Poetics

By Aristotle

Part of the Nick Hern Books Dramatic Contexts series: important statements on the theatre by major figures in the theatre.
One of the most influential tracts in world theatre, Aristotle's Poetics is crucial to an understanding of how drama works, and how it has evolved.
It is the source of the doctrine of the Three Unities – of Time, Place and Action – and the concept of catharsis in tragedy.
Writing only a hundred years after Sophocles and Euripides, Aristotle's insights into Greek drama are endlessly rewarding.
This English translation by Kenneth McLeish makes the famous text more accessible than ever before, without cutting or paraphrasing. Important passages are highlighted, while key words and concepts are glossed within the text, without the need for intrusive footnotes.
The result is an authoritative text of Aristotle's Poetics that allows readers to experience his arguments directly for themselves.
Also included is a compact introduction by McLeish to Aristotle and his ideas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Mar 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781788502047

Aristotle

Aristotle (384–322 BCE) was a Greek philosopher whose works spanned multiple disciplines including math, science and the arts. He spent his formative years in Athens, where he studied under Plato at his famed academy. Once an established scholar, he wrote more than 200 works detailing his views on physics, biology, logic, ethics and more. Due to his undeniable influence, particularly on Western thought, Aristotle, along with Plato and Socrates, is considered one of the great Greek philosophers.

Book preview

Aristotle

Poetics

translated and introduced by

Kenneth McLeish

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Introduction

Translator’s Note

For Further Reading

Poetics

Key Dates

Who’s Who

About the Author

Copyright Information

Introduction

Aristotle (384-322BC)

Aristotle was a Macedonian, son of the royal physician to King Philip. He studied with Plato in Athens, and after Plato’s death spent some years as a travelling professor. (Among other things, he tutored the Macedonian prince Alexander, the future Alexander the Great.) In 335, aged 49, he set up a teaching institution of his own in Athens; it survived for almost a millennium, one of the longest-lasting ‘universities’ of the ancient world.

Like most other intellectuals of the time – the Greek word ‘philosopher’ means no more than ‘lover of knowledge’ – Aristotle held that nothing lay outside his interest or the scope of his science. His chief researches were into the phenomena of Nature, and he made minute study of rocks, plants, animal form and movement, the stars and the morphology of the Earth. He was interested in human behaviour, and wrote about character, relationships and politics. He lectured on ethics, morality, religion, psychology, grammar and the techniques of persuasion. To all this work he applied a research method of his own, partly derived from the techniques of Socrates and Plato (who discussed each topic in a way designed to strip away inessentials until a core of ‘truth’ was left) and partly anticipating modern scientific method. He and his assistants amassed as much information as was available about each chosen topic, studying first-hand evidence and reading all writings and opinions they could find. From this mass of material, by a rigorous process of logic, they formulated theories and principles, testing them against other people’s views and new evidence as it came along. The method could be applied equally well to physical phenomena (such as variations in types of rock or animal behaviour), to abstractions (such as the nature of change or what ‘virtue’ is) and to human artefacts (such as political constitutions), and it was open-ended, allowing scope for alternative opinions and for constant reassessment.

Poetics

Poetics appeared some time in the 330s. In Aristotle’s catalogue it was a minor work, probably unrevised and possibly incomplete. Like others of his surviving writings, it is less a polished and finished book than notes, possibly assembled for the lecture-room. It is repetitive, stylistically inconsistent and veers between passages which are fully written out and others where complex arguments are compressed into single sentences or phrases. Comparisons with other artforms, for example painting and sculpture, are tantalising as much for their brevity as their acuity. The appeal of Poetics is partly for the pithiness and mind-expanding nature of its pronouncements – Aristotle must have been an inspired teacher – and partly because it is the earliest piece of literary criticism from the ancient world, closer in time than any other to the artform it discusses. For modern readers, a second point of attraction is the wild way it was misinterpreted by later theorists on drama (notably in the Renaissance), and the overwhelming influence that their views – not always Aristotle’s – had on subsequent dramatic theory and practice. Poetics may be hard, at times, to relate to the practice of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides in their surviving plays, and both Aristotle’s theories and those derived from them may sometimes appear eccentric or wrong, but the book is seminal for Western drama.

The Nature and Purpose of the Arts

In the last book of his Republic, produced some forty years before Poetics, Plato brought to a conclusion a series of meditations on the nature and purpose of the arts, meditations which had preoccupied him for half a century. In summary, he said that if you believe that the prime human objectives are to discover what ‘virtue’ is and then aspire to it, you should deal only in truth, in actuality. Since the arts, by definition, are confected, they are distracting at best and at worst destructive. God creates the ideal – for example the ideal of a table or the ideal of ‘virtue’; human beings create practical examples of that ideal – a functional table or a life ‘virtuously’ lived; art creates merely a simulacrum of such examples – a picture of a table or a ‘virtuous’ dramatic character. Furthermore, the arts encourage emotional response, far from the rational and considered stance of the genuine seeker after truth.

In Poetics, briefly and bluntly, Aristotle challenges this view. The pleasure offered by the arts – something Plato deplored – is, for him, a moral and didactic force. We see imitations of reality and compare them with reality; this is both pleasurable in itself and also morally instructive. From infancy human beings learn by imitation, and the process does not stop with maturity, but is ironically layered and enhanced by it. The pleasure, and the learning, are similar whether what is imitated is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – discrimination in the beholder is the deciding factor. The chief duty of artists is to provide imitations technically as perfect as they can make them, and in Poetics Aristotle offers hints and suggestions for how this should be done, at least in literature. The starting-point may be moral or aesthetic philosophy, but Poetics is

Reviews for Poetics

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What is poetry, how many kinds of it are there, and what are their specific effects? These are questions that Aristotle’s Poetics, one of his most influential books, attempts to answer. While it has been an important aspect outside philosophical circles it is doubtful that it can be fully appreciated outside Aristotle’s philosophical system as a whole.A theme common to all Aristotle’s philosophy is the claim that nothing can be understood apart from its end or purpose (telos). This is certainly true for the Poetics which seeks to discover the end or purpose of all the poetic arts, and especially of tragic drama. Aristotle argues that generally, the goal of poetry is to provide pleasure of a particular kind. For comparison the Metaphysics begins, “All men desire to know by nature,” and the Nicomachean Ethics repeatedly says that the satisfaction of natural desires is the greatest source of lasting pleasure. The Poetics combines these two approaches with the idea of imitation. All people by nature enjoy a good imitation (that is, a picture or drama) because they enjoy learning, and imitations help them to learn.Of particular interest to Aristotle is the pleasure derived from tragic drama, namely, the kind of pleasure that comes from the purging or cleansing (catharsis) of the emotions of fear and pity. Though the emotions of fear and pity are not to be completely eliminated, excessive amounts of these emotions are not characteristic of a flourishing individual. Vicariously experiencing fear and pity in a good tragedy cleanses the soul of ill humors.Though there are many elements of a good tragedy, the most important, according to Aristotle, is the plot. The centrality of plot once again follows from central doctrines of the Metaphysics and the Nichomachean Ethics. In the former, Aristotle argues that all knowledge is knowledge of universals; in the latter, he states that it is through their own proper activity that humans discover fulfillment.For a plot to work, it must be both complete and coherent. That means that it must constitute a whole with a beginning, middle, and end, and that the sequence of events must exhibit some sort of necessity. A good dramatic plot is unlike history. History has no beginning, middle, and end, and thus it lacks completeness. Furthermore, it lacks coherence because many events in history happen by accident. In a good dramatic plot, however, everything happens for a reason. This difference makes tragedy philosophically more interesting than history. Tragedy focuses on universal causes and effects and thus provides a kind of knowledge that history, which largely comprises accidental happenings, cannot.While literary styles have changed over the centuries, the observations of Aristotle still contain value both for writers and readers today.

[sashame-485567 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While the normative layout of tragedy/comedy/epic seems silly today in its specificity, the descriptive analysis of plot and genre is excellent, if harder to get at. The fragments and additions in this text were also v helpful.

[madepercy-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Every piece has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Sounds so simple. We teach students that every essay has an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. But here it is being written for the first time. Art imitates life. Much of this work sounds cliched, but it is the original!

[jonarnold_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Specifically the Penguin Classics edition, with an excellent introductory essay by Malcolm Heath which outlines the themes, differing interpretations and problems of the text. With the caveat that Aristotle’s conception of tragedy is drama as performed in Ancient Greece, the actual text itself is thought provoking on the nature of drama itself, with many of the basics still applicable today.

[tiffanyak_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I actually read an online version of this text provided by my teacher as part of my Introduction to Drama course, so this is not the same translation I'm writing about, but is the same work. I found the language to be difficult to follow at times, but there is certainly a lot of "meat" here. I could also recognize the importance of what was being said when it comes to analyzing drama and following its early evolution of form. I probably won't be reading it just for fun anytime soon, but I do feel it's an essential part of one's library if they wish to seriously study drama at all.

[avogl_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I need to read this more than once to digest. A friend mentioned that it helped for learning to write; especially plot. It did have some good insights into imitation and character and plot.

[wonderperson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What makes a good story, analysis of various ways of constructing story, it would help if we all grasped language of story construction in terms of literary terms used. A good book from a very versatile Philosopher.

[g0ldenboy_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Forces the formulaic but a foundation text for tragedy.

[eowyna_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was surprised at how readable this was. Artistotle's world was very different that ours is today. He talks of poetry and drama, which we think of as separate, as being the same thing. And of the addition of a second player in that drama as being an innovation. But his talk of the use of spectacle in poetry/drama made me think of the sometimes tiresome CGI spectacles in our modern movie dramas. His observations applied equally to his time and to our most current entertainment. He was the first to write down many of the principles of plot and character that sometimes seem so obvious as to not need mentioning. And then he'll use that obvious observation to provide an insight that might not otherwise be quite so clear. Some parts are just as relevant now as they ever were. Some parts are fascinating from an historical perspective, and made me wish I were more familiar with his chosen exemplars, like Aeschylus, Homer, and Euripides. Some parts are just cool, like his dissertation on metaphors, and how to construct them. And Some parts are more wholely of his time than ours. Readable, for the most part, and anyone who professes a love of writing should read this.

[chriszodrow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Indispensable as both a guide to writing as well as a matrix of interpretation and critique. Waiting for him to finish the section on comedy…

[amandacb_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A logical, methodical and utterly necessary guide for those who wish to create drama. It also aids those who analyze, read, and/or view drama. Aristotle's Poetics is something that is taught in high schools and then reiterated again in universities, and rightly so--it's timeless.

[jpsnow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In 50 pages, the ultimate explanation of what makes for classic writing and the one ideal introduction to all of the Greek tragedies. The whole is defined as that which is necessary to the plot, and no more. The tragedy must invoke feelings of fear or pity. Tragedy can be complex or simple, depending on whether the character's position changes once or several times. Recognition and reversal are key elements which can be done well or poorly. Aristotle judged Euripides to be the best tragedian of everyone. He comments on how each of the most famous group altered or expanded the style with staging, use of chorus, etc. Recognition is done poorly with "contrived tokens and necklaces." Poetic style involves good diction (lengthening words, sometimes inventing new, ornamental words. Between tragedy and epic, tragedy is superior because it is more compact and more enjoyable.

[nicolehc_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

LOVE IT. LOVE IT. LOVE IT. Explains the art of storytelling so well. So profound. Why couldn't even the primary school teachers have told us to read this?! I did not even stumble across this until university. For shame, I felt! For the logic and the blatant obviousness of it all after you read it! Like a lightbulb that went, AHAH~!