Aristotle’s Poetics

Man with wax tablet. Vase painting
by Douris, c.500 BCE.

Aristotle (his actual name was Aristoteles) rivals his tutor Plato as one of the most important philosophers of antiquity. After studying with Plato at the Academy in Athens for twenty years, he spent a few years teaching the young Alexander the Great, then returned to Athens where he founded the Lyceum. His many surviving works cover a vast range of knowledge, from zoology to rhetoric, and include a major contribution to the theory of beauty and of art which can be found in his Politics, Rhetoric, and above all the Poetics.

The Poetics, thought to be a later work written perhaps between 350-330 BCE, is the first proper work of Western literary criticism. Criticism pre-Aristotle, such as the remarks by Xenophon and Heraclitus on Homer, survives only in scraps. Literary judgements appear in the comic playwrights, especially the satire of Aristophanes, and Plato makes a number of important statements on art and artists in his dialogues. However none of these are a consistent critical analysis.

Although it never mentions him by name, the Poetics is often interpreted as Aristotle’s response to Plato, and with good reason. Aristotle knew he was diverging from his teacher’s views when he said poetry could have cognitive value, and that its provocation of emotion could be good for the soul. However the Poetics is more than that. Aristotle spent his career trying to understand the world by systematically breaking it down into categories and systems. In literary criticism, as in so many other areas of knowledge, he effectively created an entire discipline and vocabulary, to the benefit of all who came after him.

The Poetics is very short – about fifty pages – and its sketchiness has led many scholars to think the text is not a polished treatise but a set of lecture notes, either Aristotle’s own or a student’s. There is evidence that the original work contained more material and included a companion volume on comedy. For example, there are a few references by later writers to things absent from the surviving text. Aristotle himself says in the Poetics, chapter 6, ‘I shall speak later... about comedy’ but no discussion follows; and he refers in the Rhetoric to a discussion of the ridiculous, and in the Politics to a discussion of catharsis, that don’t exist in our version¹. The ancient biographer Diogenes Laertius, amongst others, mentioned a Poetics in two volumes. Our last reference is from the middle of the 6th century – at some point after that, the second volume disappears.² In 1839 a medieval manuscript was discovered, known as the Tractatus Coislinianus, which seems to be a summary of the Poetics based on a more complete text than our own, and including an analysis of humour.³

Ancient texts were not written according to modern norms of publication and scholarship, and their messy history suffers many uncertainties: the circumstances of their writing, what interpolations or edits were made later, who copied the manuscript and how accurately, precisely what editions or parts of editions were known to later scholars and how they were catalogued, and so on.

Despite its fragmented history, the Poetics is a hugely important contribution to literary theory and lays out a fairly complete analysis. Aristotle gave us some of our basic concepts of poetics and story-making, such as the beginning, middle and end; reversals, recognitions and denouements; advising against the deus ex machina⁴; and that plot events should lead inevitably into one another. He also unwittingly founded a couple of concepts that have been misrepresented by later commentators: the ‘three unities’ and the ‘fatal flaw’.

I am referring to the 1965 English translation of T.S. Dorsch, available in Penguin Classics. Translations available free online include S.H. Butcher’s at the Internet Classics Archive, or W.H. Fyfe’s at Perseus Digital Library. I can’t comment on the merits of translations but the latter has the advantage of line references and explanatory footnotes.

My goal below is simply to outline the contents of the Poetics, with just a few comments. In my next post I will take a more detailed look at some of the issues it raises and at Aristotle’s aesthetics in general.

Synopsis

The Poetics is normally divided into 26 chapters. The references are to Bekker numbers, the standard method of citation for the works of Aristotle. Sometimes words are translated differently so I’ve tried to indicate variants when it seems important.

Introduction and Chapters 1-3: Poetic imitation

• Poetry and music ‘can be all be described in general terms as forms of imitation or representation.’
• They differ from one another in three ways: 1) different media 2) representing different things 3) representing things in different ways. These are often discussed as medium, object and mode.
1. Medium. Each art has its own medium of imitation. ‘Some artists, whether by theoretical knowledge or by long practice, can represent things by imitating their shapes and colours, and others do so by the use of the voice... imitation is produced by means of rhythm, language, and music, these being used either separately or in combination.’
2. Object. Artists represent people in action who are of good or bad character: they will be 1) better than us, 2) the same, or 3) worse than us. Thence the distinction between comedy (portrays people as worse) and tragedy (portrays people as better).
3. Mode. Subjects can be presented in various ways within the same medium. E.g. using narration, the first person, the third person, or a mixture.

Aristotle seems to think poetry must take human actions as its subject (as opposed to Nature, for example). Poetry, as a human production, has to appeal on some level to human experience.

Chapters 4-5: The origins of poetry

• Poetry has two causes, both rooted in human nature. 1) The instinct for imitation 2) The enjoyment of imitation.
1. The instinct for imitation is inherent, uniquely human, and we learn our earliest lessons through it.
2. Enjoyment: ‘we enjoy looking at the most accurate representations of things which in themselves we find painful to see’ e.g. low animals and corpses. ‘The reason for this is that learning is a very great pleasure... [People] enjoy seeing likenesses because in doing so they acquire information (they reason out what each represents, and discover, for instance, that “this is a picture of so and so”.’
• Starting from these natural aptitudes – also music and rhythm and therefore metre – people improvised on them, until by gradual improvement they created poetry. 
• Poetry soon branched into two, based upon the poets’ temperaments.
1. The serious-minded represented noble persons and actions (hymns and panegyrics, heroic verse). This later emerged as tragedy.
2. The more trivial wrote about meaner/inferior people (invectives, lampoons). This later emerged as tragedy.
• The two branches went through their own process of development until acquiring their present form.

Chapter 5: Comedy, tragedy and epic

• Comedy represents ‘the worse types of men’ but in the sense that they are ridiculous rather than evil, and cause no pain.
• The distinction between epic poetry and tragedy: both are ‘a representation, in dignified verse, of serious actions.’ They share parts: ‘Anyone who can discriminate between what is good and what is bad in tragedy can do the same with epic.’ But whereas all the elements of epic are in tragedy, not all elements of tragedy are in epic. And:
1. Epic keeps to one metre and narrative form and has no time contraints. 
2. Tragedy ‘tries as far as possible to keep within a single revolution of the sun, or only slightly to exceed it’. 

Note that when Aristotle talks of ‘tragedy’ he means tragic plays, such as Sophocles’ Oedipus The King. He gives no justification for why a tragedy should keep within one day.

Chapter 6: What is tragedy?

• Tragedy is ‘a representation of an action that is worth serious attention, complete in itself, and of some amplitude; in language enriched by a variety of artistic devices appropriate to the several parts of the play; presented in the form of action, not narration; by means of pity and fear bringing about the purgation of such emotions.’ Aristotle assumes the inclusion of music and song.
• ‘The representation is carried out by men performing the actions.’
• Essential parts of tragedy: 1) spectacle 2) the medium of representation: song and diction.
• Tragedy imitates action. Action is done by agents with certain qualities of character and thought. Thought and character therefore are two causes of actions; ‘it is on them that all men depend for success or failure’. 
• The action gives us the plot: ‘the ordered arrangement of incidents’.
• Character is the participants, whose thought comes out in what they say.
• Every tragedy has six parts. All playwrights use these elements. Two of these (diction and song) represent the medium, one (spectacle) involves manner of representation, three (plot, character, thought) represent the object. In order of importance:
1. Plot. This is the most important, tragedy’s ‘life-blood’. Tragedy is ‘a representation, not of men, but of action and life, of happiness and unhappiness.’ Our character makes us what we are, but it is our actions that make us happy or unhappy. Plot includes important devices like ‘reversals’ and ‘recognitions’.
2. Character. Persons are involved for the sake of the action, but character takes second place to plot. Character is revealed by a person’s choices.
3. Thought. ‘The ability to say what is possible and appropriate in any given circumstances’. Revealed when something is being discussed or an opinion is expressed.
4. Diction. The expressive use of words. Has the same force in both prose and verse. 
5. Song. A pleasurable addition to the play.
6. Spectacle. An attraction, but of least importance to craft of tragedy.

As a non-Greek speaker I’m not sure if the gender-specific ‘men’ is Aristotle’s word-choice or the translator’s. But in Greek theatre only men were allowed to perform, even in the female roles.

Chapters 7-11: Plot (mythos)

• Tragedy is ‘the representation of an action that is complete and whole and of a certain amplitude.’
• ‘A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle and an end.’ A well-constructed plot will fit this logic. 
• A beautiful thing, made of various parts, must have its parts properly ordered and of appropriate size. Aristotle likens plot to ‘living creatures and organisms’. 
• Plots must be of reasonable length, so ‘they may be easily held in the memory’. The proper time limit is ‘a length which, as a matter either of probability or of necessity, allows of a change of misery to happiness’ or vice versa. 
• Basing a plot on one person does not necessarily give it unity. It should not relate every incident that happens in their life but a single action, presented as a unified whole. The incidents must be arranged so that if any are taken away, the whole suffers. If removing an incident makes no difference, it should not be there. 
• The difference between poetry and history:
• History tells of what has happened.
• Poetry tells of what might happen (because probable or necessary).
• ‘For this reason poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history; for while poetry is concerned with universal truths, history treats of particular facts.’
• Universal truths: ‘the kinds of thing a certain type of person will probably or necessarily say or do in a given situation.’
• However, poets may write about things that have happened, since they are possible and probable.
• Comic poets do not write about real people. Tragedians keep to the names of real people as ‘what is possible is credible’, but need not keep to the traditional stories. 
• The poet is a poet ‘by virtue of his representation, and what he represents is actions.’
• Plots should not be a series of episodes that are neither probable or necessary. However ‘tragedy is the representation not only of a complete action, but also of incidents that awake fear and pity, and effects of this kind 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.’
• Plots are simple or complex by virtue of their content. 
• Simple = single and continuous, in which a change of fortune comes about. 
• Complex = one in which the change is accompanied by a discovery or reversal or both. 
• Both kinds of plot should develop inevitably/probably from what has come before. ‘There is a big difference between what happens as a result of something else [propter hoc, because of it] and what merely happens after it [post hoc, after it].’
• Three components of a complex plot: reversal (peripeteia), discovery/recognition (anagnorisis) and calamity/pathos (pathos).
• Reversal. ‘A change from one state of affairs to its opposite’, unexpected but conforming to probability or necessity. E.g. a person’s identity is revealed to another.
• Discovery/Recognition. ‘A change from ignorance to knowledge... it leads directly to love or to hatred between persons destined for good or for ill-fortune.’ Most famously when Oedipus discovers he has murdered his father and slept with his mother. Should be related to the plot. In combination with a reversal, creates pity and fear – as befits tragedy.
• Calamity/pathos. ‘An action of a destructive or painful nature, such as death openly represented, excessively suffering, wounding and the like.’

Observations like ‘a plot needs a beginning, middle and end’ may seem obvious to us today, but sometimes things aren’t obvious until someone points them out – Aristotle was the first to do so.

When he asserts that comic poets don’t write about actual people, Aristotle is not referring to older writers like Aristophanes, who did include real people like Socrates and Euripides in his plays, but to newer comic writers.

The ‘three-act structure’ popular with screenwriters is sometimes attributed to Aristotle, but he says only that a plot should have a beginning, a middle and an end, which is not the same thing. Later in chapter 18 the division into ‘complication’ and ‘denouement’ makes two parts, not three (though this still does not approximate to an act structure).

Chapter 12: The parts of tragedy

• Aristotle lists six constituent parts of tragedy particular to Greek theatre.

Chapters 13-14: Pity and fear

• At its best, tragedy should be complex, not simple, and represent actions that awake fear and pity. How to do this?
• Good men passing from prosperity to misery, or evil men passing from misery to prosperity, do not awaken fear and pity but disgust. These plots do not ‘appeal to our humanity’.
• A worthless man falling from prosperity into misery might ‘play on our human feelings’ but also awakens no pity or fear.
• Pity is awakened by ‘undeserved misfortune’; fear by recognising that the same thing could happen to ourselves. 
• Tragedy should look between these extremes for a character we can identify with: a man who is not purely virtuous but whose fall is not thanks to depravity but to a terrible error (hamartia).
• The well-conceived plot must have:
1. a single interest
2. a change in fortune from prosperity to misery
3. caused in a man of prosperity and high reputation not by depravity but by a great error.
• Tragedy should end in misfortune. Aristotle defends Euripides on these grounds. 
• The next best kind of plot has a double interest, ending in opposite ways for the good and bad characters. Audiences like this but it belongs to comedy not tragedy. 
• The best way to awaken pity and fear is through the action. Aristotle is dismissive of mere spectacle. The most effective incidents are injuries inflicted on those who are near and dear. Aristotle considers four possibilities:
1. The character inflicts an injury in full knowledge of what they are doing (e.g. the murder of Clytemnestra by Orestes).
2. The character inflicts an injury without knowing what they are doing (e.g. Oedipus).
3. The character is about to inflict an injury in ignorance but discovers the truth before doing it.
4. The character is about to knowingly inflict an injury but fails to do so. This option is not tragic, since no suffering results.
• If the deed is done, it works better if the character only finds out what they have done afterwards. This outrages our feelings and gives us a surprise. However option #4 is the best. 
• Poets like to keep to a few families (e.g. the house of Oedipus) that are famous for their suffering.

Chapter 15: Characters

• There are four goals in characterisation.
1. Characters should be morally good. Goodness comes out in people’s actions. The social attitudes of Aristotle’s time show in his remark on women and slaves.
2. The portrayal should be appropriate to the sort of person, according to rank, sex, etc
3. The characters should be lifelike.
4. They should be consistent. Even if a person behaves inconsistently, they should be consistent in their inconsistency.
• As in the plot, it should be necessary and probable that a character speaks and acts in a certain way. 
• The unravelling/denouement of the plot should arise naturally. A deus ex machina should be avoided except in a few acceptable instances. 
• The poet should heighten the characters’ personality defects but still show them to be good people.

The deus ex machina is a Latin phrase derived directly from the Greek, meaning ‘god from the machine’. It refers to a stage crane that would literally allow a god to descend from the top of the stage and sort out the drama’s problems.

Chapter 16: Kinds of discovery/recognition

• Aristotle discusses five kinds of discovery/recognition (see chapter 11). 
1. The least artistic kind is discovery by visible signs or tokens: congenital marks, necklaces etc.
2. Another inartistic kind is contrived discoveries, such as when a character is made to simply say something instead of it being revealed by the plot. 
3. Memory. An experience reawakens a character’s memory, e.g. when a minstrel’s harp reminds Odysseus of the past.
4. Reasoning. The second-best kind of discovery. A character works out a plot point, such as someone’s identity, by logical reasoning. ‘Someone who is like me has come; no one is like me except Orestes; therefore it is Orestes who has come’. Of course, the character’s reasoning might be false.
5. The best kind is discovery brought about the plot: ‘when the startling disclosure results from events that are probable’.

Chapters 17-18: Some advice for the tragic poet

• To avoid inconsistencies, poets should as far as possible try to visualise the scenes they are writing, as if witnessing the events themselves.
• They should also imitate their characters’ gestures and speech to better imitate how they will behave. 
• Poets should plan their story in outline first and then work out the individual incidents, making sure they are appropriate.
• The length of a work is determined by the working out of its episodes – plays tend to be shorter than epic poetry. Even a rich plot like The Odyssey can be summarised in a few sentences. 
• Every tragedy has a complication and denouement. 
• The complication: from the beginning to just before the change of fortune (peripeteia and/or anagnorisis).
• The denouement: from the change of fortune to the end.
• There are four kinds of tragedy. The poet should try to include all four.
• Complex tragedy: depends on reversal and discovery.
• Tragedy of suffering. Plots of calamity or pathos.
• Tragedy of character.
• Tragedy of spectacle. 
• A tragedy should not have many stories, like an epic, as it does not have the space.
• In a note specific to Greek theatre, Aristotle says the chorus should be part of a whole, like an actor in its own right, not just be tacked on haphazardly.

Chapter 19: Thought and diction

• Aristotle refers readers to his Rhetoric. ‘Thought’ means the effects wrought by language, subject to probability, and without being explained by the characters. He lists: 
• proof and refutation
• awakening emotions (pity, fear, anger, etc)
• exaggeration and depreciation.
• Diction refers to the art of expressive language. Poets are not judged by their grasp of the art of elocution.

Chapters 20-22: Parts of speech

• Aristotle describes various parts of speech: what is a noun, and so on. Many scholars think some of this has been added to the Poetics by someone else. 
• Diction should be clear but not commonplace. Unfamiliar words – loan-words, metaphors, ornamental terms and so on – give dignity and raise the poet’s language above the commonplace, but too much can cause confusion. Good diction mixes common words with unfamiliar ones. 
• Moderation is advised. Tricks should not be over-used. 
• The most important trope is use of metaphor. This cannot be learnt, and is a mark of natural talent.

Chapter 23-24: Epic poetry

• In narrative verse plots should be constructed like in tragedies.
• Centre on single, whole, complete action, with a beginning, middle and end, like a single organism.
• Not a string of episodes like in histories. Homer rightly did not try to include every aspect of the Trojan War in the Iliad.
• Epic poetry shares the same parts as tragedy except for song and spectacle.
• Epic poetry can be much longer, showing many episodes, even simultaneous events. The metre should keep to heroic hexameter.
• Again, Homer is the model. The poet should speak not in his/her own voice but through the characters. 
• Homer knows how to tell lies: when Odysseus runs aground and is lifted to shore without ever waking, we accept the improbable incident because Homer charms us with his talent. Stories should prefer ‘probable impossibilities’ to ‘improbable possibilities’. There should be no irrational incidents/inexplicable details.

Chapter 25: Literary criticism

• Aristotle offers advice on the criticism of poetry. The poet aims at the representation of reality:
• Either things as they were or are, or as they are said to be or seem to be.
• His medium is language, mixed with unfamiliar terms and ornaments.
• Important: ‘There are not the same standards of correctness in poetry as in the political theory or any other art’ (1460b).
• Faults in poetry are of two kinds. 
1. Essential: the poet tries to represent something but fails through lack of skill.
2. Incidental: an error of fact but not of artistic skill (e.g. not knowing a female deer has no antlers).
• Faults are forgiveable if they help the work achieve its goal. Aristotle outlines five grounds for objection but calls for caution:
1. Impossibility. Poets should try to keep to what is possible, but may break this rule if it 1) helps the work achieve its goals 2) tries to improve on reality 3) fits accepted tradition.
2. Irrationality. Objectionable when it adds nothing. But improbable things do happen.
3. Immorality. We should not judge a speech or act as good or bad without considering the whole: ‘the persons by whom and to whom it was said or done, the occasion, the means and the reason.’
4. Contradiction/inconsistency. Critics should take care that they have read the poet’s intentions correctly before leaping to judgement.
5. Poor technique. Again, take care that alleged mistakes in language are not metaphors, intentionally ambiguous etc, i.e. that you aren’t misinterpreting the poet.

Aristotle wants to establish a fair framework for criticism. He wants to seek out mistakes and shortcomings, while allowing poets licence to bend the rules for their artistic purposes. Poetry should not be held to the same standard of factual correctness as other disciplines.

At the end of the chapter, Aristotle mentions ‘twelve criteria’ of criticism which may not be immediately obvious. A footnote in the Perseus edition ennumerates them thus:

Any expression that is criticised should be considered with reference to (1) things as they were; (2) things as they are; (3) things as they are said to be; (4) things as they seem to be; (5) things as they ought to be. Further, we should consider whether (6) a rare word or (7) a metaphor is used; what is the right (8) accent and (9) punctuation; also where there may be (10) ambiguity and what is (11) the habitual use of the phrase; also we may refer to (12) the proper standard of correctness in poetry as distinct from other arts.

Chapter 26: Epic and tragedy compared

• Which is better, epic poetry or tragedy? Epic is said to be better because cultivated readers don’t need spectacle; tragedy is spoilt by the vulgar behaviour of the performers. 
• Aristotle disagrees:
• That is a criticism of acting, not of poetry. Reciters of epic may also exaggerate their gestures.
• We should not object to all performance per se, only that of meaner/inferior types of people. 
• We may discern the quality of a tragedy without actors by reading it instead. So it does not necessarily have to appeal to meaner/inferior minds.
• On the contrary, tragedy is better:
• It has everything that epic has.
• It has scenic effects and music, a source of pleasure.
• It creates its effects over a shorter time span. 
• It is more single and has greater unity. Epic has lots of episodes (enough for several tragedies). Aristotle excludes the Iliad and Odyssey as they are so well-made and show a single action.
• Therefore tragedy is the superior art form. It gives pleasure, Aristotle seems to say, not through a long, diverting series of episodes as in epic, but through ‘the kinds I have described’, i.e. when a representation in art creates pity and fear leading to catharsis.

The fate and impact of the Poetics

For the first few hundred years after it was written, there is little evidence that the Poetics had much influence: there are hardly any references to it in surviving ancient texts, even in significant critical works like Horace’s Ars Poetica and Longinus’ On the Sublime. In the 8th century it was translated into Syriac, and from that into Arabic. The Spanish Muslim scholar Ibn Rushd, or Averroes, wrote a commentary on the Poetics in the 12th century that stressed the political use of language.

Aristotle’s treatise did not really arrive on the European intellectual scene until 1498, when the first Latin translation appeared. It had an immediate influence. Renaissance humanist scholars, interested in the revival of ancient culture, started a process of debate that led to the Poetics becoming the most influential work in Western critical theory. For example, when in 1595 Philip Sydney published his splendid Apology for Poetry (or Defence of Poetry), Aristotle, along with Horace and Cicero, was one of his main references, and he borrows his ideas freely. The Apology then exerted its own influence, on the Neo-Classicists and beyond.

The Renaissance commentators were as keen to turn the Poetics to their own ends as to understand what Aristotle wanted to say. Another important stage in the book’s history was Lodovico Castelvetro’s treatise The Poetics of Aristotle in the Vulgar Language (1570). Castelvetro claims to be faithful to Aristotle, but in fact used the Poetics as a vehicle for developing his own views on drama. Perhaps his most notable contribution was to formulate the so-called ‘three unities’, which don’t really appear in Aristotle as such, but match Castelvetro’s own idiosyncratic theories. This interpretation become influential in criticism and drama. In 17th century France, the playwrights Racine and Corneille took ideas like the three unities very seriously – the concept didn’t lose its eminence until the 19th century – and in turn spread Neoclassical dramatic theory throughout Enlightenment Europe.

Today the Poetics continues to be of more than academic interest. Many of its insights into drama are as relevant today as ever, and the work regularly features in screenwriting courses. Critical theory has come a long way since Aristotle, and the Poetics has not survived the test of time in many respects, but there is no denying its stature as the first major work of literary criticism in the Western tradition.

Notes

There is a discussion of Aristotle’s Poetics on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

1. For example Rhetoric, 1371b: ‘The ridiculous has been discussed separately in the Poetics.’ In fact, Chapter 5 of the Poetics offers only a definition: ‘The ridiculous consists in some form of error or ugliness that is not painful or injurious’ (1449a), which falls short of a ‘discussion’. The reference in the Politics is: ‘the term purgation we use for the present without explanation, but we will return to discuss the meaning that we give to it more explicitly in our treatise on poetry’ (1341b). Again, the Poetics mentions the purging of pity and fear in passing but contains no discussion.
2. There is a summary of this evidence in the introduction to Walter Watson’s The Lost Second Book of Aristotle’s Poetics (2012).
3. The manuscript is controversial. The possible contents of a second volume of the Poetics have been discussed by Walter Watson (ibid.) and by Richard Janko in Aristotle on Comedy: Towards a Reconstruction of Poetics II (1984).
4. Aristotle wrote, of course, in ancient Greek, but because his work was for extant for centuries in Latin translation we often use the Latin versions of his terminology.