Literary Theorists: Aristotle

The Poetics by Aristotle 

The Poetics of Aristotle is a treatise by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) on the nature of poetic art and the relation of poetry to reality. He work consists of 26 chapters. Apparently, the work was originally composed of two parts: a first book on the tragedy and epic, and a second on comedy and iambic poetry that has been lost. The fundamental principle of the poetics is that a poem is a mimesis, that is, an imitation. A tragedy, in particular, is an imitation of an action.



Aristotle's Poetics seeks to address the different kinds of poetry, the structure of a good poem, and the division of a poem into its component parts. Aristotle defines poetry very broadly, including the types such as epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry, and even some kinds of music. According to Aristotle, the origin of poetry has two causes of connatural order: the first is that imitation is natural to man from childhood, acquiring their first knowledge through this; the second is about the joy that occurs by learning. He also lays out six elements of tragedy: plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, and song. Plot is 'the soul' of tragedy, because action is paramount to the significance of a drama. A plot must have a beginning, middle, and end; it must also be universal in significance, have a determinate structure, and maintain a unity of theme and purpose.

Other important point is that the poetry was originated because of the existence of two factors or natural causes in man: first, the capacity and tendency to imitate and enjoy with imitations, and second, the ability of harmony and rhythm. He mentions that every work of art is a likeness or reproduction of an original is consistently maintained throughout the Aristotelian system of philosophy, and in the Poetics poetry is shown to be the highest form of reproductive art. The emotional catharsis which Aristotle attributes to the impact of tragedy is contrived by the spectacle, the structure, and the incidents of the play.

To sum up, Aristotle concludes that Epic poetry is like tragedy in that it reveals man to be better than he is but it is narrative in form, depending either on an omniscient first-person narrator, a third-person narrator, or a first-person narrating hero. A tragedy, meanwhile, involves the dialogue of two or more characters. Additionally, tragedy and epic poetry differ in length tragedy is confined usually to a single day, in the efforts to reveal a quick devolution of the hero. Epic poetry, meanwhile, often continues for a man's full lifetime.

                                                                                               Kenny Baruch García