Aristotle’S Poetics Analysis Essay Example For Students

Aristotle’S Poetics Analysis Essay Is a much-disdained book. So unpatriotic a soul as Aristotle has no business speaking about such a topic, much less telling poets how to go about their business. He reduces the drama to its language, people say, and the language Itself to Its least poetic element, the story, and then he encourages insensitive readers like himself to subject stories to crudely moralistic readings, that reduce tragedies to the childish proportions of Aesop-fables. Strangely, though, the Poetics itself Is rarely read with the kind of sensitivity Its critics claim to possess, and he thing criticized is not the book Aristotle wrote but a caricature of it. Aristotle himself respected Homer so much that he personally corrected a copy of the Iliad for his student Alexander, who carried It all over the world. In his Rhetoric (Ill, xv, 9), Aristotle criticizes orators who write exclusively from the intellect, rather than from the heart, in the way Sophocles makes Antigen speak. Aristotle is often thought of as a logician, but he regularly uses the adverb log ¶s, logically, as a term of reproach contrasted with pushup ¶s, naturally or appropriately, to describe arguments made by there, or preliminary and inadequate arguments of his own. Those who take the trouble to look at the Poetics closely will find, I think, a book that treats Its topic appropriately and naturally, and contains the reflections of a good reader and characteristically powerful thinker. Table of Contents 1. Poetry as Imitation 2. The Character of Tragedy 3. Tragic Catharsis 4. Tragic Pity 5. Tragic Fear and the Image of Humanity 6. The Iliad, the Tempest, and Tragic Wonder 7. Excerpts from Aristotle poetics 8. References and Further Reading The first scandal In the Poetics is the Initial marking out of dramatic poetry as a form f imitation. We call the poet a creator, and are offended at the suggestion that he might be merely some sort of recording device. As the painters eye teaches us how to look and shows us what we never saw, the dramatist presents things that never existed until he imagined them, and makes us experience worlds we could never have found the way to on our own. But Aristotle has no intention to diminish the poet, and In fact says the same thing I just said, in making the point that poetry Is more philosophic than history By imitation, Aristotle does not mean the sort of mimicry by which Aristotelian, say, finds syllables that approximate the sound of frogs. He Is speaking of the Imitation of action, and by action he does not mean mere happenings. Aristotle speaks extensively of praxis in the Mechanical Ethics. It is not a word he uses loosely, and in fact his use of it in the definition of tragedy recalls the discussion In the Ethics. Action, as Aristotle uses the word, refers only to what Is deliberately chosen, and capable of finding completion in the achievement of some purpose. Animals and young children do not act in this sense, and action is not the n human life, and a sense for the actions that are worth paying attention to. They are not present in the world in such a way that a video camera could detect them. An intelligent, feeling, shaping human soul must find them. By the same token, the action of the drama itself is not on the stage. It takes form and has its being in the imagination of the spectator. The actors speak and move and gesture, but it is the poet who speaks through them, from imagination to imagination, to present to us the thing that he has made. Because that thing he makes has the form of an action, it has o be seen and held together Just as actively and attentively by us as by him. The imitation is the thing that is re-produced, in us and for us, by his art. This is a powerful kind of human communication, and the thing imitated is what defines the human realm. If no one had the power to imitate action, life might Just wash over us without leaving any trace. How do I know that Aristotle intends the imitation of action to be understood in this way? In De Anima, he distinguishes three kinds of perception (II, 6; Ill, 3). There is the perception of proper sensible-colors, sounds, tastes and so n; these lie on the surfaces of things and can be mimicked directly for sense perception. But there is also perception of common sensible, available to more than one of our senses, as shape is grasped by both sight and touch, or number by all five senses; these are distinguished by imagination, the power in us that is shared by the five senses, and in which the circular shape, for instance, is not dependent on sight or touch alone. These common sensible can be mimicked in various ways, as when I draw a messy, meandering ridge of chalk on a blackboard, and your imagination rasps a circle. Finally, there is the perception of that of which the sensible qualities are attributes, the thing-the son of Diaries, for example; it is this that we ordinarily mean by perception, and while its object always has an image in the imagination, it can only be distinguished by intellect, noose (111,4). Skilled mimics can imitate people we know, by voice, gesture, and so on, and here already we must engage intelligence and imagination together. The dramatist imitates things more remote from the eye and ear than familiar people. Sophocles and Shakespeare, for example, imitate pentacle and forgiveness, true instances of action in Aristotle sense of the word, and we need all the human powers to recognize what these poets put before us. So the mere phrase imitation of an action is packed with meaning, available to us as soon as we ask what an action is, and how the image of such a thing might be perceived. Aristotle does understand tragedy as a development out of the childs mimicry of animal noises, but that is in the same way that he understands philosophy as a development out of our enjoyment of sight-seeing (Metaphysics l, 1). In each of these developments there is a vast array of possible intermediate stages, but Just as philosophy is the ultimate form of the innate desire to know, tragedy is considered by Aristotle the ultimate form of our innate delight in imitation. His beloved Homer saw and achieved the most important possibilities of the imitation of human action, but it was the tragedians who, refined and intensified the form of that imitation, and discovered its perfection. 2. The Character of Tragedy A work is a tragedy, Aristotle tells us, only if it arouses pity and fear. Why does he single out these two passions? Some interpreters think he means them only as examples-pity and fear and other passions like that-but I am not among those loose but I think he does so only to indicate that pity and fear are not themselves things subject to identification with pin-point precision, but that each refers to a range of feeling. It is Just the feelings in those two ranges, however, that belong to tragedy. Why? Why shouldnt some tragedy arouse pity and Joy, say, and another fear and cruelty? In various places, Aristotle says that it is the mark of an educated person to know what needs explanation and what doesnt. He does not try to prove that there is such a thing as nature, or such a thing as motion, though some people deny both. Likewise, he understands the recognition of a special and powerful form of drama built around pity and fear as the beginning of an inquiry, and spends not one word justifying that restriction. We, however, can see better why he starts there by trying out a few simple alternatives. Suppose a drama aroused pity in a powerful way, but aroused no fear at all. This is an easily recognizable dramatic form, called a tear- jerker. The name is meant to disparage this sort of drama, but why? Imagine a well written, well made play or movie that depicts the losing struggle of a likable central character. We are moved to have a good cry, and are afforded either the relief of a happy ending, or the realistic desolation of a sad one. In the one case the tension built up along the way is released within the experience of the work itself; in the other it passes off as we leave the theater, and readjust our feelings to the fact that it was, after all, only make-believe. What is wrong with that? There is always pleasure in strong emotion, and the theater is a harmless place to indulge it. We may even come out feeling good about being so compassionate. But Dostoevsky depicts a character who loves to cry in the theater, not noticing that while she wallows in her warm feelings her coach-driver is shivering outside. She has day-dreams about relieving suffering humanity, but does nothing to put that vague desire to work. If she is typical, then the tear-jerker is a dishonest form of drama, not even a harmless diversion but an encouragement to lie to oneself. Well then, lets consider the opposite experiment, in which a drama arouses fear in a powerful way, but arouses title or no pity. This is again a readily recognizable dramatic form, called the horror story, or in a recent fashion, the mad-slashes movie. The thrill of fear is the primary object of such amusements, and the story alternates between the build-up of apprehension and the shock of violence. Again, as with the tear-jerker, it doesnt much matter whether it ends happily or with uneasiness, or even with one last shock, so indeterminate is its form. And while the tearjerker gives us an illusion of compassionate delicacy, the unrestrained shock-drama obviously has the effect of coarsening feeling. Genuine human pity could not co-exist with the so-called graphic effects these films use to keep scaring us. The attraction of this kind of amusement is again the thrill of strong feeling, and again the price of indulging the desire for that thrill may be high. Let us consider a milder form of the drama built on arousing fear. There are stories in which fearsome things are threatened or done by characters who are in the end defeated by means similar to, or in some way equivalent to, what they dealt out. The fear is relieved in vengeance, and we feel a satisfaction that we might be inclined to call Justice. To work on the level of feeling, though, Justice must be understood as the exact inverse of the crime-doing to the offender the sort of thing he did or meant to do to others. The imagination of evil then becomes the measure of infliction of pain or death is nothing but a thin veil over the very feelings we mean to be punishing. This is a successful dramatic formula, arousing in us destructive desires that are fun to feel, along with the self-righteous illusion that we are really superior to the character who displays them. The playwright who makes us feel that way will probably be popular, but he is a menace. We have looked at three kinds of non-tragedy that arouse passions in a destructive way, and we could add others. There are potentially as many kinds as there are passions and combinations of passions. That suggests that the theater is Just an arena for the manipulation of passions in ways that are pleasant in the short run and at least reckless to pursue repeatedly. At worst, the drama could be seen as dealing in a kind of addiction, which it both produces and holds the only remedy for. But we have not yet tried to talk about the combination of passions characteristic of tragedy. When we turn from the sort of examples I have given, to the acknowledged examples of tragedy, we find ourselves in a different world. The tragedians I have in mind are five: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; Shakespeare, who differs from them only in time; and Homer, who differs from them somewhat more, in the form in which he composed, but shares with them the things that matter most. I could add other authors, such as Dostoevsky, who wrote stories of the tragic kind in much looser literary forms, but I want to keep the focus on a small number of clear paradigms. When we look at a raggedy we find the chorus in Antigen telling us what a strange thing a human being is, that passes beyond all boundaries (lines 332 if. ), or King Lear asking if man is no more than this, a poor, bare, forked animal (Ill, v, off. ), or Macbeth protesting to his wife l dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none (l, vii, 47-8), or Oedipus taunting Terrifies with the fact that divine art was of no use against the Sphinx, but only Oedipus own human ingenuity (Ode. Try. 9098), or Agamemnon, resisting walking home on tapestries, saying to his wife l tell you to revere me as a an, not a god (925), or Cadmium in the Beach saying l am a man, nothing more (199), while Dionysus tells Penthouse Mimi do not know what you are (506), or Patrols telling Achilles Pulses was not your father nor Thesis your mother, but the gray sea bore you, and the towering rocks, so hard is your heart (Iliad WI, 335 ). I could add more examples of this kind by the dozen, and your memories will supply others. Walt Whitman the poet of American inclusion EssayTragedy is about central and indispensable human attributes, disclosed to us by the pity that draws us toward them and the fear that makes us recoil from what threatens them. Because the suffering of the tragic figure splays the boundaries of what is human, every tragedy carries the sense of universality. Oedipus or Antigen or Lear or Othello is somehow every one of us, only more so. But the mere mention of these names makes it obvious that they are not generalized characters, but altogether particular. And if we did not feel that they were genuine individuals, they would have no power to engage our emotions. It is by their particularity that they make their marks on us, as though we had encountered them in the flesh. It is only through the particularity of our feelings that our bonds with them emerge. What we care for and cherish makes us pity them and fear for them, and thereby the reverse also happens: our feelings of pity and fear make us recognize what we care for and cherish. When the tragic figure is destroyed it is a piece of ourselves that is lost. Yet we never feel desolation at the end of a tragedy, paradox, but to describe a marvel. It is not so strange that we learn the worth of something by losing it; what is astonishing is what the tragedians are able to achieve by making use of that common experience. They lift it up into a state of wonder. Within our small group of exemplary poetic works, there are two that do not have the raging form, and hence do not concentrate all their power into putting us in a state of wonder, but also depict the state of wonder among their characters and contain speeches that reflect on it. They are Homers Iliad and Shakespearean Tempest. Incidentally, there is an excellent small book called Woe or Wonder, the Emotional Effect of Shakespearean Tragedy, by J. V. Cunningham, that demonstrates the continuity of the traditional understanding of tragedy from Aristotle to Shakespeare. ) The first poem in our literary heritage, and Shakespearean last play, both belong to a investigation of which Aristotle Poetics is the most prominent part. 6. The Iliad, the Tempest, and Tragic Wonder In b oth the Iliad and the Tempest there are characters with arts that in some ways resemble that of the poet. It is much noticed that Prospered farewell to his art coincides with Shakespearean own, but it may be less obvious that Homer has put into the Iliad a partial representation of himself. But the last 150 lines of Book XVIII of the Iliad describe the making of a work of art by Hyphenates. I will not consider here what is depicted on the shield of Achilles, but only the meaning in the poem of the held itself. In Book XVIII, Achilles has realized what mattered most to him when it is too late. The Greeks are driven back to their ships, as Achilles had prayed they would be, and know that they are lost without him. But what pleasure is this to me now, he says to his mother, when my beloved friend is dead, Patrols, whom I cherished beyond all friends, as the equal of my own soul; I am bereft of him (80-82). Those last words also mean l have killed him. In his desolation, Achilles has at last chosen to act. l will accept my doom, he says (115 Thesis goes to Hyphenates because, in pits of his resolve, Achilles has no armor in which to meet his fate. She tells her sons story, concluding he is lying on the ground, anguishing at heart (461). Her last word, anguishing, ache ¶n, is built on Achilles name. Now listen to what Hyphenates says in reply: Take courage, and do not let these things distress you in your heart. Would that I had the power to hide him far away from death and the sounds of grief when grim fate comes to him, but I can see that beautiful armor surrounds him, of such a kind that many people, one after another, who look on it, will wonder (463-67). Is it not evident that this source of wonder that surrounds Achilles, that takes the sting from his death even in a mothers heart, is the Iliad itself? But how does the Iliad accomplish this? Let us shift our attention for a moment to the Tempest. The character Alonso, in the power of the magician Prospers, spends the length of the play in the illusion that his son has drowned. To have him alive again, Alonso says, l wish Myself were muddied in that oozy bed Where my son lies (V, I, But he has already been there for three hours in his imagination; he says earlier my son I the ooze is bedded; and Ill seek him deeper than oer plummet sounded And with him there lie muddied (Ill, iii, 100-2). What is this muddy ooze? It is Alonso grief, and his regret for exposing his son to danger, and his self-reproach for his own past crime against Prospers and Prospered baby daughter, which made his son a Just target for only comes after he has lost the thing he cares most about. But the spirit Ariel sings a song to Alonso son: Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a EAI change Into something rich and strange (l, it, 397-402). Alonso grief is aroused by an illusion, an imitation of an action, but his repentance is real, and is slowly transforming him into a different man. Who is this new man? Let us take counsel from the honest old councilor Gonzalez, who always has the clearest sight in the play. He tells us that on this voyage, when so much seemed lost, every traveler found himself When no man was his own (V, I, 206-13). The something rich and strange into which Alonso changes is himself, as he was before his life took a wrong turn. Prospered magic does no more than arrest people in a potent illusion; in his power they are knit up In their distractions (Ill, iii, 89-90). When released, he says, they shall be themselves (V, I, 32). On virtually every page of the Tempest, the word wonder appears, or else some synonym for it. Marinaras name is Latin for wonder, her favorite adjective brave seems to mean both good and out-of-the-ordinary, and the combination rich and strange means the same. What is wonder? J. V. Cunningham describes it in the book I mentioned as the shocked limit of all feeling, in which fear, sorrow, and Joy can all merge. There is some truth in that, but it misses what is wonderful or wondrous about wonder. It suggests that in wonder our feelings are numbed and we are left limp, wrung dry of all emotion. But wonder is itself a feeling, the one to which Miranda is always giving voice, the powerful sense that what is before one is both strange and good. Wonder does not numb the other feelings; what it does is dislodge them from their habitual moorings. The experience of wonder is the disclosure of a sight or thought or image that fits no habitual context of feeling or understanding, but grabs and holds us by a power borrowed from nothing part from itself. The two things that Plotting says characterize beauty, that the soul recognizes it at first glance and spontaneously gives welcome to it, equally describe the experience of wonder. The beautiful always produces wonder, if it is seen as beautiful, and the sense of wonder always sees beauty. But are there really no wonders that are ugly? The monstrosities that used to be exhibited in circus side- shows are wonders too, are they not? In the Tempest, three characters think first of all of such spectacles when they lay eyes on Caliber (II, I, 28-31; V, I, 263-6), but they re incapable of wonder, since they think they know everything that matters already. A fourth character in the same batch, who is drunk but not insensible, gives way at the end of Act II to the sense that this is not Just someone strange and deformed, nor just a useful servant, but a brave monster. But Stephan is not like the holiday fools who pay to see monstrosities like two-headed calves or exotic sights like wild men of Borneo. I recall an aquarium somewhere in Europe that had on display an astoundingly ugly catfish. People came casually up to its tank, were startled, made kisses of disgust, and turned away. Even to be arrested before such a sight feels in some way perverse and has some conflict in the feeling it arouses, as when we stare at the victims of a car wreck. The sight of the ugly or disgusting, when it is felt as such, does not have the settled repose or willing surrender that are characteristic of wonder. Wonder is sweet, as Aristotle says. This sweet contemplation of something in every other respect he is a model of the spectator of a tragedy. We are in the power of another for awhile, the sight of an illusion works real and durable changes n us, we merge into something rich and strange, and what we find by being absorbed in the image of another is ourselves. A s Alonso is shown a mirror of his soul by Prospers, we are shown a mirror of ourselves in Alonso, but in that mirror we see ourselves as we are not in witnessing the Tempest, but in witnessing . A tragedy. The Tempest is a beautiful play, suffused with wonder as well as with reflections on wonder, but it holds the intensity of the tragic experience at a distance. Homer, on the other hand, has pulled off a feat even more astounding than Shakespearean, by imitating the experience of a spectator of tragedy within a story that itself works on us as a tragedy. In Book XIV of the Iliad, forms of the word than boss, amazement, occur three times in three lines (482-4), when Prima suddenly appears in the hut of Achilles and kisses the terrible man-slaughtering hands that killed his many sons (478-9), but this is only the prelude to the true wonder. Achilles and Prima cry together, each for his own grief, as each has cried so often before, but this time a miracle happens. Achilles grief is transformed into satisfaction, and cleansed from is chest and his hands (513-14). This is all the more remarkable, since Achilles has for days been repeatedly trying to take out his raging grief on Hectors dead body. The famous first word of the Iliad, mints, wrath, has come back at the beginning of Book XIV in the participle Maine ¶n (22), a constant condition that Loiterer translates well as standing fury. But all this hardened rage evaporates in one lamentation, Just because Achilles shares it with his enemys father. Hermes had told Prima to appeal to Achilles in the names of his father, his mother, and his child, in order to stir his heart (466-7), but Prisms focused misery goes straight to Achilles heart without diluting the effect. The first words out of Prisms mouth are remember your father (486). Your father deserves pity, Prima says, so pity me with him in mind, since I am more pitiful even than he; I have dared what no other mortal on earth ever dared, to stretch out my lips to the hand of the man who murdered my children (503-4). Achilles had been pitying Patrols, but mainly himself, but the feeling to which Prima has directed him now is exactly the same as tragic pity. Achilles is looking at a human being who has chosen to go to the limits of what is humanly possible to search for something that matters to him. The wonder of this sight takes Achilles out of his self-pity, but back into himself as a son and as a sharer of human misery itself. All his old longings for glory and revenge fall away, since they have no place in the sight in which he is now absorbed. For the moment, the beauty of Prisms terrible action re-makes the world, and determines what matters and what doesnt. The feeling in this moment out of time is fragile, and Achilles feels it heartened by tragic fear.