Aristotle’s Poetica

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*Conventions of Greek Drama*

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Aristotle’s Poetica

• This text is Aristotle’s theory on drama, and the general effects of drama on humanity.*
• It dates back more than 2300 years ago, and is written about 100 years after the plays of Sophocles. Aristotle looks back on Sophocles’ play, Oedipus Rex, for evidence on what makes good tragedy, and how tragedy could be used for the edification of all of us. **
• Can art instruct us all to live better lives? Aristotle felt that not only COULD it do so, but that tragedy was not effective unless it DID so.
• Nietzsche would do the same, in developing his Birth of Tragedy: Where the Poetica deals with Man and Fate, Nietzsche is concerned with conflicting ideas of passion and civilization. He looks to Hamlet for answers….

Aristotle’s Poetica

• “Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artful ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play, in the form of action, not narration, through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these and similar emotions.”

Aristotle’s Poetica

• Imitation: Not life, but the quintessence of a serious aspect of life. Not participatory; that is, no longer ritual or rapture. The audience should suspend its disbelief.
• Magnitude: Good tragedy deals with a very primal, universal life issue. In the tragedy, this problem affects kings and others who are above ordinary. Even the mighty can fall.
• Ornament: High diction, song, verse, dance, masks: all to create a spectacle that is uplifting, elevating, transporting, like a Gothic cathedral, or the ornaments of the Mass. The audience is expected to keep its aesthetic distance, and in part, ornament or spectacle helps to achieve this: While transporting, it is also unreal.

Aristotle’s Poetica

• Several Parts: The plays are constructed in episodes connected by action and the effects of the action: Aristotle identifies only beginning, middle, and end, although Greek drama has five episodes. Renaissance drama is largely structured with this form as a model. The dramas also include prologue and epilogue, envoi, choral odes (strophe, antistrophe, epode) choral dialogues and soliloquy.
• The plays were written in iambic trimeter, similar in rhythm to the blank verse that Shakespeare used. Also similar is that only men performed on the Greek stage. Although masks were used in Greece, transforming to another gender was a regular part of an actor’s craft.

Aristotle’s Poetica

• Action: No action is wasted! Every action has an effect that counts. Each plot element is connected causally with the others. The plot is accretive, building on actions of the tragic hero. Although fate is inescapable, the tragic hero effects his own catastrophe through hamartia. The plot builds to the anagnoresis, followed by catastrophe.*
• mimesis: to show a narrative
• diegesis: to tell a narrative*

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Dynamic Plot Structure: Elements of plot connected causally. Dynamic plot structure puts weight on the actions of the characters.

Episodic Plot Structure: Plot elements repeat as hero tries to reach his goal. Episodic plot structure reinforces thematic elements.

Aristotle’s Poetica

• Purgation: Catharsis of the audience at the catastrophe of the play. Once you experience terror vicariously, you yourself can better cope with the trauma of life and gain the heroic courage needed to continue to find meaning in our meager lives.
• Tragedy provides the means by which we can vicariously practice to find the strength to face, not avoid, the inevitable traumas of life, even death itself, and find meaning.

Conventions of a Tragic Hero*

• High or noble individual whose goal is noble
• Has hamartia / hubris
• His misfortune is greater than he deserves
• He acts in ways that lead him into catastrophe, although he believes he is doing the right thing! (peripeteia)
• He sees the error of his ways, but it is too late (anagnoresis) and he cannot avoid catastrophe.

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Conventions of Greek Tragedy

• Hamartia or Tragic Flaw: A character flaw that results in the tragic hero’s making poor choices, and not seeing the flaws in his own actions. The tragic hero often will proclaim defiance, never believes he is wrong, or misguidedly welcomes adversity. Hubris: Excessive pride.*
• Spectacle: Greek Tragedy is high form: Verse, music...
• Dramatic Irony: Audience is aware of the web the tragic hero is weaving. This is important because tragedy is meant to model or instruct. As in framed narratives, we focus on the “why” not the “how” characters fall. Our eyes are open to the irrevocable path of fate, and to the hamartia of the tragic hero. We are to have empathy for the tragic hero, yet keep aesthetic distance to be able to “correct” the errors of passion or hamartia.

Conventions of Greek Tragedy

• Dynamic Plot Structure: Different from epic poetry! Every action matters! This bears weight on the tragic hero’s hamartia.
• Peripeteia (Peripety): The actions of the tragic hero, that effect a result opposite of what is desired. The tragic hero tightens the noose around his own neck, often unwittingly.*
• Reversal: Moment in rising action when it seems that the protagonist will take action in opposition of the goal he seeks, towards, perhaps a better ending. ☹
• Anagnoresis: Disclosure or epiphany of the protagonist where he recognizes his place in the universe, too late, and recognizes that he himself is the reason he is at catastrophe.

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Conventions of Greek Tragedy

• Agon: Serious universal human truth or question at the heart of every good tragedy.
• Protagonist: The main character who takes one side of the argument. NOTE: Greek tragedy had a limit of three main characters. Comedy was more flexible.
• Antagonist: The force or character who takes the other side of the argument. In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus is both! The antagonist is NOT the bad guy. If the agon is truly a serious human question, there is no easy right or wrong! And this is why good tragedy is so compelling: The hardest choices you will make in life will be the ones with no easy answers.
• Other terms include: deuteragonist* and tritagonist. (Second and third characters in the play. The deuteragonist will function as antagonist in many plays.)

Conventions of Greek Tragedy

• The Three Unities: Time, Place, Action (plot). This ideal is not part of the Poetica, but comes from 17^th and 18^th century neoclassical theater, as based on classical theater. Drama could have only one setting and one plot, and must take place during one day. This ideal was not part of English Renaissance theater, largely because Shakespeare ignored all of these aspects of Greek theater in his plays.
• Divine Intervention: Often part of Greek theater to propel the plot, and to provide the resolution. Magical beings entered and exited via deus ex machina.
• Prophecy: Provides the condition for the tragedy and the setting for it. Human action provides the cause.* Consider that in all art, the supernatural is an expression of psychological or philosophical truth for the characters.

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Aristotle’s Poetica

• Although presented in a heightened context, tragedy connects to us viscerally. The core human issues expressed in tragedy often can give us means and courage to survive the misery that we ourselves inevitably cause in our lives. We learn to understand and forgive the human flaws that cause us to err in judgment, sometimes catastrophically.
• The tragic hero can rise, assert splendor and even bring down evil forces with him, acknowledging that there is no escaping fate. Tragedy touches on the greatness of humanity, and reveals an individual’s ability to ascend to the heights of human potential in the face of an antagonistic force he knows will eventually destroy him.

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Aristotle’s Poetica

• Because tragic heroes take on great causes and fail, classical tragedy is often a great source of comfort for prisoners, politicians, moral leaders and soldiers – as well as for the rest of us. It is important to remember that tragedy reveals that there is no easy answer to the agon. The tragic hero, often like all of us when faced with impossible choices, reacts in ways that through weakness and lack of foresight at the time seems logical.
• The paradox is that even in failure there is nobility in the human struggle to live honorably within our clouded perception, and that of this struggle, wisdom comes, always painfully, in the acceptance and understanding of our humanity, and of our place in the world: imperfect, flawed, mortal, yet blessed with joy, love, hope—and endurance.