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2 Aristotle’s Poetics Dr. Mosam Sinha www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
3 * 6 Parts of “Poetics” Introductory remarks on poetry and its classification. *Tragedy. *Poetic diction. *Narrative poetry and Tragedy . *Epic is compared with Tragedy. *Objections are answered. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
Differences between Aristotle and Plato 4 Plato considered • Aristotle interpreted it imitation merely as as a creative process. mimicry or a servile copy of nature. • Aristotle compared it to music. Plato compared poetry to painting. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
5 Differences between Aristotle and Plato Poetry presents a copy of nature as it Poetry may imitate men as they are, is. Poetry is twice removed from or better and worse. Poetry gives us reality and it’s a ‘shadow of idealized version of reality. shadows’. Plato takes up the cudgel on behalf of He takes up the cudgels on philosophy and shows that philosophy behalf of poetry and effectively is superior to poetry. brings out its superiority. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
6 Overall Summary of “Poetics” www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
7 He defines poetry as a means of mimesis, or imitation by means of language, rhythm, and harmony. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
8 Tragedy serves to arouse the emotions of pity and fear and to effect a katharsis (catharsis) of these emotions. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
Six different parts of TRAGEDY: 9 (1)mythos, or plot, (2)character, (3)thought, (4)diction, (5)melody, and (6)spectacle. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
10 First essential to creating a good tragedy is that it should maintain unity of plot. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
11 The plot can also be enhanced by an intelligent use of peripeteia, or reversal, and anagnorisis, or recognition. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
12 The misery should be the result of some hamartia, or error, on the part of the hero. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
13 Aristotle discusses thought and diction and then moves on to address epic poetry www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
14 After addressing some problems of criticism, Aristotle argues that tragedy is superior to epic poetry. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
15 IMPORTANT TERMS of Aristotle www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
Hamartia 16 The word translates almost directly as \"error,\" though it is often rendered more elaborately as \"tragic flaw.\" Tragedy involves the downfall of a hero, effected by some error. This error could be a simple matter of not knowing something or forgetting something. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
17 Anagnorisis \"recognition\" or \"discovery.\" That moment when the hero, or some other character, passes from ignorance to knowledge. This could be a recognition of a long lost friend or family member, or it could be a sudden recognition of some fact about oneself. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
Mythos 18 usually translated as \"plot,\" but unlike \"plot,\" mythos can be applied to all works of art. Not so much a matter of what happens and in what order, mythos deals with how the elements of a tragedy (or a painting, sculpture, etc.) come together to form a coherent and unified whole. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
19 The overall message or impression that we come away with is what is conveyed to us by the mythos of a piece. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
20 Katharsis This word was normally used in ancient Greece by doctors to mean \"purgation\" or by priests to mean \"purification.\" In tragedy, Aristotle uses it to talk about a purgation or purification of emotions. Presumably, this means that katharsis is a release of built up emotional energy, much like a good cry. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
Peripeteia 21 A reversal, either from good to bad or bad to good. Peripeteia often occurs at the climax of a story, often prompted by anagnorisis. - the climax of a story: the turning point in the action, where things begin to move toward a conclusion. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
22 Lusis Literally \"untying,\" the lusis is all the action in a tragedy from the climax onward. All the plot threads that have been woven together in the desis are slowly unraveled until the conclusion. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
Desis 23 The desis is all the action in a tragedy leading up to the climax. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
24 Aristotle’s ‘The Poetics’ www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
25 “Scientific study of the constituent parts of poetry and drawing conclusions from those observations.” www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
26 He lists the different kinds of poetry: epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry, and most flute-playing and lyre-playing. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
27 Next, he classifies all of these kinds of poetry as mimetic, or imitative, but that there are significant differences between them. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
Mimesis 28 The act of creating in someone's mind, through artistic representation, an idea or ideas that the person will associate with past experience. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
How can we differentiate the 29 tragedy from other poetic forms? medium objects Manner Of imitation www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
First kind of distinction is the medium 30 they employ. Just as a painter employs paint and a sculptor employs stone, the poet employs language, rhythm, and harmony, either singly or in combinations. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
31 The second distinction is the objects that are imitated. All poetry represents actions with agents who are either better than us, worse than us, or quite like us. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
32 Tragedy and epic Poetry Characters are better than us. Comedy and Parody: Characters are worse than us. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
33 The third distinction is with the manner of representation: the poet either speaks directly in narrative or assumes the characters of people in the narrative and speaks through them. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
Objects, Manner, and Medium of 34 Imitation in Tragedy Objects Serious manner Represent action through action medium Verse in dialogue www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
35 We are by nature imitative creatures that learn and excel by imitating others, and we naturally take delight in works of imitation. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
*We learn by examining representations 36 and imitations of things *Learning is one of the greatest pleasures. *Rhythm and harmony also come naturally to us, so that poetry gradually evolved out of our improvisations. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
Tragedy and comedy are later 37 developments that are the grandest representation of respective traditions: their ** tragedy of the lofty tradition ** comedy of the mean tradition www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
Comedy deals with the ridiculous which he 38 defines as a kind of ugliness that does no harm to anybody else. very sketchy account of the origins of comedy, because it was not generally treated with the same respect as tragedy and so there are fewer records of the innovations that led to its present form. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
Tragedy and epic poetry deal with lofty 39 subjects in a grand style of verse. Three significant differences: First, tragedy is told in a dramatic, rather than narrative, form, and employs several different kinds of verse while epic poetry employs only one. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
40 Second, the action of a tragedy is usually confined to a single day, and so the tragedy itself is usually much shorter than an epic poem. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
41 Third, while tragedy has all the elements that are characteristic of epic poetry, it also has some additional elements that are unique to it alone. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
42 Aristotle now narrows his focus to examine tragedy exclusively. In order to do so, he provides a definition of tragedy that we can break up into seven parts. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
(1) It involves mimesis; 43 (2) It is serious; (3) The action is complete and with magnitude; (4) It is made up of language with the \"pleasurable accessories\" of rhythm and harmony; www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
44 (5) These \"pleasurable accessories\" are not used uniformly throughout, but are introduced in separate parts of the work, so that, for instance, some bits are spoken in verse and other bits are sung. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
(6) it is performed rather than narrated; and 45 (7) it arouses the emotions of pity and fear and accomplishes a katharsis (purification or purgation) of these emotions. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
Definition of Tragedy 46 www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
Action must be complete. 47 End Middle Beginning www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
48 Completeness:- www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
Unity of Action:(Probability and 49 Necessity) There must be a They must follow each causal connection between other naturally and inevitably. the various events and incidents. No incident or character The events introduced must should be superfluous. be such as are probable under the circumstances. Aristotle emphasizes Unity of Action ; he is against plurality of action as it weakens the final effect of Trawgwewd.cyui.dol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
Imitation of an action, serious, complete 50 and of a certain magnitude……. magnitude thought length It must be long enough to permit an orderly development of action to a catastrophe. Too short an action cannot be regarded as proper and beautiful, for its different parts will not be clearly visible, as in the case of a very small living creature. It must be an ‘organic’ whole. www.cuidol.in Unit-1(MAP-607) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL
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