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, recognition, sudden change of fortune, and response thereto, produce in the audience powerful feelings of pity and fear—feelings alleviated or purged, finally, by the tragic hero’s decline and death.