Mythos (Aristotle)

Mythos is a concept developed by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 BCE–322 BCE) and presented in Poetics, his treatise on dramatic theory. Usually translated as “plot” or “structure of the incidents,” mythos is one of the six principal dramatic elements Aristotle identified. It refers to the dramatist’s ordered arrangement of story elements into a beginning, middle, and end, and for Aristotle, it is the single most important aspect of a dramatic work. Beyond serving as the source of a drama’s structural organization, mythos also creates plausible, cause-and-effect relationships between story events and serves as a main source of the audience’s emotional engagement with the work.

In Poetics, Aristotle focused specifically on tragedies. However, his notion of mythos can also be applied to comedic works of drama as well as other, modern narrative forms that did not exist during Aristotle’s lifetime.

Background

Aristotle was a student of Plato (circa 428 BCE–348 BCE), a leading Greek thinker who headed a philosophy school in the city-state of Athens. He later served as a tutor to the future Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great (356 BCE–323 BCE) before establishing an academy of his own known as the Lyceum. A highly influential figure in the Western tradition, Aristotle wrote extensively on philosophical subjects including ethics, politics, science, and human culture. He is also credited with pioneering the branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, which explores abstract ideas about the nature of existence, time, identity, and knowledge. Aristotle wrote Poetics around 335 BCE. It is the oldest surviving work of dramatic theory in the Western canon, with a sweeping influence that continues to profoundly impact contemporary forms of literary and dramatic expression.

Poetics focuses on tragedy, a type of drama that traditionally deals with serious events that shape the life and fate of a heroic protagonist while profoundly affecting the larger society to which the protagonist belongs. Scholars believe the original version of Poetics included a separate examination of comedy, a lighthearted dramatic form intended primarily as entertainment. However, this chapter of the work, if it did exist, has been lost.

In Poetics, Aristotle endeavors to identify and explain the various individual elements that interconnect to create an effective tragedy. Of the six major elements Aristotle names, mythos carries central importance. The other five elements are character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle. In the Aristotelian paradigm, character, which Aristotle calls ethos, is secondary only to mythos in importance. Ethos and mythos heavily interact, which each shaping the other. As he explains in Poetics, the qualities of a person are known by the individual’s actions.

Overview

The Aristotelian model of mythos separates the plot into a beginning, middle, and end, which combine to create a unified whole. Aristotle characterized this tripartite structure as “unity of action,” which yields a complete, self-contained narrative that ties all plot events together through the interplay of logic (cause and effect), theme, and character. Events unfold through a cause-and-effect relationship, with the narrative’s first incident marking the lone moment that is not dependent upon any previous scene. In the middle, the narrative builds to a major turning point called the climax, in which the protagonist makes an important decision that sets the remaining events on a course leading to their resolution in the end. All events leading up to the climax are collectively known as desis (“tying”), while all events that follow the climax are termed lusis (“untying”). The plot’s final incident should provide a definitive conclusion that does not imply any further effect, effectively serving as a mirror opposite of its opening incident while creating closure.

A mythos that lacks unity of action is what Aristotle calls episodic. Episodic stories take liberties with cause and effect, introducing story points that do not follow from previous incidents while failing to examine the logically implied effects of causal events. Aristotle considers such narratives inherently inferior and unworthy of serious attention.

Aristotle also describes two other important unities: unity of place and unity of time. Unity of place establishes the physical and contextual setting of the plot, which Aristotle believes should be self-contained in the same manner as its action. In this regard, he makes a distinction between tragic drama and epic drama, with tragedies occurring in relatively confined settings while epics take place in grand, sweeping settings. In explaining unity of time, Aristotle opined that dramatic works should endeavor to restrict their events to a single day. Modern interpretations of the concept note that the time over which a narrative takes place serves as a framing device that functions to define and contain the story.

Additional structural features of a dramatic plot include the concepts of catastrophe, peripeteia, and anagnorisis. Simple plots build solely toward a catastrophe, or moment of resolution, in which the protagonist’s fate is sealed through what Aristotle calls a “change of fortune.” Complex plots similarly feature a catastrophe at their moment of resolution, but unlike simpler narratives, they use peripeteia and anagnorisis to build toward it. Peripeteia is most accurately described as a reversal of expectation, which traces the unexpected consequences of the protagonist’s initial efforts to solve the story’s main problem or conflict. Anagnorisis marks the protagonist’s procession from a state of unawareness to a state of knowledge that changes his or her perception of the dramatic situation. The ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus Rexoffers a famous example; the story follows the title character’s efforts to determine the identity of his father’s killer and his mother’s lover, and at the moment of anagnorisis, Oedipus learns that he is in fact that person. Aristotle posits that the peripeteia and anagnorisis should ideally fuse together and weave themselves into the cause-and-effect tapestry of the plot to bring about the moment of catastrophe.

Catharsis, or the release of the plot’s emotional buildup, is another noteworthy aspect of mythos. Aristotle argues that effective dramatic works always have an emotional effect on their audience, with tragedies functioning best when they generate pity and/or fear. The catastrophe brings these emotions to their breaking point, releasing their full impact as the plot reaches its final resolution.

Bibliography

Aristotle. Poetics. Available online at classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.html. Accessed 8 May 2019.

Brook, Adriana E. Tragic Rites: Narrative and Ritual in Sophoclean Drama. U of Wisconsin P, 2018.

Dunbar, Zachary and Stephe Harrop. Greek Tragedy and the Contemporary Actor. Springer, 2018.

Hansen, Per Krogh, et. al. Emerging Vectors of Narratology. De Gruyter, 2017.

Landa, Jose Angel Garcia. “The Structure of the Fabula (I): Aristotle’s Poetics.” University of Zaragoza, www.unizar.es/departamentos/filologia‗inglesa/garciala/publicaciones/narrativetheory/1.Fabula.Aristotle.htm. Accessed 8 May 2019.

Mark, Joshua J. “Aristotle.” Ancient History Encyclopedia, 2 Sept. 2009, www.ancient.eu/aristotle/. Accessed 8 May 2019.

Sidnell, Michael J. and D.J. Conacher (eds.). Sources of Dramatic Theory, Volume 1: From Plato to Congreve. Cambridge UP, 1991.

Telo, Mario and Melissa Mueller. The Materialities of Greek Tragedy: Objects and Affect in Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018.