1.3.5. Tragedy
1.3.5.1. Definition
1.3.5.2. Plot
1.3.5.3. Character
1.3.5.4. Thought
1.3.5.5. Diction
1.3.5.6. Spectacle
1.3.5.7. Song
1.3.5.8. Kinds of tragedies
1.3.5.1. Definition
Aristotle's definition of tragedy is a noteworthy attempt at analysing the features of a literary genre taking into account the system of literature as a whole, which includes other genres which may share some common traits with each other but must be differentiated in a logical way:
Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions. . . .
Every tragedy has six constituents, which will determine its quality. They are plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, and song. (Poetics VI)
Spectacle is the mode of representation, diction and music are relative to the medium, and plot, character and thought are connected with the objects of the representation. Aristotle will deal with each of these elements in a systematic way. This systematic and precise definition is in sharp contrast with the hazy definitions we find for many centuries afterwards; the concept of tragedy itself is simplified and confused in those definitions: Chaucer's in the prologue to The Monk's Tale is a good example:
Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie,
As olde bookes maken us memorie,
Of hym that stood in greet prosperitee,
And is yfallen out of heigh degree
Into myserie, and endeth wrecchedly.
And thy ben versified communely
Of six feet, which men clepen exametron.
In prose eek been endited many oon,
And eek in meetre, in many a sondry wyse.
Lo, this declaryng oghte ynogh suffise.
But this evolution of the concept of tragedy will in the long run lead to the birth of the concept of "the tragic" as an aesthetic category which can be present in genres other than stage tragedies.
1.3.5.2. Plot (mythos )
1.3.5.2.1. Definition
1.3.5.2.2. Unity of plot
1.3.5.2.3. Kinds of plots
1.3.5.2.4. Contents of the tragic action
1.3.5.2.5. Effects of the tragic action: catharsis
1.3.5.2.6. Sections of tragedies. Sections of plots
1.3.5.2.1. Definition
The mythos, "plot," or "structure of the incidents" is for Aristotle the main part of the tragedy:
But most important of all is the structure of the incidents. For tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a quality. Now character determines men's qualities, but it is by their actions that they are happy or the reverse. Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character; character comes in as subsidiary to the actions. Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy; and the end is the chief thing of all. . . . Besides which, the most powerful elements of emotional interest in tragedy-peripeteia or reversal of the situation, and recognition scenes-are parts of the plot.
We may misunderstand Aristotle here if we forget his teleological and essentialist view of literature. He is not disparaging the portrayal of character; he is simply saying that the essence of tragedy does not consist in the portrayal of character. Epigram, for instance, can portray character, and it is a "lower" genre than tragedy. The essence of tragedy and its greatness lies in that it allows the portrayal of an action, which an epigram could not do. That ability is what defines a tragedy as a tragedy; it is appropriate that the making of good plots is more difficult than the portrayal of good characters, belonging as it does to a higher degree of the teleological development of literature; Aristotle sees the proof of this both in the achievements of early poets and in the difficulty which beginners have to build good plots: "The plot, then , is the first principle and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy: character holds the second place" (Poetics VI).
But there are other reasons apart from purely literary or generic ones which determine why plot should be more important than character. In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics we also find the view that in actual life, and not merely in literature, character is subordinated to action because it is the product of action; it is developed in particular directions by the nature of our actions from our earliest days, and a man's bent of character can be manifested only in his actions. Similarly, in drama 'character' in its full sense can be manifested only in action, and must therefore play a subordinate part to plot. The superiority of tragedy to other genres is no doubt partly due to this coincidence of the relation between action and character in real life and in the dramatic genres.
Aristotle compares portrayal of character without a structuring action to the difference in painting between patches of colour and random and the superior organization of a sketch which represents something, even if it is colourless. "Thus tragedy is the imitation of an action, and of the agents mainly with a view to the action" (Poetics VI). Strictly speaking, it is the mythos, the plot of the tragedy, which is a the representation of an action. Aristotle speaks of "a plot giving an ordered combination of incidents", of plot being "the arrangement of the incidents" or "the imitation of the action" (Poetics VI).
So, we have two possible ways of looking at a tragedy, two possible levels of analysis of the story which is being represented. On the one hand, it is an action (práxis ), just as our daily activities may be described as actions. On the other hand, it is a plot (mythos ), an artistic structure which the poet builds out of the action; on the one hand we find mere incidents, on the other, the disposition of incidents. This sense of mythos as something which is made by the poet, as opposed to the action or story, which is inherited by him (although he may invent it as well) is something new in Aristotle. It did not exist in the Greek language before he defined it. The poet is the maker not of verses or of stories, but of this important intermediate structure whose presence had not been identified before Aristotle: plots.
This distinction of Aristotle's will remain largely undeveloped until the twentieth century, when it is rediscovered by the Russian Formalists and developed by the Structuralists. Aristotle himself did not pay much attention to it; we may note that he did not include action as a separate constituent of tragedy; probably he felt that the presence of plot in that list accounted for both of them; the action would only be seen through the plot.
There is an important difference, however, between Aristotle's mythos and the Formalist equivalent, which will be called siuzhet, and that is the abstract quality of the mythos. The difference between the siuzhet and the actual literary text is never clearly defined. But Aristotle clearly conceives his mythos or plot as an abstraction to deal with the narrative aspect of tragedy, and other aspects of the text are comprised under the heads of thought and diction.
We have said that this distinction between action and plot remains undeveloped in Aristotle's theory. He deals with many of the elements of action as belonging to the plot, for instance: "Plots are simple or complex, for the actions in real life, of which the plots are an imitation, obviously show a similar distinction" (Poetics X). Sometimes he even uses the terms interchangeably. So it may be convenient not to elaborate too much on this distinction; we will study actions combined with plots, as Aristotle himself does. But we will keep the distinction in mind, because at some points it does become significant. For instance, in chapter 18, when there is talk of the incidents of an action which lie outside the plot, for instance, past incidents which have a bearing on it but do not appear on stage.
1.3.5.2.2. Unity of Plot
There was during the Renaissance and the Neo-classical age an important debate on the three Aristotelian unities of drama. Aristotle was supposed to have established three rules which every play ought to follow: unity of action, of place and of time. Aristotle does give some indications on these matters, but no absolute rules. He is much more tolerant than many of his later commentators, who were responsible for the strict formulation of the rules.
To begin with, he says that a plot ought to be proprotionate, not too long and not too short. He is concerned above all with the correct understanding of the whole, so this "rule" of the length of the plot should be contemplated together with his observations on unity of plot and on catharsis: "in the plot, a certain length is necessary, and a length which can be easily embraced by the memory" (Poetics VII). The nature of the action must also be taken into account:
the limit as fixed by the nature of the drama itself is this: the greater the lenght, the more beautiful will the piece be by reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous. And to define the matter roughly, we may say that the proper magnitude is comprised within such limits, that the sequence of events, according to the law of probability or necessity, will admit of a change from bad fortune to good, or from good fortune to bad. (Poetics VII)
As to the length of the action itself, Aristotle advises that it should not go much beyond one complete day. It must be pointed out that this was the practice of the major Greek tragedians. The same might be argued about the unity of place. There is no reference in the Poetics to such a unity, apart from an observation of the fact that epic poetry has not the limitations set by the stage to the presentation of different places. The works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, however, are usually as strict in this respect as any Neoclassical critic might wish .
These supposed unities, or rather, these observations of Aristotle's are wholly coherent with his main requirement for the plot of a tragedy, and also subservient to it. This requirement is our third unity, unity of action. "Unity of plot," Aristotle says, "does not, as some persons think, consist in the unity of the hero" (Poetics VIII). The actions of a man do not necessarily build up a single pattern, a unified action which makes a coherent whole with a sense. And the action must be a whole:
A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it. A well constructed plot, therefore, must neither begin nor end at haphazard, but conform to these principles. (Poetics VII)
This definition of beginning, middle and end derives from Plato's Phaedrus. It is not wholly truistic: "the acceptance of the statement that a story must have a beginning would seem to be that the story must start more or less with where its antecedents may be taken for granted, that is, where they are generic rather than specifically relevant" (Wimsatt and Brooks 30). The distinction is especially relevant in Greek tragedy, which relied for its plots on stories which were well known to the public. Aristotle draws this conclusion from the requirement of unity:
As therefore, in the other imitative arts, the imitation is one when the object imitated is one, so the plot, being an imitation of an action, must imitate one action and that a whole, the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed. For a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible difference, is not an organic part of the whole. (Poetics VIII)
Aristotle sees the whole as more than the sum of its parts, if only in that it includes the relations among the parts. Defined in this way, the unity of action has a much more general and comprehensive nature than will be allowed by later interpretations. We may notice that it is not too much to say that this is a structural definition of unity: its abstraction allows us to account for any kind of unity we may find in a plot, and in this respect it is difficult to go beyond it.
Aristotle compares the unity of the plot to the unity of a living being. It is only a comparison, but it has its importance. As Humphrey House has pointed out, the comparison of the unity of a literary work with that of a living organism refutes the charge that Aristotle is describing a formal, dead, mechanical kind of unity. This is "unity" in a sense similar to that used in modern structuralist poetics.
However, it has an obvious shortcoming : being a structural definition of the plot, which is only one of the constituent elements of a tragedy, it fails to account for the whole of the tragedy. This we have already seen; Aristotle's theory of tragedy and indeed the whole of his Poetics is plot-centered, and so it fails to account for many literary phenomena. It is the work that we might wish to define as a whole and as a structure, and not merely the plot. But we had better wait until the twentieth century, and be content in the meantime with Aristotle's theory of plots.
1.3.5.2.3. Kinds of Plots
Aristotle discards plots which do not keep this rule of unity as the worst. These plots he calls episodic : "I call a plot 'episodic' in which the episodes or acts succeed one another without probable or necessary sequence" (Poetics IX). He then divides plots into simple and complex:
By a simple action I refer to one which is single and continuous in the sense of my earlier definition, and in which the change of fortune comes about without a reversal or discovery. A complex action is one in which the change is accompanied by a discovery or reversal, or both. (Poetics X)
We must be careful not to confuse this classification of Aristotle's with another one which he will use immediately, the one which divides plots into single and double (Poetics XIII). Here the criterion of classification is similar to the one used in defining episodic plots: we are considering whether there is a single focus of interest in the action. But from the examples set by Aristotle, double plots are not to be confused with episodic plots. In episodic plots, one focus of interest follows the other and the connection between them is not necessary; in double plots, both actions are developed simultaneously (f.i., in the Odyssey ).
1.3.5.2.4. The Contents of the Tragic Action
But it remains to define those terms which are to serve as the basis of the first classification, reversal (peripeteia ) and recognition (anagnorisis ). To them we might add calamity (pathos ). These are aspects of content.
Reversal of the situation is a change by which the action veers round to its opposite, subject always to our rule of probability or necessity.... Recognition, as the name indicates, is a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined by the poet for good or bad fortune. The best form of recognition is coincident with a reversal of the situation, as in the Oedipus. (Poetics XI)
The difference between reversal and recognition may seem obscure at first, but becomes clearer when we notice that reversal concerns above all the expectations of the audience, and discovery those of the characters. Besides, reversal is related to the fortune of the characters, and recognition is relative to their identity: there is a mistaken identity or a double identity in the case of one or several characters, and the discovery unravels the plot. In reversal, the intention of the character produces results opposite to the desired ones; whereas there is not a specific intention in the case of recognition. Reversal is intimately connected with the requirement set by Aristotle for the best tragic plots, which involve a passage from happiness to unhappiness. Reversal has also a suggestion of sudden change from good to bad or bad to good. The key moment of reversal is the turning point (metabasis ) where the downfall of the protagonist begins. Maybe the two meanings are not consciously divided by Aristotle. It is important to note that the reversal must be both intelligible and paradoxical. This is the key to Aristotle's conception of plot as integrating pleasure and instruction. We may note that these criteria (reversal and recognition) are even today a key element in the functioning of plots, especially in the cinema.
The definition of recognition, on the other hand, is related to the requirement that the tragic action must involve friends or next of kin (e.g. in Oedipus Rex), because only these relationships can bring about the greatest suffering on scene, and only they are capable of causing pity and fear, which are the objective proper to tragedy. There is a potential for dramatic irony here, although Aristotle does not use that word to refer to the superior knowledge of the audience: the character's deeds or words escape his intention, as he is not in knowledge of all the facts, and they are charged with another meaning by the situation. At the turning-point, "action is confronted by its own unintended outcome" (Halliwell 208). So, both peripeteia and anagnorisis are developments and complements of the basic ignorance or error (hamartia ) of the character.
The best effects of pity and fear are obtained by the means of calamity, pathos: "The scene of suffering (pathos ) is a destructive or painful action, such as death on the stage, bodily agony, wounds, and the like" (Poetics XI). The popular notion of tragedy today is associated to the idea of physical and moral suffering.
The conditions set by Aristotle on these key elements of tragedy are strict: they must not be gratuitous, and the unity of the plot must be preserved. Reversal and recognition "should arise from the internal structure of the plot, so that what follows should be the necessary or probable result of the preceding action. It makes all the difference whether any given event is a case of propter hoc [causal relationship] or post hoc [mere succession]" (Poetics X). Succession does not equal causality; post hoc non ergo propter hoc . The disaster of the tragical hero must be a logical disaster, or at least must seem inevitable to the audience. Aristotle bans supernatural or irrational solutions from the tragedy.
It is therefore evident that the unraveling of the plot, no less than the complication, must arise out of the plot itself, it must not be brought about by the deus ex machina. (Poetics XV)
Here and elsewhere Aristotle is not describing actual Greek practice; he is rather defining his own ideal of poetry, one in which there is no place for the irrational except in peripheral areas of the work.
The formal requirements of unity, causality, and the element of surprise and point of view represented by recognition and reversal are integrated in Aristotle's remark that pity and fear are heightened when things happen unexpectedly as well as logically, for then they will be more remarkable than if they seem merely mechanical or accidental: "The tragic wonder will then be greater than if they happened of themselves or by accident; for even coincidences are most striking when they have an air of design" (Poetics IX).
1.3.5.2.5. The Effects of Tragic Action : Catharsis of Pity and Fear
(See the definition of tragedy in Poetics VI).
Fear and pity may be aroused by spectacular means; but they may also result from the inner structure of the piece, which is the better way, and indicates a superior poet. (Poetics XIV)
Aristotle has defined tragedy as the representation of a complete serious action through artistic language and dramatic representation which by means of pity and fear will bring about the purgation of such emotions. The original Greek term for "purgation" is catharsis . Catharsis is, then, a theory of the effects of literature on the receiver, in this case the audience of the tragedy. Nor the actual audience, which Aristotle seems to despise at times; rather an abstract audience. The theory of catharsis presupposes that there is an integral connection between some aspects of the structure of the work and the response of the audience. So we look at that response through the structure of the work.
It is not a theory of the immediate pleasure to which Aristotle makes reference at times. It is a theory which tries to find which are the ultimate effects of literature, the better to assess its role. But unfortunately Aristotle's account of catharsis is short and ambiguous. It seems to suggest, however, that pity and fear have a homoeopathic function, that they are used to drive out pity and fear.
This notion of catharsis has been interpreted in wildly different ways. Some theories we might call the "vaccine" theories: pity and fear are raised up where they did not exist before, and are then released. This produces a kind of emotional education which will prevent them from overpowering the spectator in the circumstances of his real life.
Other theories we might call the "safety valve" theories: pity and fear which have been dangerously pent up or repressed in the mind of the audience are excited by the means of pathetic and violent action, and are then released; this would seem to be closer to some related medical senses of the word catharsis.
Still other interpretations, mainly neoclassical, are moralising: speak of an education of virtue, warning against pride through fear and teaching pity. This seems to be out of the question, since Aristotle speaks of both pity and fear as of passions which must be cast away. Tragedy has positive ethical effects, but it is essential to recognize that this is not to be interpreted in a narrowly didactic sense. Tragedy does not give data on how to behave: rather, it acts through its effect on the emotions. The obvious effect of tragedy, the raising of emotions, is the very reverse of its actual effect, their being cast out. If tragedy teaches, Aristotle seems to say, it is only in a hidden and indirect way. Poetry helps men to be rational, but it is not necessarily concerned with any more specific teaching. Aristotle is in favour of the best form of catharsis, which is an indirect way of teaching, but he is against poetic justice (the deus ex machina ) which is an instance of carrying tragedy towards an end which is not its own, and trying to transform it into direct moralizing, without the essential requirements of pity and fear.
A further ambiguity is the precise nature of this being cast away, this purification, which may be given a mystical or a psychological sense. The word was used in religion as well as in medicine. Taking into account the general drift of Aristotelianism, it is more likely that Aristotle is referring to some kind of medical purification, to something that today we would call a psychological effect, rather than to a religious phenomenon.
A mimetic interpretation is also possible. We might relate the idea of catharsis to Aristotle's conception of art as imitiation. Just as the action on the stage is only the imitation of an action, the effects of pity and fear caused in the audience may be thought to be only the imitation of real emotions, which produce a sense of well-being as they are set against their real counterparts.
Yet another theory stands in opposition to all these previous ones. According to this theory, the cathartic effect is not located in the audience, but inside the play --it is fabulaic. Tragedy would require then scenes representing pity and fear. It is the hero who is purified through pity and fear when he realizes the failing that has brought about his downfall. But even this last theory recognizes that the audience is presented with a moral progress in the hero, a spectacle which cannot but be beneficial to its morals. In fact, Aristotle seems to consider that the capacity to elicit pity and fear is an objective attribute of the poetic material as handled by the playwright: "fearful and pitiful events". The homoeopathic overtones of the theory of catharsis suggest that these fearful and pitiful events are such for both characters and audience: the emotions involved are both the means and the object of the experience.
In any case, it is evident that Aristotle's theory is the very reverse of Plato's (there are, however, some suggestions of homoeopathic catharsis in the Laws, on the subject of Korybantic dancers). Plato saw in this kind of artistic imitations a kind of surrender to the passions. Both agree on the fact that tragedy excites the passions, but for Plato they remain so, while Aristotle insists that raising them is merely a means of casting them out. There are also different interpretations of "casting out". Probably he means the restoration of these passions to their right proportions, to the desirable "mean" which is the basis of his discussion of human qualities in the Ethics . Some theorists believe that this purification is carried out through a reciprocal effect of the two emotions, pity and fear. Pity draws us nearer to the object we pity, while fear drives us away from it. Catharsis would be some kind of equilibrium, of seeing things in a reasonable way, once both emotions have staved each other off. If Aristotle did not mean that, at least he did relate in an organic way the two emotions, pity and fear, in the Ethics. These emotions had been identified as essentials of the tragic experience before Aristotle (catharsis, on the other hand, is uniquely Aristotelian). Common Greek attitudes of the time link pity to metabasis or change of fortune. Pity is felt, Aristotle argues, when the spectator perceives an analogy between himself and the sufferer. Pity for others derives from fear for oneself; pity and fear are essentially linked. This very definition exemplifies Aristotle's refusal to sever thought from emotions, in his ethics as well as in his poetics. Tragic fear differs from ordinary fear because it is focussed on the experience of others. There may be a suggestion that it derives too from our own experience of fear, by analogy and reasoning.
It remains to determine which is the best way to arouse the emotions of pity and fear. We have seen it must be done through elements present in the plot, and not through spectacle. But not everything may be included in the plot. Monstruous characters or deeds, for instance, must be ruled out, as they will be in later classicist periods because of decorum. Aristotle's idea of decorum, however, is not the same: he is not concerned with indecency, but with generic propriety: "we must not demand of tragedy any and every kind of pleasure, but only that which is proper to it" (Poetics XIV).
Tragedy then must involve some calamity which befalls people who are friends or next of kin and which is caused by one of them. Aristotle classifies tragic plots using two criteria:
· whether the calamitous act is carried out or not.
· whether the agent knows that it is a calamitous act, that is, whether the recognition precedes or follows the act.
So, we have four possibilities, and, as Aristotle himself says, "These are the only possible ways. For the deed must either be done or not done-and that wittingly or unwittingly" (Poetics XIV):
· "to be about to act knowing the persons and then not to act, is the worst. It is shocking without being tragic, for no disaster follows."
· "The next and better way is that the deed should be perpetrated."
· "Still better, that it should be perpetrated in ignorance, and the discovery made afterwards."
· "The last case is the best, as when in the Cresphontes Merope is about to to slay her son, but recognizing who he is, spares his life." (Poetics XIV)
Let us notice that Aristotle seeks a logical ground for his classifications, and that he wants to exhaust all the possibilities. The relevant criteria in this classification are the following structural pairs:
knowledge / ignorance
intention / lack of intention
action[ / lack of action
Another similar attempt at structural classification is to be found in chapter 16. dealing with the different types of discovery, but we will not enter into it.
1.3.5.2.6. Sections of Tragedies. Sections of Plots
We have seen an abstractive classification of the constituent elements of tragedy into plot, character, thought, diction, spectacle and song. These we might call "parts of quality" in the sense that they are present more or less simultaneously at every moment of the play. Our concern now is with the "parts of quantity", those parts into which the dramatic representation can be divided, as it were, longitudinally. They are "prologue, episode, exode, and choral song, this last being divided into parode and stasimon" (Poetics XII). These are not very important for our purposes, since they belong specifically to Greek tragedy, and modern drama uses a division into acts, but it is important to notice that Aristotle made a difference between parts of quantity, parts of quality and parts of the action.
Now we go for the parts of the action:
Every tragedy falls into two parts-complication and unraveling or dénoument. Incidents extraneous to the plot are frequently combined with a portion of the plot proper, to form the complication; the rest is the unraveling. By the complication I mean all that extends from the beginning of the action to the part which marks the turning-point to good and bad fortune. The unraveling is that which extends from the beginning of the change to the end. (Poetics XVIII)
The first part of this definition is peculiar to Greek tragedies, but the second has a more general value; it is more useful for us.
1.3.5.3. Character (ethos )
Character is the second constituent element of a tragedy. We have already seen some opinions of Aristotle concerning the place of character and its relationship with plot. Character is not clearly defined in the Poetics, but at one point Aristotle says that "character refers to men's qualities" (Poetics VII). Character, then, is not to be taken in the sense of "human being" (personaje ) but rather in the sense of "personality", "disposition" (carácter ). Character is bound to action, since it determines the possibility of acting in one way or other: choice and intention are its main defining traits. It is not the whole of the personality, but rather the disposition to act virtuously or otherwise, as manifested in deliberate ethical intention (proaíresis ). This intention is manifested both through action and speech: thence the importance of "thought". There is no place in Aristotle's theory for an unconscious revelation of character. Character is made evident only in conscious and deliberate moral choice.
"In respect of character there are four things to be aimed at. First, and most important, it must be good" (Poetics XV). Aristotle means here moral goodness, but later he will qualify this requirement. There is a place in his theory for evil characters, of course, and also for not so good characters. Moreover, he does not identify virtue and happiness, as Socrates and Plato had done. Tragedy deals for Aristotle with the vulnerability of external conditions of happiness, vulnerability of fortune and prosperity, and not of virtue. And anyway, he does not mean any kind of absolute moral goodness, but rather a fulfilment of the possibilities of each character:
This rule is relative to each class. Even a woman may be good, and also a slave; though the woman may be said to be an inferior being, and the slave quite worthless. The second thing to aim at is propriety . . . . Thirdly, character must be true to life . . . . The fourth point is consistency: for though the subject of the imitation, who suggested the type, be inconsistent, still he must be consistently inconsistent. (Poetics XV)
With these rules, Aristotle sets the foundations of the doctrine of decorum in characterization, and its slippery requirement that characters in literary works must be both like characters in life and like characters in other literary works.
The last of the four requirements seems to lead us to a regressus in infinitum, but it becomes clearer from what follows that Aristotle is here demanding a certain idealization of character, in the sense of universalization, that is, of an interpretation of the way a character would act "according to the laws of necessity or probability":
So too, the poet, in representing men who are irascible or indolent, or have other defects of character, should preserve the type and yet ennoble it. In this way Achilles is portrayed by Agathon and Homer. (Poetics XV)
The poet should then preserve the type with its defects, and at the same time ennoble it. Let us point out that this is a theory of character in tragedy.
We may also add here some requirements for tragedy taking "character" in our modern sense (personaje ). Aristotle speaks in this respect not of "characters", but of actors (in the sense of actants or participants in a plot, not in the sense of the professional comedians). We see that the very name makes them subservient to the action. Besides, it has a connotation of activity which does not accomodate very well with the element of passivity and suffering which seems so strongly linked to many of the Greek tragedies. For Aristotle, tragedy must be centered on an active figure, the hero.
Besides the general requirements of character, we have already seen some specific indications on the actors of tragedy. They must be men better than the average. They must also be friends or relatives. Aristotle observes that the fact that they belong to a small group of mythical families is convenient, even though it is not a necessary condition. The poet is free to invent his characters, provided that they fulfil the basic requirements.
The best way of producing pity and fear, according to Aristotle, is through a complex action (one with recognition, or reversal, or both) in which a man not eminently good or just falls into misfortune because of some error or frailty (hamartia ). The character must not be too bad, because his downfall would not bring about terror or pity, and not too good because then the result would be disgust, and not pity. So, hamartia does not necessarily mean "sin", but rather "error" or "unskilfulness" in current Greek usage. In Aristotle's Ethics, it may include sin and crime, but the main sense is something like "rash and culpable negligence". The kind which seems favoured by Aristotle is man's blundering against the supernatural, such as we find in Oedipus Rex. We may note that the requirement that tragedy must present men as better than they are is somewhat relaxed: the hero in tragedy seems to be closer to human limitations.
However, and most surprisingly, Aristotle ignores the religious significance of tragedy. Aristotle has insisted on the conscious action of the characters, so there is not much place left for their being victims of fate; this Aristotle would consider an irrational element , alien to the plot itself. This attitude is another link between his theory of poetics and the whole of his philosophy, in which there is not much place for the traditional beliefs. Although Aristotle never attacks traditional beliefs, we can't help thinking that for him, the stories about the gods are significant only insomuch as they show what men think about the gods (in this he followed Xenophanes' dictum). This neglect of the religious side of tragedy impairs very seriously the value of his theory for an understanding of Greek tragedy, though its originality as a purposive and ideological theory is enhanced. "At the centre of the Poetics," according to Stephen Halliwell, "we see the results of a confrontation between a confident rationalism and the tragic vision of the poets" (237).
The chorus, Aristotle says, must be regarded as one of the actors. Choral songs must not be lyrical interludes; they should instead be relevant to the plot. He prefers Sophocles' way to that of Euripides or Agathon. The chorus must get involved in the action.
1.3.5.4. Thought (dianoia )
By "thought" Aristotle means the rhetorical element of poetry, and above all the construction of the speeches of the characters.
Thought includes all the effects that have to be produced by means of language; among these are proof and refutation, the awakening of emotions such as pity, fear, anger, and the like, and also exaggeration and depreciation. (Poetics XIX)
These effects, Aristotle says, are similar to those that can be achieved by means of action. But even though action is to be preferred whenever possible, sometimes speech is required to produce these effects.
Note that with "thought" Aristotle is referring to the speech acts of the character, the speech acts which are a part of the story, and not to the speech act of the author, the whole of the work, its ultimate meaning or general effect. But he seems to draw an opposition between thought and character which we may find unacceptable today:
Character is that which reveals moral purpose, showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids. Speeches, therefore, which do not make this manifest, or in which the speaker does not choose or avoid anything whatever, are not expressive of character. Thought, on the other hand, is found where something is proved to be or not to be, or a general maxim is enunciated. (Poetics VI)
Aristotle does not dwell long on thought in the Poetics because this area is not specifically literary : "Concerning thought, we may assume what is said in the rhetoric, to which inquiry the subject more strictly belongs" (Poetics XIX).
1.3.5.5. Diction (lexis )
1.3.5.5.1. Definition
1.3.5.5.2. Metaphor
1.3.5.5.3. Diction and style
1.3.5.5.1. Definition
By "diction" Aristotle refers to "the expression of the meaning in words" (Poetics VI), that is, to the expressive use of words, the poetic side of language, or the verbal element in literature. Diction "has the same force in verse and in prose" (Poetics VI).
The study of diction has several aspects, among them what today we would call the pragmatic or speech act approach to language and literature, which, as Aristotle says, is also not specific to poetics, but of a more generally rhetorical nature:
One branch of the inquiry treats of the modes of utterance. But this province of knowledge belongs to the art of delivery and to the masters of that science. It includes, for instance-what is a command, a prayer, a statement, a threat, a question, an answer, and so forth. (Poetics XIX)
This is Aristotle´s speech act theory, which follows the lines laid down by Protagoras and other sophists before him. We noted that they did not distinguish any specific categories to deal with literature: neither does Aristotle. Instead, he refers us to the general theory of action through speech laid out in his Rhetoric. But a special treatment for literature is found implicitly in his very refusal to include this kind of study in the Poetics: "To know or not to know these things involves no serious censure upon the poety's art" (Poetics XIX). The poet has some privileges when it comes to the use of language, and a degree of freedom with what is not specifically poetic must be given him.
This amounts to an assertion that poetry is not commensurable with the categories of rhetoric as expounded by Aristotle himself. In other words, literature is a speech act of a different kind from those used to analyse ordinary language, and the rhetoric of literature is called poetics.
But there are other aspects of diction apart from speech acts, and these we might call Aristotle's linguistic study of literature. Aristotle devotes three whole chapters to poetic diction. Here he develops a brief theory of linguistics, which has an enormous interest but which does not concern us in an immediate manner. In spite of appearances, his observations have a systematic nature, and they provide a wider frame to the study of literary language which will be our main concern. For instance, he begins with this definition of the parts of language: "Language in general includes the following parts: letter, syllable, connecting word, noun, verb, inflection or case, sentence or phrase" (Poetics XX). It was Castelvetro who noted that this definition starts at the pole of the non-significative and indivisible elements, and ascends a scale towards those which have meaning and can be divided. Another example of this systematic concern of Aristotle: he defines first language at large, ordinary language. Then he goes on to define metaphor and other phenomena of discourse. Metaphor is defined as a kind of deviation from ordinary language, so the order of the argument is to some extent a logical one.
We will note some interesting observations which have a bearing on the theory of literature.
The first seems to foreshadow the development of textual grammar in our century. The Iliad, and, by implication, any literary work, is defined as a phrase or proposition, a composite of sounds with a meaning, some parts of it having a meaning of their own. Furthermore,
A sentence or phrase may form a unity in two ways-either as signifying one thing, or as consisting of several parts linked together. Thus the Iliad is one by the linking together of parts, the definition of man by the unity of the thing signified. (Poetics XX)
There seems to be an implication that of the two kinds of unity, the second is the more fundamental. Unity in the thing signified, and not in the discourse which signifies it, or simple versus complex unity. This would be an important qualification to the theory of the unity of action in tragedy or epic poetry: unity of action would not exist in the world by itself, it would rather be a product of the discourse which contains the action, of its rearrangement into a mythos. But even if this is so, and discursive unity is of a lesser metaphysical value, there is also a place for its study in Aristotle's system; it has some value in itself.
Aristotle also studies lexis in our modern sense. He classifies words into current, strange, metaphorical, ornamental, newly coined, lengthened, contracted, altered, etc. At first sight, this may seem one of those Chinese classifications invented by Borges (dividing animals into dogs, painted animals, animals which run fast in circles and animals belonging to the Emperor), but it makes more sense if we bother to examine it more closely. We will only dwell on the theory of metaphor, which has a crucial significance for literary studies.
1.3.5.5.2. Metaphor
Metaphor is the application of an alien name by transference either from genus to species, or from species to genus, or from species to species, or by analogy, that is, proportion . . . . Analogy or proportion is when the second term is to the first as the fourth to the third. We may then use the fourth for the second, or the second for the fourth. (Poetics XXI)
The examples given by Aristotle are:
1- " 'Here lies my ship', for lying at anchor is a species of lying."
2- " 'Odysseus has indeed performed ten thousand noble deeds' , for 'ten thousand' . . . is used here instead of the word 'many'."
3- " 'Draining off the life with the bronze' . . . ; here 'draining off' is used for 'severing' . . . , and both are species of 'taking away' ."
4- "old age is to life as evening is to day, and so one may call the evening the old age of the day . . . and one may call old age the evening of life."
Schematically,
1 life 2 old age
3 day 4 evening
In this fourth case, we may add to the metaphor a qualification appropriate to the term which has been replaced. Aristotle also points out that "in some cases there is no name for some of the terms of the analogy, but the metaphor can be used just the same." Also, "having called an object by the name of something else, one can deny it one of its attributes-for example, call the shield not Ares' cup, but a wineless cup" (Poetics XXI). We may complain that our classifications of tropes are more precise, and that some of Aristotle's metaphors are rather metonymies or synecdoches. But there exists an enormous confusion in the current usage of all these terms (in part because there is no way of drawing clear-cut categories). We include under metaphor several of the different types listed by Aristotle, without any further thought; and besides, there seems to be no general agreement on the difference between metonymy and synecdoche, though it seems advisable to use the term "metonymy" for relationships of cause-effect and "synecdoche" for those of logical inclusion. There is some advantage in a clear vocabulary, but the most important thing is a clear underlying conceptual system, and there is no doubt that Aristotle did much in this respect for the theory of metaphor.
Nevertheless, Aristotle's view of metaphor remains a limited one. Even though he stresses that metaphor may be important in grasping a new idea while learning, its function is always auxiliary. It is always an exception, a deviation, an addition to ordinary language, whereas modern linguistics (and indeed critical thought since the Romantics) sees metaphoric processes as the basic instrument for creating meaning. "Oddly perhaps to a modern mind, Aristotle seems unable to extend this view of the capacities of metaphor to his concept of the nature of language at large." This conception of metaphor as something extraneous may explain why the term "metaphor" is used not only for the whole relationship between the two terms of the metaphor, but also for the substituted term on its own. But it remains that Aristotle's account is good enough if we restrict it to "living" metaphors, metaphors which are perceived as such, as a deviant phenomenon --those used in poetry, for instance.
Aristotle's closing statement on metaphor may seem a surprising one, coming from him:
It is great matter to observe propriety in these several modes of expression as also in compound words, strange (or rare) words, and so forth. But the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances. (Poetics XXII)
This is one of the rare statements in the Poetics which present poetry as a special gift, and not as a technique which may be learnt by anybody.
1.3.5.5.3. Diction and Style
"The perfection of style is to be clear without being mean" (Poetics XXII). Simplicity is a virtue, but there is the danger of falling into the commonplace. A lofty style, abounding in metaphor, coinages, foreign words, etc. has dignity, and is raised above the everyday level, but it may be obscure, resulting in riddle, if too metaphorical, or barbarism, if there are too many foreign words. Schematically (see diagram overleaf),
form content
___________________________________________________
plain Clear Commonplace
(ideal)
complex Obscure Lofty
Aristotle favours moderate alterations of words as a means to be both dignified and clear. He also distinguished what is right for some kinds of speech and what is right for others:
Ariphrades ridiculed the tragedians for using phrases which no one would employ in ordinary speech . . . . It is precisely because such phrases are not part of the current idiom that they give distinction to the style. This, however, he failed to see. (Poetics XXII)
Also, not all genres have the same requirements. All resources may be used in heroic verse, which is intended for epic poetry,
but in iambic verse, which reproduces, as far as may be, familiar speech, the most appropriate words are those which are found even in prose. These are-the current or proper, the metaphorical, the ornamental. (Poetics XXII)
Aristotle breaches here the issue of the proper language for the drama and its difference from other poetic genres and from ordinary speech. This was a subject of lively debate in the neoclassical age (Dryden).
In his Rhetoric, Aristotle underlines the importance of rhythm in diction. He defines rhythm as the repetitition of similar elements, which works through the expectation arised in the hearer: the hearer knows that such and such elements will recur. Later critics (Coleridge, Lotman) will develop further this approach to rhythm and poetic language which takes into account the expectations of the reader.
1.3.5.6. Spectacle (opsis )
Aristotle does not value very highly the representational aspect of tragedy. He recognizes that it is a source of pleasure, but it is an inessential kind of pleasure. Pity and fear, the ends of tragedy, must be achieved by means of the construction of the plot, and not be dependent on the spectacle. This attitude of Aristotle is an aspect of the general shift we find in the Poetics from the sensuous to the cognitive. Art is not directed to the eyes, but to the higher abilities of the mind. The art of spectacle, moreover, is not properly the poet's, but rather the stage director's.
1.3.5.7. Song (melopoeia )
Song is the sixth and last component part of tragedy. It includes not only music, but lyrical compositions as well. Aristotle considers both elements as rather peripheral to the art of poetry. For him, lyrical poetry is an ornament; he does not perceive its wider agreement with the plot in an expanded sense of "unity". He considers the development of plot against the musical origin of tragedy as an improvement, and insists that the chorus must not have a lyrical function, but rather get involved in the action.
This is one more instance of the way in which Aristotle's theory of tragedy is sometimes at odds with actual Greek practice. The lyrical potential of drama was exploited to the full by the poets, but it is ignored by the philosopher.
1.3.5.8. Kinds of Tragedies
We have distinguished several elements which make up a tragedy. We can make a classification of tragedies (which is not to be confused with the classification of plots ) according to the element which predominates in them. Aristotle distinguishes complex tragedies, in which reversal and recognition are the most important elements, pathetic tragedies, in which passion, pathos or suffering is predominant, ethical tragedies, where character is foremost, and... here the text is corrupted. Anyway, "Concerning tragedy and imitation by means of action this may suffice" (Poetics XXIII).