LITERARY THEORY Aristotle - PowerPoint Presentation

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LITERARY THEORY

Aristotle

Aristotle's Poetics

Aristotle

's

Poetics

seeks to address the different kinds of poetry, the structure of a good poem, and the division of a poem into its component parts. He defines poetry as a 'medium of imitation' that seeks to represent or duplicate life through character, emotion, or action. Aristotle defines poetry very broadly, including epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry, and even some kinds of music.

According to Aristotle, tragedy came from the efforts of poets to present men as 'nobler,' or 'better' than they are in real life. Comedy, on the other hand, shows a 'lower type' of person, and reveals humans to be worse than they are in average. Epic poetry, on the other hand, imitates 'noble' men like tragedy, but only has one type of meter - unlike tragedy, which can have several - and is narrative in form.

Aristotle’s Definition of

Tragedy

A

tragedy is the imitation of an action that is

serious, with proper magnitude

, complete in

itself

,

given

in appropriate and pleasurable

language,

in

a dramatic rather than narrative

form,

with

incidents arousing pity and

fear, wherewith

to accomplish a catharsis of these emotions

.

1

.

“

the imitation of an action that is serious and also,

having magnitude, complete in itself;”

This means that a good tragedy deals with one issue that is very “

serious

.” You can’t have a tragedy about

something trivial

like breaking a

fingernail. The

issue has to be serious and

very

important. That’s why a lot of tragedies deal with someone’s death

. “

Magnitude

” here means certain

length.

“

Complete in itself

” means that the

play must

stick to the

one complete issue with a beginning, a middle, and an end;

otherwise, the audience will get lost in the plot.

2.

“

in appropriate and pleasurable language

:”

The diction used must be the elevated perfect language with metaphors as the chief figure of speech to give pleasure. Ancient

Greek tragedy had a chorus whose role was to comment on the action of the play. The chorus

sometimes sang

their part. Aristotle said that the language should be easy to listen to. It should have rhythm and also

good harmony

for the lines that were sung

.

3.

“

in a dramatic rather than narrative form

;”

To narrate a story is simply to tell the story, like telling a friend what happened over the

weekend

. In a play, the

story must

be dramatized or acted out.

4.

“

with incidents arousing pity and fear

,”

In a tragedy, the events or episodes in the play should lead the audience to feel very sorry for the main

character—the tragic

hero. The audience should also feel afraid for the hero as he moves toward a destructive end.

5.

“

wherewith to accomplish a catharsis of these emotions

.

As the play moves along, the events should build up the emotions of pity and fear. A catharsis is a purging,

or cleansing

of the emotions--a release of tension. In a tragedy, this is often a moment of revelation when the

tragic hero

“

falls flat on his face

,” and the audience can finally “

explode

.”

Characteristics of tragedy

Aristotle

defines tragedy according to seven characteristics:

1.

I

t

is mimetic

2.

I

t

is serious

3.

I

t

tells a full story of an appropriate length

4.

I

t

contains rhythm and harmony

5.

R

hythm

and harmony occur in different combinations in different parts of the tragedy

6.

I

t

is performed rather than narrated

7.

I

t

arouses feelings of pity and fear and then purges these feelings through catharsis.

SIX PARTS OF TRAGEDY

A tragedy consists of six component parts, which are

listed

in order from most important to least important:

1.

Plot

2.

Character

3.

Thought

4.

Diction

5.

Melody

6.

spectacle

Plot

Aristotle felt that the action of the

play was

the most important of the six elements

.

He said,

“All human happiness or misery takes the form of action....Character gives us qualities, but it is in our actions--what we do--that we are happy or miserable.”

The end of tragedy is to represent action from real life and it is by men’s actions that they are happy or miserable. Action necessitates plot not characters.

T

he weakness in the construction of the plot cannot be compensated by excellence in diction or thought.

1.

There must be Unity of Plot. This has already been described in the definition which talks about “one complete action.” Any events or episodes must be necessary to the main issue and must also be probable or believable.

2.

A good plot

must have

Revolution

or

Discovery-

or

both. It also includes Disaster.

a.

Revolution: is

the change from one state of things at the beginning of the play to the exact opposite state by the end of the

play, or the reverse of fortune from expected to un expected – from happiness to unhappiness..

This could be something like the change from being rich to being poor, or from being powerful to being powerless, or from being a ruler to being a beggar. The change that takes place in a tragedy should take the main character (and possibly other characters) from a state of happiness to a state of misery

.

b.

Discovery:

is a change from ignorance to

knowledge, from the unknown to the known.

This often happens to the tragic hero who starts out “clueless” and slowly learns how he himself created the mess he ends up in at the end of the play

.

c.

Disaster: is represented by the painful destructive actions that include death, wounds, and injuries of different kinds.

3.

Change by itself is not enough. The character

(tragic hero)involved

in the change must have specific characteristics to arouse the tragic emotions of pity and fear. Therefore, Aristotle said that there are three forms of plot that should be avoided

.

A.

A totally good man must not pass from happiness to misery.

This will make the audience angry that bad things happened to him. They won’t pity him so much as be angry for him

.

B.

A bad man must not pass from misery to happiness.

This won’t appeal to the audience at all because they won’t want to see evil rewarded

.

C.

A bad man cannot pass from happiness to misery.

The audience won’t feel sorry for him because they will believe he got what he deserved.

The true tragic hero cannot be too good or too bad, but he must

be a normal human being with a human frailty or weakness that leads to his downfall and ends

up in

misery.

Aristotle concluded that the best tragedy centers on a basically good man who changes from happiness to misery because of some great error. For example, he might have a good quality, like pride, that gets out of hand

.

4.

The plot of a tragedy also involves some horrible or evil deed. The tragic hero either does it consciously,

or does

it out of ignorance, or mediates it (makes it easy for the deed to happen). For the audience to be horrified by the evil

deed, the

evil has to be done to someone important to the tragic hero. If the hero kills his enemy, the deed won’t seem

so bad

. On the other hand, if the hero kills someone he doesn’t care about, the audience won’t care much either.

To make

it really horrible for the audience, Aristotle suggested that the evil deed should be done to a family

member

.

Character

Main

character should

have 4 goodness, propriety, resemblance, uniformity.

Good

Aristotle

explains that audiences do not like, for example, villains "making fortune from misery" in the end. It might happen though, and might make the play interesting. Nevertheless, the moral is at stake here and morals are important to make people

happy

(people can, for example, see tragedy because they want to release their anger)

Appropriate

if

a character is supposed to be wise, it is unlikely he is young (supposing wisdom is gained

with age)

Resemblance

the character must resemble people in real life.

Uniformity: Consistent

if

a person is a soldier, he is unlikely to be scared of blood

if this soldier is scared of blood it must be explained and play some role in the story to avoid confusing the audience;

it is also

"good"

if a character doesn't change opinion "that much" if the play is not "driven" by who characters are, but by what they do (audience is confused in case of unexpected shifts in behavior and its reasons, morals of characters

"consistently inconsistent“

if a character always behaves

foolishly

it is strange if he suddenly becomes

smart

. In this case it would be good to explain such change, otherwise the audience may be confused. If character changes opinion a lot it should be clear he is a character who has this trait, not a real life person –

this is also to avoid confusion

Thought and Sentiments

Thought is

third

in

importance and

is found

where

something is proved to be or not

to be

, or

a

general maxim is enunciated

.

- Aristotle says little about thought, and most of what he has to say is associated with how speeches should reveal character . Thought spoken

(usually) reasoning of human characters can explain the characters or story background

. However, we may assume that this category would also include what we call the themes of a

play, and whatever is the object of speech. What is said must move passions of pity and terror, but these must be aroused from action not decoration.

. It Refers

to the quality of speech in tragedy. Speeches should reflect character, the moral qualities of those on the stage

. The language used must be perfect and elevated and the metaphor should be the basic figure of speech used.

DICTION

MELODY

It is the musical element of the chorus. Aristotle argues that the Chorus should be fully integrated into the play like an actor; choral odes should not be “mere interludes,” but should contribute to the unity of the plot .

The Chorus comments on the action, narrates incidents that cannot be acted on stage or happened long ago, and presents a musical relief for the audience.

SPECTACLE and Decoration

Spectacle :

Refers

to the visual apparatus of the play, including set, costumes and

props

. It is supposed to produce not the terrible but the marvelous.

Aristotle

calls spectacle the

"least artistic"

element of tragedy, and the

least

connected with the work of the poet .

For example: if the play has

"beautiful" costumes

and

"bad" acting

and "bad" story, there is "something wrong" with

it, even though that "beauty" may save the play it is "not a nice thing".