Poetics by Aristotle

First transcribed:Peri poētikēs, c. 334-323 b.c.e. (English translation, 1705)

Type of work: Literary criticism

The Work

The significance of the Poetics cannot be overemphasized. In format, content, and methodology, Aristotle’s analysis of the literature of Greece is the origin of Western literary criticism. His examination of the components and aims of comedy, epic, and tragedy evolved into what is probably the first, and certainly the most influential, formalist analysis of literature in the Western tradition.

At the center of Aristotle’s analysis lies his explanation of the concept of mimesis, the process of representing reality in works of literature. Mimesis does not imply mimicry of the everyday world. Aristotle, however, is careful to stress that the job of “the poet” (which later critics have expanded to mean the author of any form of imaginative literature) is to present portraits of humankind as a means of helping audiences learn something about themselves. Far from being lies, as Plato calls the works of poets, good poems and dramas are useful to society because readers and audiences can learn from the experiences of fictional characters without having to experience for themselves the traumas and heartbreaks they can see in tragedy or the foibles and humiliations they can experience through comedy.

Unfortunately, during the later Renaissance and neoclassical periods, the process of description employed by Aristotle in examining the drama and poetry of classical Greece became a prescription for producing and evaluating similar works. French and English dramatists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries endeavored to produce plays that adhered slavishly to the unities of time, place, and action they found set down by Aristotle. Although later generations abandoned the criteria set forth in the Poetics for determining the value of specific genres, Aristotle’s method of analysis became the basis for the method of literary analysis known as genre criticism. The idea of judging the worth of a particular poem, play, story, or novel by comparing it to designated criteria that characterize other, similar productions has become a staple of literary criticism.

Although his reputation as one of the greatest philosophers of all time rests principally on his work in metaphysics, Aristotle nowhere shows himself more the master of illuminating analysis and style than in the Poetics. The conception of tragedy that Aristotle developed in this work has perpetuated the Greek ideal of drama through the ages.

Aristotle begins his essay with an exposition of the Greek idea that all poetry, or art, is representative of life. For the Greeks, the idea of poetry as imitative or representational was a natural one because a great deal of Grecian art was representational in content. By “representation” was meant not a literal copying of physical objects, although it was sometimes that, but a new use of the material presented by sense.

Aristotle’s intention in the Poetics is to analyze the essence of poetry and to distinguish its various species. Among the arts that Aristotle mentions are epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry, flute playing, and lyre playing. These arts, all of which a poet in Aristotle’s time may have been expected to practice, are regarded as representative of life, but they are distinguished from one another by their means and their objects. The means include rhythm, language, and tune, but not all the arts involve all three, nor are these means used in the same way. For example, flute playing involves the use of rhythm and tune, but dancing involves rhythm alone.

When living persons are represented, Aristotle writes, they are represented as being better than, worse than, or the same as the average. Tragedy presents people who are somewhat better than average, while comedy presents people who are somewhat worse. This point alone offers strong evidence against a narrow interpretation of Aristotle’s conception of art, for if people can be altered by the poet, made better or worse than in actual life, then poetry is not merely an uncreative copying of nature. A comment later in the Poetics indicates that the poet, in representing life, represents things as they are, as they seem to be, or as they should be. This concept certainly allows the artist a great deal more freedom than is suggested by the word “imitation.”

Aristotle explains the origin of poetry as the natural consequence of humanity’s love of imitation, tune, and rhythm. People enjoy looking at accurate copies of things, he says, even when the things are themselves repulsive, such as the lowest animals and corpses. The philosopher accounts for this enjoyment by claiming that it is the result of people’s love of learning; in seeing accurate copies, one learns better what things are. This view is in opposition to Plato’s idea that art corrupts the mind because it presents copies of copies of reality (physical objects being considered mere copies of the universal idea or kind). Aristotle believed that universals, or characteristics, are to be found only in things, while Plato thought that the universals had some sort of separate existence.

Comedy represents inferior persons in that they are a laughable species of the ugly. The comic character makes mistakes or is in some way ugly, but not so seriously as to awaken pity or fear.

Epic poetry differs from tragedy in that it has a single meter and is narrative in form. A further difference results from the Greek convention that a tragedy encompass events taking place within a single day, while the time span of the epic poem is unlimited.

Aristotle defines tragedy as a representation of a heroic action by means of language and spectacle so as to arouse pity and fear and thus bring about a catharsis of those emotions. The relief, or catharsis, of the emotions of pity and fear is the most characteristic feature of the Aristotelian conception of tragedy. According to Aristotle, tragedy arouses the emotions by bringing a person who is somewhat better than average into a reversal of fortune for which he or she is responsible; then, through the downfall of the hero and the resolution of the conflicts resulting from the hero’s tragic flaw, the tragedy achieves a purging of the audience’s emotions. The audience feels pity in observing the tragic hero’s misadventures because the character is a vulnerable human being suffering from unrecognized faults. Fear then results from the realization of the audience that they, like the hero, can err and suffer.

Aristotle defines plot as the arrangement of the events that make up the play; character as that which determines the nature of the agents; and thought as what is expressed in the speeches of the agents. Diction is the manner of that expression. The plot is an important element in the tragedy (the others being character, diction, thought, spectacle, and song) because a tragedy is a representation of action. The characters exist for the sake of the action, not the action for the sake of the characters.

The two most important elements of the tragedy and of its plot are peripeteia and discovery. Peripeteia means a change of a situation into its opposite state of fortune—in tragedy, a change from a good state of affairs to a bad one. A discovery is a revelation of a matter previously unknown. The most effective tragedy, according to Aristotle, results from a plot that combines peripety and discovery in a single action.

To modern readers, Aristotle’s definitions of the beginning, middle, and end of a tragedy may seem either amusing or trivial, but they contain important dramatic truths. The philosopher defines the beginning as that which does not necessarily follow anything else but does necessarily give rise to further action. The end necessarily follows from what has gone before but does not necessarily lead to further events. The middle follows the beginning and gives rise to the end.

Aristotle’s definitions make sense when one realizes that the important thing about the beginning of a play is not that it is the start but that, relative to the audience’s interest and curiosity, no earlier event is needed and further events are demanded. Similarly, for the ending, the closing events of a play should not be merely the last events presented; they should appear necessary as a result of what has already happened, and they should not give rise to new problems that must be solved if the audience is to be satisfied.

Aristotle writes that anything that is beautiful not only must have orderly arranged parts but also must have parts of a large enough, but not too large, size. An animal a thousand miles long or something too small to be seen cannot be beautiful. A play should be as long as possible, allowing a change of fortune in a sequence of events ordered in some apparently inevitable way, provided the play can be understood as a whole. In his conception of unity, Aristotle emphasizes a point that continues to be useful to all who compose or criticize works of art: If the presence of a part makes no difference, it has no place in the work.

A good tragedy should not show worthy persons passing from good fortune to bad, for that is neither fearful nor pitiful but shocking. Even worse is to show bad people acquiring good fortune, for such a situation causes irritation without arousing pity and fear. The tragic hero, consequently, should be one who is better than the audience but not perfect; the hero should suffer from a flaw that shows itself in some mistaken judgment or act resulting in the hero’s downfall. There has been considerable discussion about the kind of flaw Aristotle means, but it can be inferred from the examples he gives that the flaw should be such that a character who has it must inevitably be able to defeat it in action. It is not inevitable that all human beings have that flaw, but all are liable to it. Hence the tragic hero arouses fear in all those who see the resemblance between the hero’s situation and their own. The hero arouses pity because a human being cannot be perfect like the gods, and a human’s end is bound to be tragic.

Aristotle concludes the Poetics with careful discussion of diction and thought, and of epic poetry. Among his sensible conclusions is that what is believable although not possible is better in a play than an event that is possible but not believable.

Throughout the Poetics, Aristotle offers remarkably clear analyses of what Greek tragedy actually is and of what he thinks it ought to be. He shows not only an adroit analytical intellect but also an understanding of the practical problems of the art of poetry. He realizes that most questions concerning the value, length, beauty, and other features of a work of art are settled relative to the kind of audience the judge prefers.

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