Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
The Poetics of Aristotle - Coggle Diagram
The Poetics of Aristotle
XIV
-
-
Plots ranked
- where anagnorisis allows a harmful deed to be avoided.
- the deed is done in ignorance.
- the deed is done with full knowledge
- there is full knowledge throughout, and the premeditated deed is only refrained from at the moment of action.
XII
-
-
-
Choral potion
-
Stasimon
a choral song in a certain meter, while action that takes place between choral songs is Episode.
-
VI
Elements of Tragedy
-
-
-
-
-
Song
The means of imitation (language, rhythm, and harmony)
seven parts of tragity
arouses emotions of pity, fear, and katharsis of emotions
-
-
-
-
-
-
VIII
the poet must select some series of events from a character's life—as Homer does in the Odyssey—and craft them into a coherent whole. Any part of a story that could be added or removed without any great effect on the rest of the story is superfluous and takes away from the unity of the piece.
IX
Poetry is superior to history because history always deals with particular cases while poetry can express universal and general truths.
As a medium that arouses pity and fear, tragedy is most effective when events occur unexpectedly and yet in a logical order.
The ideal is to have the audience see the final outcome of a tragedy as the necessary consequence of all the action that preceded it, and yet have that outcome be totally unexpected.
XI
Peripeteia is the reversal from one state of affairs to its opposite. Some element in the plot effects a reversal, so that the hero who thought he was in good shape suddenly finds that all is lost, or vice versa.
Anagnorisis is a change from ignorance to knowledge. This discovery will bring love and happiness to characters who learn of good fortune, and hatred and misery to those who discover unhappy truths.
The best kind of anagnorisis accompanies peripeteia. That is, a reversal of fortune effects a discovery or vice versa.
The two together will help to arouse pity and fear and will also help to draw the play to its conclusion.
XIII
-
-
the best kind of plot involves the misfortune of someone who is neither particularly good nor particularly bad and whose downfall does not result from some unpleasantness or vice, but rather from hamartia (an error in judgment)
building a good plot
- focus around one single issue
-
-
- the hero should be at least of intermediate worth
he must be better—never worse—than the average person
VII
Plot structer
Middle
a point that naturally follows from preceding events but does not have any necessary consequences following it.
-
Beginning
a point that does not necessarily follow from anything else, which naturally has consequences following from it.
-
The longer the play the greater the magnitude, provided the poet can hold the tragedy together as one coherent statement.
the action should be long enough to allow the main character to pass through a number of necessary or probable steps that take him from fortune to misfortune or vice versa.
X
-
Simple Plots
simple plot does so without peripeteia (reversal of fortune) or anagnorisis (discovery or recognition)
Complex Plot
may have one or both of peripeteia (reversal of fortune) or anagnorisis (discovery or recognition) elements.
XIX
thought
-
when agents try to prove or disprove a point, to arouse emotion, or to inflate or deflate a matter, they are exhibiting thought.
-
XV
hero
-
- the good qualities of the hero must be appropriate to the character
- the hero must be realistic
- the hero must be written consistently
a character may behave inconsistently so long as we can perceive this inconsistency as stemming from a personality that is internally consistent.
the behavior of the characters should be seen as necessary or probable, in accordance with the internal logic of their personality
Both the characters and the plot ought to follow a probable or necessary sequence, so that the lusis (denouement) should be a part of this sequence.
-
in order to reconcile the first requirement—that the hero be good—with the third requirement—that the hero be realistic—Aristotle recommends that the poet should keep all the distinctive characteristics of the person being portrayed but touch them up a little to make the hero appear better than he is.
For instance, in the Iliad, Homer repeatedly describes Achilles' hot temper and yet makes him seem exceedingly good and heroic nonetheless.
XVII & XVIII
(4) Every play consists of desis, or complication, and lusis, or denouement.
Desis is everything leading up to the moment of peripeteia, and lusis is everything from the peripeteia onward.
(5) There are four distinct kinds of tragedy, and the poet should aim at bringing out all the important parts of the kind he chooses.
complex tragedy, made up of peripeteia and anagnorisis
-
-
-
(3) The poet should first outline the overall plot of the play and only afterward flesh it out with episodes.
6) The poet should write about focused incidents, and not about a whole epic story.
-
(7) The chorus should be treated like an actor, and the choral songs should be an integral part of the story.
-
-