The Poetics of Aristotle
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~15,400 words · 73 passages
Cite this work
- APAAristotle. (n.d.). The Poetics of Aristotle. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/the-poetics-of-aristotle
- MLAAristotle. The Poetics of Aristotle. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/the-poetics-of-aristotle.
- ChicagoAristotle. The Poetics of Aristotle. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/the-poetics-of-aristotle.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The first theory of literature: what tragedy is and how it works — plot before character, reversal and recognition, and the purging of pity and fear that the audience takes away.
Context and history
Lyceum notes, around 335 BC, written when the great Attic tragedy was already history and could be studied coolly. Of its two parts, on tragedy and on comedy, the second was lost — the most celebrated absence in literature, to the point that Umberto Eco made it the motive of 'The Name of the Rose'. No text has ruled so long over how stories are told: the three unities of French classicism, Hollywood's screenwriting manuals and half the vocabulary of criticism — catharsis, peripeteia, anagnorisis — come out of these pages.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Whether Tragedy has as yet perfected its proper types or not; and whether it is to be judged in itself, or in relation also to the audience,--this raises another question. Be that as it may, Tragedy--as also Comedy--was at first mere improvisation. The one originated with the authors of the Dithyramb, the other with those of the phallic songs, which are still in use in many of our cities. Tragedy advanced by slow degrees; each new element that showed itself was in turn developed. Having passed through many changes, it found its natural form, and there it stopped. Aeschylus first introduced a second actor; he diminished the importance of the Chorus, and assigned the leading part to the dialogue. Sophocles raised the number of actors to three, and added scene-painting. Moreover, it was not till late that the short plot was discarded for one of greater compass, and the grotesque diction of the earlier satyric form for the stately manner of Tragedy. The iambic measure then replaced the trochaic tetrameter, which was originally employed when the poetry was of the Satyric order, and had greater affinities with dancing. Once dialogue had come in, Nature herself discovered the appropriate measure. For the iambic is, of all measures, the most colloquial: we see it in the fact that conversational speech runs into iambic lines more frequently than into any other kind of verse; rarely into hexameters, and only when we drop the colloquial intonation. The additions to the number of 'episodes' or acts, and the other accessories of which tradition; tells, must be taken as already described; for to discuss them in detail would, doubtless, be a large undertaking. V Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type, not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the Ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly.…