Aristotle: “Poetics” (I disagree, slightly)

Rufus F.

Rufus is a likeable curmudgeon. He has a PhD in History, sang for a decade in a punk band, and recently moved to NYC after nearly two decades in Canada. He wrote the book "The Paris Bureau" from Dio Press (2021).

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15 Responses

  1. Will H. says:

    Sounds like Aristotle would have enjoyed professional wrestling.
    He might even have been a Stone Cold Steve Austin fan.
    Hell, yeah!Report

  2. Paul B says:

    I want to quibble with this:

    Drama, developing from religious ritual and epic storytelling, is fairly universal; but tragedy is a specific genre that requires the audience to conceive of a hubristic individual will coming into conflict with the larger reality: social, existential, or divine

    It’s not a bad distinction, but if we insist on it then we have to exclude a lot of (extant) Greek drama from the tragic genre. So maybe Aristotle missed the mark.Report

    • Rufus F. in reply to Paul B says:

      @Paul B, Oh don’t blame Aristotle! The part of that which is problematic was, no doubt, where I was trying to develop my own definition of tragedy. I’m still puzzling through just what the genre entails. So any suggestions would be welcome.Report

      • Paul B in reply to Rufus F. says:

        @Rufus F.,

        I’ve never actually read the Poetics, but your interpretation sounds pretty standard, so I’m pretty sure it’s Aristotle that deserves the blame. Jaybird hits on what I was trying to say below, so the only suggestion I’ll add is to get your aesthetic theory of Attic tragedy from The Frogs instead.

        The question I have is whether Aristotle make his purpose clear? If his project is descriptive, he pretty clearly fails since a substantial chunk of what survives* falls outside his definition of tragedy. And if it’s prescriptive, identifying the best bits of plot mechanics as a sort of canon within the canon, then it leaves us with the problem you identify of rote, lifeless applications of the theory** by generations of subsequent hacks.Report

        • Rufus F. in reply to Paul B says:

          @Paul B, Well, much of the post is just me summarizing. But, the idea that tragedy requires a fairly strong will bashing up against a larger reality that contradicts that will- hence the tension- was my suggestion. I think Aristotle talks more about it in terms of events forcing the character to face a problem and resolve it somehow.

          The problem I have with Aristotle is that a lot of what survives and goes against his ideas about good tragedy is actually fine, so long as we consider those plays failures. And, indeed, maybe time has given all Greek tragedies a sheen that some don’t deserve, but it’s hard for me to think of Medea as a failure because its conclusion is such a deus ex machina. Indeed, though, I think Aristotle describes that as indicating a deficient plot at one point. And, you know, maybe it is. I just find the main character so interesting that it hardly matters to me that the end is so contrived.Report

          • Paul B in reply to Rufus F. says:

            @Rufus F.,

            “maybe time has given all Greek tragedies a sheen that some don’t deserve”

            Probably so. But I’m more inclined to say that it’s the successes that depart from the pattern while the failures work like so much Aristotelian clockwork. (I want to call Aeschylus rudimentary here, but that’s hardly fair since he was essentially inventing tragedy as he went along.) And anyway I suppose we shouldn’t disputare de gustibus.Report

      • Paul B in reply to Rufus F. says:

        @Rufus F.,

        *Off the top of my head, in half of Aeschulus and Sophocles (i.e. The Suppliants, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Ajax, Antigone, Trachiniae, and Electra) the closest thing to hamartia is either caused by god-induced delusion or is better characterized as a dilemma prompted by incompatible external pressures, scenarios which would seem to fall short of Aristotle’s demands. And Euripides is all over the map: if his plays don’t have a deus ex machina to disrupt their unity, they’re hardly anything we or Aristotle would recognize as tragedy at all (I’m thinking especially of Helen in Egypt and Iphigenia in Tauris here).

        **Poe is a notable exception. His theory of the short story is notably similar to Aristotle’s, and he stuck to it with admirable results.Report

  3. Jaybird says:

    It is very difficult for me to read Aristotle fairly.

    His take on what makes for a good play reads like it can easily be swapped out for what makes a good meal.

    “A good meal begins with a bowl of cold soup! A Gazpacho! A vichyssoise, perhaps. Maybe a fruit soup. Then there must be a salad!”

    There is part of me that says “yeah, that does sound like a meal that I would enjoy” while the rest of me is *SCREAMING* “De gustibus non est disputandum!

    Would I enjoy a play that uses all of Aristotle’s rules? Heck, yes. Shakespeare’s big four tragedies use many of the rules to the point where one feels like he had the book nearby when he was writing his plays… and, humorously (I find it funny, anyway), it feels like he follows the rules (in the big four anyway) more than Sophocles, Aeschylus, or Euripides does.

    At the end of the day, though, I can’t help but think that Aristotle is missing out on oh so very much.

    Hot soup, for example.Report

    • Rufus F. in reply to Jaybird says:

      @Jaybird, I think it helps to look at the Poetics as more descriptive than proscriptive. It’s more like he’s trying to explain what was so good about meals he’s had. Of course, it’s hard not to take the Poetics as suggestions on how to make a good meal yourself.Report

  4. drapier says:

    I sympathize with your disliking of drama that is poorly draped over unlikely plot points but I think you misread Aristotle a bit. In his discussion of the formal elements of drama, plot falls in among the other key elements he writes about: spectacle, character, diction, song and reasoning. These elements combine with plot to create a robust piece of theatre. But “plot” does not indicate certain milestones the playwright works toward and past, running weak or strong characters from the beginning to the middle to the end of the play. Rather, plot points to the quality of drama that conveys a sense of animation or life. As he writes in the section titled “The primacy of plot:” “Tragedy is not an imitation of persons, but of actions and of life. Well-being and ill-being reside in action, and the goal of life is an activity, not a quality; people possess certain qualities in accordance with their character, but they achieve well-being or its opposite on the basis of how they fare.” As you rightly point out, Aristotle discusses the way children imitate as they foster an awareness of how to act in the world. But when you divide this action from character as starkly as you do, insisting that Hamlet is a man of character and not action, you do damage Aristotle’s notion of action as it is conveyed in plot. There is certainly action in Hamlet and there is certainly character. But if we imagine what the play would be like if there was no bloodbath after all of the Dane’s hemming and hawing, we lose the power of Shakespeare’s drama. In the read of Aristotle I find most productive, plot is something more unseen than “one fucking thing after another” (History Boys). It indicates the nature of a changing world. For Aristotle, actions are both the measure and formative moments of character and, as such, he sets it at the center of drama, which is a temporal display of human life, which I think he rightly ties strongly to notions of action. If we allow a conception of drama to rest on character and not plot, we endanger an understanding of drama (and thus an understanding of humanity) that includes the ability to change, the notion of hard choices, and we endorse a sort of prejudice about good and bad guys, based on the assumption one can be essentially one, the other, or some vague mixture of both.Report

    • Rufus F. in reply to drapier says:

      @drapier, That helps a lot actually. Admittedly, I was starkly separating plot and character in order to be a bit provocative. But I think yours is a much better explanation of plot and, indeed, Hamlet as a one-man soliloquy wouldn’t work nearly as well. There has to be tension, doesn’t there?

      What you get at here, and what I think you’re right that Aristotle is really talking about is an organic plot– one that seems to the audience like we’re simply observing life in its most natural state. I don’t know if Aristotle really touches on just how maddeningly hard that is to write. It seems like it would be easy, if we keep to some basic guidelines, but writing a plot that feels natural and doesn’t telegraph its major points is about as hard as it gets, and again I think it’s because it’s so hard to make sense of the events of our lives in this way. Of course, the problem, like you suggest with the Hamlet example, is that an audience watching a play without a beginning, middle, and end, or in which the characters go through no major events and change in no way, is really having their time wasted in some way. It’s tedious. So I think there does need to be some plot hook, or even just what Hitchcock called a Macguffin- an excuse for us to watch- and some sort of payoff.

      The subtext to this discussion, I should mention, is that I’ve been trying to write a play for several months now and find that the absolute hardest thing is showing the events of life unfolding in a way that doesn’t seem like plot mechanics. But, whenever I try to write characters and just let them speak, without any plot, it’s extremely tedious after about five pages.

      So thanks for your comments! I’ll keep them in mind.Report

      • drapier in reply to Rufus F. says:

        @Rufus F.,

        Yes, when one is talking about writing a play, this notion of substantive plot is perhaps not very useful. In my opinion, it is mostly helpful in a reflective sense – helping us to think about the fullness of plot and its rewards. But in thinking about how to get stuff on the page, “plot,” in whatever form, holds that magic “golden mean” that Aristotle loves and will always be just a little bit religious. Because ultimately, he is talking about – life – which is a always bit more than plot or character or anything else can convey. Perhaps a bit less than they convey too.

        This is a long way of saying happy churning on your play.Report

    • Paul B in reply to drapier says:

      @drapier,

      This is a really good comment and made me realize the extant that Aristotle’s aesthetics are (of course!) informed by his ethics.

      It also reminds me that the intertwining of plot and character is especially deep in Greek tragedy, since so much plot happens offstage and comes to us secondhand — and not just through characters, but also intertwined with language and lyric. Maybe it’s only after playwrights got around to actually showing those action-packed swordfights and whatnot that we can talk about “pure” characterization of the Hamlet-dithering-about type?Report

  5. JL Wall says:

    Regarding plot and character — one thing that no one has touched on yet is the difference of context between the Classical, Elizabethan, and contemporary drama. With the sole exception of Aeschylus’ PERSIANS, a tragedy based on then-recent events, every surviving tragedy is based in the framework of myth. (Well, there is the possibility of a handful of other historical plays that Aeschylus may have written — but it’s unclear whether those dealt with history or foundation myths.) That is, the characters were already defined by the traditional stories that were known to everyone sitting in the audience. Even though Shakespeare recycled old plotlines (his ending of LEAR might be likened to what Euripides did with his MEDEA), I’d argue a distinction based on the fact that these stories simply were not as ingrained in Elizabethan society as the myths of tragedy were in Classical Athens.

    Creating “new” character came not through inventing new details or backgrounds — though there are certainly variant traditions for many mythological figures — but through creative action. For example: it is entirely possible, if not likely, the Euripides’ MEDEA was the first version of that myth in which she kills her children; before the 5th century, they were killed by angry townspeople. Uniqueness in plot would have been more possible/plausible/effective than uniqueness in character alone. (Though Medea’s character is certainly changed by the plot.)

    Further, thinking of Greek tragedy, which is what Aristotle knew, as a retelling of these ancient inherited myths might also shed light on the importance of plot insofar as myth is story-centric in a way that modern, character-centric writing is not. (That might even be the more fundamental difference between Joyce and Homer than their respective languages.)

    That being said — none of this really deals with the matter of organic plot, etc.; and I admit that considering the POETICS this way is not terribly useful for considering it in relation to any non-Classical text. But if the POETICS is going to be a pesky book like that anyway (and it is), then trying to see what its assumptions — otherwise, I suppose, its flaws — might tell us about the workings of Classical tragedy is one of its more important uses.Report