A 4th-century B.C.E. philosopher, biologist, and physicist, Aristotle also wrote what has been perhaps the most influential and celebrated work of literary criticism in the Western tradition.
A rather slim volume (some 30 or so pages), Poetics contains an even slimmer but very dense
treatment of tragedy, a topic of particular relevance to this course because so
central to several of our readings.
I offer here a rather selective overview of several key
concepts. (For Aristotle’s full treatment of the theory of tragedy, go to Poetics, Section I, Parts VI-XXII.)
Aristotle defined tragedy as “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 kinds 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.” That’s quite a
mouthful. From this definition we can draw several conclusions:
mimesis)—it mimics reality.acted
and therefore its proper medium is drama, the theater.
This latter point reminds us that in its earliest form,
tragedy was no mere entertainment. One did not go to the theater in Athens as one
might attend a play on Broadway. The experience of tragedy, in Aristotle’s
conception, is a ritualistic, even quasi-religious one. The term purge (Aristotle’s
Greek term is katharsis) suggests too a medicinal
purpose: just as an anti-viral medication contains small traces of the disease it is
intended to cure, so are an audience’s powerful human emotions of pity and fear
exorcised through exposure to the very same.
It is the artifice of the theater, its mimetic power, that
makes possible this experience of emotional catharsis. In what consists that
artifice, the “language embellished with each kind of artistic
ornament”? Aristotle offers a list of tragedy’s essential elements, in order
of importance:
mythos)ethos)dianoia)lexis)melos)opsis)
In Shakespeare and much of the theatrical tradition since
his time, the delineation of character and the illusion of psychological depth have
been paramount. In contrast, ancient Greek dramatists, whose plays were the
exemplary models from which Aristotle derived his theory, treated character as
secondary to the arrangement of plot. For it is the plot of a play that provides the
set of circumstances through which the hero’s ethos or
character is tested and thereby truly revealed.
These two primary elements—plot and
character—are closely related by several other intrinsic concepts, namely:
hamartiaperipeteiaanagnorisis
Often translated as something like “tragic
flaw,” the Greek term hamartia is really a
metaphor Aristotle borrows from spear-throwing contests. It means literally
“missing the mark.” The tragic hero’s suffering originates in an
unfortunate choice, a “missing the mark” or bull’s eye, for which s/he
is morally responsible yet at the same time somehow fated to have committed.
Peripeteia means something
like reversal of fortune—an abrupt shift in circumstances that sends the plot
and the tragic hero’s development (mythos and ethos) in an entirely new direction.
In the best plays, according to Aristotle, this sudden
change of fortune or circumstance is accompanied by a profound moment of recognition
or anagnorisis, wherein the tragic hero discovers some
truth about himself and his circumstances that produces in him a profound
anguish.
If combined effectively, the hero’s choice and recognition, combined with a sudden change of fortune and response thereto, produces in the audience powerful feelings of pity and fear—feelings alleviated or purged, finally, by the tragic hero’s decline and death.