Poetics

by Aristotle

These, then, as we said at the beginning, are the three differences which distinguish artistic imitation — the medium, the objects, and the manner.

Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated.

iambic is, of all measures, the most colloquial we see it in the fact that conversational speech runs into iambic lines more frequently than into any other kind of verse; rarely into hexameters, and only when we drop the colloquial intonation.

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

Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality — namely, Plot, Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Song.

Peripeteia

Reversal of the Situation,

The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; Character holds the second place.

Third in order is Thought — that is, the faculty of saying what is possible and pertinent in given circumstances.

Character is that which reveals moral purpose, showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids.

Fourth among the elements enumerated comes Diction;

the expression of the meaning in words; and its essence is the same both in verse and prose.

A well constructed plot, therefore, must neither begin nor end at haphazard, but conform to these principles.

But the limit as fixed by the nature of the drama itself is this: the greater the length, the more beautiful will the piece be by reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous.

we may say that the proper magnitude is comprised within such limits, that the sequence of events, according to the law of probability or necessity, will admit of a change from bad fortune to good, or from good fortune to bad.

the imitation is one when the object imitated is one, so the plot, being an imitation of an action, must imitate one action and that a whole, the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed.

For a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible difference, is not an organic part of the whole.

it is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen — what is possible according to the law of probability or necessity.

Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular.

Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but of events inspiring fear or pity. Such an effect is best produced when the events come on us by surprise; and the effect is heightened when, at the same time, they follows as cause and effect.

Reversal of the Situation is a change by which the action veers round to its opposite, subject always to our rule of probability or necessity.

Recognition, as the name indicates, is a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined by the poet for good or bad fortune.

In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a spectator of the action, he will discover what is in keeping with it, and be most unlikely to overlook inconsistencies.

The perfection of style is to be clear without being mean.

the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities.

The poet being an imitator, like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects — things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be.

‘ill-favored indeed he was to look upon.’