but by some error [HAMARTIA] or frailty";
end unhappily; Euripides, most tragic of the poets; second rank of
tragedy: double thread of plot, opposite catastrophe for the good and for
the bad
Book Fourteen
fear and pity resulting from inner structure of the tragedy; "the plot
ought to be so constructed that, even without the aid of the eye, he who
hears the tale told will thrill with horror and melt to pity at what
takes place; best effects of the terrible/pitiful: tragic incident between
kin or loved ones; deed of horror done in ignorance, hidden tie of kinship
or friendship
Book Fifteen
character must be good, have good purpose; propriety of qualities; true
to life but more beautiful, ennobled; consistent; necessary or probable;
unraveling of plot should not be brought about by deus ex machina (e.g.
Medea); nothing irrational; need to appeal to the senses
Book Sixteen
recognition: by signs; willfully invented by poet; by memory; by reasoning;
by turn of incidents (best).
Book Seventeen
poet should attempt to visualize the scene clearly; use appropriate gestures;
need for outline/general plan before filling in episodes and details.
Book Eighteen
two parts of tragedy: complication and unraveling or dénouement;
four kinds of tragedy (according to motive): complex, pathetic (passion),
ethical, simple; poet should attempt to combine all poetic elements; identity
or difference: "identity exists where the complication and unraveling
are the same" (i.e. executed with equal skill); dramatists should avoid
epic multiplicity of plots; [simultaneous critique and flattery of Agathon]
Agathon: "it is probable ... that many things should happen contrary
to probability"; chorus should be part of the action, one with the
actors.
Book Nineteen
diction and thought; thought: "every effect which has to be produced
by speech" (proof and refutation, excitation of feelings, suggestion
of importance or unimportance; "the incidents should speak for themselves
without verbal exposition"; diction: modes of utterance (command, prayer,
statement, threat, question, answer, etc).
Book Twenty
language: letter, syllable, connecting word, noun, verb, inflection or case,
sentence or phrase; letter: "indivisible sound," vowel (audible
sound without interference of tongue), semivowel (audible sound with interference
of tongue, e.g. s, r), mute (interference of tongue, audible only when combined
with vowel, e.g. g, d); classification of sounds according to place of articulation
and form assumed by mouth in pronunciation: aspirated or smooth, long or
short, acute, grave, intermediate; syllable is nonsignificant sound composed
of mute and vowel; noun as composite significant sound; verb as composite
significant sound marking time; inflections of noun and verb: expressing
relation, number, mode or tone of delivery; sentence: unity of signification
or of linked elements
Book Twenty One
words: simple and double (formed of non-significant and/or significant elements);
words: current or strange, metaphorical, ornamental, newly coined, lengthened,
contracted, altered; "metaphor is the application of an alien name
by transference either from genus to species, or from species to genus,
or from species to species, or by analogy, that is, proportion";
gender of nouns
Book Twenty Three
perfection of style: clear but not mean (i.e. common); clearest style uses
only current words; but lofty diction is raised above commonplace, "anything,
in short, that differs from the normal idiom"; "yet a style wholly
composed of such words is either a riddle or a jargon; ... riddle ...
consists of metaphors; a jargon ... of strange (or rare) words. For
the essence of a riddle is to express true facts under impossible combinations."
"a certain infusion ... of these elements is necessary to style";
"the critics, therefore, are in error who censure these licenses of
speech"; "but the greatest thing by far is to have a command
of methaphor ... it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies
an eye for resemblances"
Book Twenty Three
plot of narrative should be like that of drama/tragedy: single action,
whole and complete, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It will
thus resemble a living organism in all its unity"; "transcendent
excellence of Homer": "never attempts to make the whole war
of Troy the subject of his poem," "detaches a single portion"
Book Twenty Four
epic poetry: simple, complex, ethical, or pathetic; reversals of situation,
recognitions, scenes of suffering; artistic thought and diction; "Homer
is our earliest and sufficient model"; Iliad: simple and pathetic;
Odyssey: complex and ethical; epic different in scale and meter from tragedy;
"in epic poetry, owing to the narrative form, many events simultaneously
transacted can be presented"; "grandeur of effect," diversion,
variety; meter, heroic measure, dactylic hexameter, proved by
"test of experience," stateliest measure, "most readily
admits rare words and metaphors"; iambic measure "expressive
of action"; trochaic tetrameter "akin to dancing"; "Homer,
admirable in all respects"; "the poet should speak as little
as possible in his own person"; element of the wonderful/irrational
"in the epic poem the absurdity passes unnoticed"; "art
of telling lies skillfully"; "the poet should prefer probable
impossibilities to improbable possibilities"; need to avoid the
irrational; character and thought should not be obscured by over-brilliant
diction
Book Twenty Five
imitation of things as they are, as they are thought to be, as they ought
to be; "vehicle of expression is language"; granting to poet
freedom to modify language; "the standard of correctness is not
the same in poetry and politics"; two kinds of errors: related to the
poem's essence or accidental; answer to Plato's objection to poet's supposed
lack of knowledge of different arts: "the error is not essential to
the poetry"; primacy of the achieving of striking effects; representation
of things as they ought to be; "Sophocles said the he drew men
as they ought to be; Euripides, as they are"; representation of
things as they are said to be (e.g. the gods); consideration of overall
context in critical assessment of a poetic statement; "due regard to
the usage of language" (consideration of cultural usage and other contexts);
inconsistency of meaning related to variety of senses; "in general,
the impossible must be justified by reference to artistic requirements,
or to the higher reality, or to received opinion"; "things
that sound contradictory should be examined by the same rules as in dialectical
refutation"; objections on grounds of the impossible, irrational, morally
hurtful, contradictory, contrary to artistic correctness
Book Twenty Six
question of superiority of epic or tragedy; question of audience, refined
or unrefined; gesture, histrionic art meant for lower audiences; reading
audience, no need for action; superiority of tragedy for "it has
all the epic elements" plus music and spectacle which "produce
the most vivid pleasures"; narrower limits, concentrated effect; epic
has less unity
Sources and Acknowledgements: Aristotle, Poetics, trans. S. H. Butcher in Hazard Adams, ed.Critical Theory Since Plato (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992); W.K.C Guthrie, Cambridge University.