English – Principles & History of Literary Criticism, Study notes of English Literature

Download English – Principles & History of Literary Criticism and more Study notes English Literature in PDF only on Docsity! 2 CRITICISM IN ANCIENT GREECE ee PLATO (427 B.C.--347 B.C.) Judicial criticism before Plato The Age of Pericles The Age of Pericles in ancient Greece is known as the golden period in the realm of art and literature in Greece. It was primarily an age of creative activity. Artists like Phidias and Polygnotus, and writers like Aeschylus ,So- phocles, Euripides and Aristophanes glorified this age by their works of art and literature. But as no era is wholly creative or critical, seeds of critical inquiry and analysis were also visible there and blossomed with full fragrance and efflorescence in the 4th century B.C. The beginnings of Greek criticism date from _ the sixth century B.C., though criticism in antiquity before Plato was not systematic. Itis seen in the form of fragment, stray hints and occasional remarks ir. creative writings. Greek criticism developed when the philosophers Xeno- phanes and Heraclitus condemned Homer on moral grounds, and Theagenes and Anaxagoras in defence of Homer advocated an allegorical interpretation of the two Homeric epics-- the /liad and the Odyssey. Growth of Literary Criticism in Ancient Greece The writings of Homer, Hesiod, Xenophanes, Pindar and Gorgias contain stray hints which throw light on critical ideas in antiquity. The theory of inspiration was already current in connection with’ poetry is suggested in the first place by the opening lines of the Homeric poems. Both the iliad and Odyssey begin with an appeal to the Muse for inspiration to utter the truth of things ; and this is confirmed by Hesiod, who, in his Preface to the Theogony, explains how the Muse breathed into himthe art of divine music. Then, too, each poet- pronounces indirectly on the function of poetry, but with some amount of difference. To Homer, on the one hand, the end of poetry was pleasure produced by some sort of enchantment; and this point he stresses at more than one place. To Hesiod, on the other hand, the poetic function was that of teaching or conveying a divine message. Equally important is Homer's comment on the quality of illusion in art when on the-shield of Achilles “the earth looked behind the plough; and,like ta ground that had been ploughed although it was made of gold; that was a marvellous plece of work." These stray references about the nature: and function of poetry in the writings of Homer < Hesiod indicate that criticism had made’a beginning as early as 6th century © scanned with OKEN Scanner (21) Critical references about the nature and function of Poetry What Plato describes in the Republic as “the quarrel of long standing between philosophy and poetry” began in the sixth century B.C., with the criticism and defence of poetry on ethical basis. The complaint of Xeno- phanes is typical that ‘Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods all that is a reproach and scandal among men. Theagenes and Anaxagoras replied by declaring that poetry as an allegory veiled moral and scientific truth. In the fifth century Pindar returned to a direct consideration of poetry, contrasting “the man who knows by nature” with "the man who learns”, and placing the greatest value on genius or inspiration. which becomes a conscious effort of genius. He recognized the value of technique : “to know the paths that shorten the toad”; also the value of brevity : “to say much in few words”. The occasional remarks of Pindar suggest that a considerable body of poetic theory existed, and from two speeches by the fifth-century rhetorician Gorgias, E.E. Sikes in his book The Greek View of Poetry has reconstructed, by combining miscellaneous comments, an early definition on tragedy which anticipates Aristotle : “a form of metrical, composition (Poetry), which alms at charming and persuading the audience, who willingly submitto the magic of fiction, and feel awe and pity for the fortune of others-represented by the poet.” Critical references in Greek Dramatic Literature In Athens towards the close of the fifth century, after the great Periclean age, the comic dramatists, who made satirical criticism of life in general their business, had some sharp things to say about literature, especially Aristophanes and his special literary target was the modernist tragic dramatist Euripides. The earliest piece of extended literary criticism which survives trom classical antiquity is an agon or debate in the Frogs of Aristophanes (405 B.C.), where Di- onysus, patron and god of the theatre festivals, descends into Hades for the purpose of bringing back to earth the recently departed Euripides, but in the end actually makes the award to the good old-fashioned writer Aeschylus. The announced standards of criticism are “skill in the art “and “wise counsel for the state”. The latter of these Is perhaps the more important, but the actual decision of Dionysus seems to rest not so much on an appeal to either standard as on the fact that Aeschylus isthe poet who takes his fancy. Some specitic poetic traits are amusingly. criticized--the wild and whirling magniloquence i Aeschylus (his “hippalectors” and “traelaphs”), the. sentimental fondness of Euripides for lame beggars as‘Heroés. But a thing that a critically inclined person may remember most vividly is acertain directness in the form of argument. Scales are brought out, and the poets are weighed against each other line for line. Dionysus : Now, then, each repeat a verse. Euripides ; “I wish that Argo with her woven wings,” Aeschylus : “O streams of Spercheins, and ye pastured plains.” Dionysus : Let go! See now==-this scale outweights that other. very considerably. Although this is a parody of critical procedure, one might take it as a symbol © scanned with OKEN Scanner (24) Produces a mere semblance of this idea which is the one real table lying bey all the tables which have been or can be made; so that the Idea, for our Presg very general purpose, is outside the world altogether. And when an artist fy down in front of the carpenter's table to paint a picture of it, the Pleture thay results is a copy of something which is itself a kind of shadow of the real Objec, Thus the artifact is removed at two stages from reality.” The painter and the poet imitate reality without understanding it Just as the painter, further more, only imitates what he sees ANd dogs not know how to make or use what he sees--he could paint a bed, but not Make one---so the poet imitates ‘reality without necessarily understanding It. Not only the arts imitations. are twice removed from the truth, they are also the product of a futile ignorance. The man who imitates or describes or represents without really knowing what he is imitating is demonstrating both his lack of useful purpose and his lack of knowledge. The real artist, who knew what he Was imitating, would be interested in realities and notin imitations; and would desire to leave as memorials of himself works many and fair; and, instead of being the author of encomiums, he would prefer to be the theme of them. lf Homer had understood what makes men behave well,_instead of merely describing men behaving well, he would have been at the first instead of the second remove from ideal truth and have been a much more useful citizen. Plato's insistence on art for the sake of life Plato believed in the doctrine of ‘art for life's sake’, For him practicality and utility were the criteria of the Value of a work of art. As works of art were the partial images of the Idea, they helped neither in improving nor in educating mankind. As the artist does not rise up to Plato’s conception of ennobling and uplifting hman being, he denounces them trenchantly in the Republic (Book X). He says, “Speaking in confidence, for I should notlike to have my words repeated to the tragedians and the rest of the imitative tribe---but Ido not mind saying to you, that all poetical imitations are ruinous to the Understanding of the hearers, and that the knowledge of their true nature is the only attitude to them.” Criticism of Plato's 'Theory.of.ideas’ Plato's views on imitation have been found not worth of a great philosopher, He attacked art by his doctrine of Ideas. He failed to think that the painter, by painting the ideal object, could suggest the ideal form visible to his inward eye. He could have said that the painter imitates the transcendent idea, the impression of which is made on his mental Surface, instead of the table made by the carpenter. This-obvious step is taken much later by neo-Platonists, never by Plato himself. Plato could not realise that what the painter paints is not the exact reproduction of reality. It is the artist's impression of reality, and not a mechanical representation of it. Poetry is not a slavish imitation or copying; it is ‘Creative. It was Aristotle who put forth this creative nature of art and his attitude to the work of imitation is altogether more respectful than- his master’s, Aristotle States that the poet does not simply. imitate or: represent particular events of situations which he happens to have noted or invented: he handles them in such © scanned with OKEN Scanner (25) away that he brings out their universal and characteristic elements, thus illuminating the essential nature of some event or situation whether or not what he is telling Is historically true. The poet works ‘according to the laws of probability or necessity’, not according to some chance observation or random invention. He is thus more fundamentally scientific and serious than the historian who must restrict himself to what happened to have occurred andcannot arrange or invent his facts in order to present what, interms of human psychology and the nature or things, is more inherently probable. Because the poet invents or arranges his own story, he creates a self-sufficient world of his own, with its own compelling kind of probability, its own inevitability, and what happens in the poet's story is both ‘probable’ in terms of that world and, because that world is itself a formal construction based on elements in. the real world, an illumination of an aspect of the world as it really is. f Plato’s Indictment of Poetry : Why does Plato attack poets and artists in ‘The Republic’ ? Plato’s indictment of poets and artists in the Republic springs from hls preoccupation with the problems concerning the establishment of an Ideal Society, peopled by hard-working and disciplined citizens who would accept realistic instead of imaginative view of life. They would be concerned with mundane affairs. of life rather. than live in ivory tower created by an artist who Will’ create works of art and literature which, according to Plato, would “feel and strengthen the worthless part of the soul". As Plato was. a_philosopher- moralist, he was concerned with the good of the individual and the state, and he _ was sure that the poet ‘an idle singer of an empty day’. had nothing to do with the good of the individual and the state. Hence he condemned poets mercilessly and banished their art of the Ideal State. But we should be careful to remember that he was not againsi all poets and all poetry. Poetry that was composed in praise of gods and emulation of Greek heroes would be cherished in the Ideal State. Plato's faith in the efficacy of high art and poetry in wielding wholesome Influence on the younger generation in the society can be illustrated by the following extract from the Republic. — “We should not have our guardians grow up among: images of moral deformity, as in some noxious pasture, and there browse and feed upon’many a baneful herb and flower day by day, little by little,’ until they silently gather a festering mass of corruption in their own soul. Let us rather search for artists who are gifted to dicern the true nature, first for war and second for peace, of the beautiful and greaceful. Then our youth will dwell in’a land of a health, amid fair sights and sounds and receive the good in everything; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, shall flow into the eye and ear, like a health-giving breeze from a pure region, and insensibly draw the soul from earliest years into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of, reason, nobility of soui in harmonious union with beauty of form,” The nature and function of poetry ‘Plato's denunciation. of the poet centres round his views about the nature and function of poetry. His fundamental objection against poetry is © scanned with OKEN Scanner (26) that itis an imitation of an imitation, a semblance of ultimate Reality, tWieg removed from reality. It is a delusion, an illusion of the Idea, and does A possess the real truth In it. It begulles rather than moulds the character of th, individual and the state. Poetry deals with the baser aspects of human nature Poetry caters to the inferior part of human nature. The imitative Post who aims at being popular is not by nature made, nor is .his art intended, to please or to affact the rational principle in the soul; but he will prefer the passionate andfitful temper, which Is easily imitated. No strict adherence to poetic justice A poet deals with virtue and vice alike, and. Plato was pained to see virtue suffering at the hands of vice. Poetic justice was not strictly observed in the Greek literature of his times. It moved him to write in the Republic: “They give us to understand that many evil livers are happy and many righteous men unhappy; and that wrong-doing, if it be undetected, is profitable, while honest dealing is beneficial to one's neighbours, but damaging to one's self.” Poetry is not a safe guide for human beings Plato gives‘a palm to reason over emotion. As poetry appeals to emotions rather than reason, It cannot safely guide us as reason does. It Is the duty of the wise to be guided by reason rather than by emotion. Poetry makes the reason prisoner and hence Plato condemns poetry for its emotive nature in these words: “Poetry fed and watered the passions instead of drying them up, and let them rule instead of ruling them as they ought to be ruled, with a view to the happiness and virtue of mankind.” The place of the poet is between a prophet and a mad man The poet is not an ordinary human being; he is an inspired being who composes poems when he is inspired by the Muse. Homerand Milton invoked the Muse for achieving a Marathon feat in poetry. In fact, great literature is the fruit of inspiration, but inspiration cannot be turned on like a tap. A poet composes poems only when he is inspired and hence he is not a safe gulde. Instead of cool deliberation he depends upon inspiration which is beyond his control. The poet speaks when he is inspired, This makes him not an, oridinary human being; his position - is between a prophet anda madman. In’ Phaedrus Plato refers to “the madness of those who are possesed by the Muses.” Plato develops this view at greater lenght in his Jon. Inthe following extract Socrates is speaking to lon: ’ : "The gift which you possess is not an art , but, as | was just saying» an inspiration : there ‘Is a divinity moving you , like that contained in the stone which Euripides calls a magnet , but which is commonly known as the stone of Heraclea: This Stone not only attracts Iron rings, but also Imparts to them a similar ehh of See others rings ; and sometimes. you may see a number of pieces iN es ring suspended from one another so as to form quite a long chain: and em drive their power of suspension from the original stone . In like manner © scanned with OKEN Scanner (29) subsequent ages. Plato discussed the theory of Inspiration in th $ W e jon. D Daiches says, The /on is the most elaborate presentation in the acer aay of the notion of poetry as pure inspiration---a notion which has had a long history, has gone through many modifications, and which survives even today.” The /on Is a debate between lon the reciter of Homer’ Socrates. lon, the rhapsodist, Is satirised who could not bain “be ab fies his ability to recite poetry. Socrates jokingly explains that both poets and rhapsodists must be under the influence of a divne power while composing poetry and speaking about it. The art of the poet.as well as that as the rhapsode who recites, poetry is the result of a sort of “madness”, “frenzy” or “Inspiration”. Socrates says: “Forthe poet isa light winged and holy thing, and there Is no inventions in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles.” Socrates again says, “The gift which you possess is not an art, but an inspiration; there is a divinity moving you. For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed.” According to this Dialogue neither poetry nor criticism results from art and knowledge. A rhapsode like lon has no rational technique which can be applied to all poetry. In other words, poetry is not a species of knowledge. And no inspiration is thus critically rejected by Plato. Since the Renaissance the Platonic theory of poetic inspira- tion has been cited to prove that Plato was not opposed to poetry. When a poet is “inspired”, he has a superhuman ability by which he is able to have a glimpse of the ultimate nature of things, their eternal forms, and their divine archetypes. Plato was the first critic who advanced the theory ofimitation, that all art is an imitation of life and nature, that art is an imitation of an imitation. The essence of his argumentsis that poetry is a form of imitation, and is thus a representation of an actual and the contingent and not of the ideal and the essential. Thus poetry takes us away from the true rather than towards it. Poetry has no concern with serious things and it is a form of trivial amusement. Aristotle dealt with this problem in the Poetics. : Plato was mainly concerned with the didactic side ot an and literature. Plato believed that poetry should subserve individuals and social morality. He was of the view that poetry helped neither to mould character nor to promote the well-being of the state. He condemned poetry because it is not only immoral but trivial too, and so detrimental to the welfare of the state. Plato says. in the Laws, “No poet shall write any poem that conflicts with what, in accordance with the public standard, Is right and lawful, beautiful and good; nor show his compositions to any private Individual until they have been submitted to the appointed judges In these matters and to the guardians of the laws, and been officially approved.” He Is thus the fountaln-head from whom has sprung the idea of censorship. However, Plato was not opposed to all types of poetry. Inthe ideal republic he welcomed those poets who composed ‘hymns to the gods and panegyrics of famous men’. * Plato was also the originator of the theory of organic unity in a piece of © scanned with OKEN Scanner (30) composition, one of the most fundamental and widely accepted principles of literary criticism. To quote him: “Every discourse must be organized, like a living being, with a body of its over, as it were, so as not to be headless or footless, but to have a middle and members, composed in fitting relations to each other and to the whole.” As far as his manner and style are concerned, he set the fashion for d romantic. His best passages have the criticising in a way which may be calle ; beauty and the rhythm, the glow and the warmth peculiar to the imaginative literature of the most genuine kind. From the earliest works to the latest, no other author reveals as Plato does the power, the beauty, and the flexibility of Greek prose. Plato is not the first philosophical critic, but also the first critic to communicate the beauty and charm of creative literature to his critical pages, derogatory as well as commendatory. His prose is Attic prose ---prose marked by simplicity and richness of thought. The perfection of style is variety in unity, freedom, ease, clearness, the power of saying anything, and of striking any note and such is the divine gift In the scale of human feeling without improprietys im and Phaedrus. of language possessed by Plato in the Symposiu: ARISTOTLE (384 B.C.--322 B.C.) The life of Aristotle Atistotle was born in 384 B.C. at Stagira in Chalcidice. He was the. son of Nicomachus, court’physician and friend to King Amyntas of Macedon. His boyhood was spent at the court of Pella: He imbibed his early interest in biology and physical science from his: father. At the age of seventeen he was.admitted to Plato’s ‘Academy’ at Athens. Here he remained'nearly for twenty. years till the death of his master in 347 B.C. Spensippus, the successor of Plato, represented a tendency of Platonism repugnant to Aristotle. Hence Aristole and his friend Xenocrates retired to Assos in Mysia. He became a guest of Hermeias, the ruler of Atarneus and Assos. He lived there nearly for three years and after the death of Hermeias in 345 B.C., he married Pythias, the niece of Hermeias.. The two years following his marriage were spent in Lesbos. In 343-342 B.C., Aristotle was chosen by King Philip of Macedon as tutor to his son Alexander whom he taught for seven years. After the death of King Philip in 335 B.C., Aristole returned to Athens where he founded his famous school Lyceum. Here he devoted his life in oral teaching and lecturing to scholars ona variety of subjects. Most of his works belong to the period of his life. . The. Athenians, after Alexander's death in 323 B.C., started a’spyhunt, and Aristotle was inevitably suspect. Aristotle retired to ‘Chalcis in Euboea, ‘lest Athens should twice’sin against philosophy’; and there he breathed his last in 322 B.C A Consideration of ‘The Poetics’ . ‘The Poetics’--a fragmentary work of criticism 2 The Poetics is a fragmentary and an incomplete criticism. It deals with tragedy, comedy and the epic. It co chapters and seems to be a summary of his lectures. delive written either by them or. by himself. Probably the text is the rough ske work of literary ntains twenty-si* red to scholals: tch 0 © scanned with OKEN Scanner (31) what he wanted to write in detail. It is also possible that ithad a sequal which we have not received. However, the fact remains that it Is incomplete, fragmen- tary and often omits the questions which he himself raised and might have discussed them in the second book of the Poetics, in Spite of its fragmentary nature the Poetics has come down tous as an authoritative treatise of the art of tragedy. ‘It is not only the first philosophical discussion of literature, but the foundation of all subsequent discussion’, It contains fundamental problems relating to literary and aesthetic criticism and his conclusions of these fundamen- tal problems have been deduced inductively and by analysis, for example tragedy Is discussed separately as plot, character, diction etc. ‘The Poetics’ as a reply to Plato's criticism of Poetry It has been suggested by J.W.H. Atkins that Aristotle wrote thePoetics as a reply to Plato's scatching denunciation of poetry as false, unreal and harmful. The author of the: Poetics had the author of the Republic in his mind, though nowhere in the Poetics he mentions the name of Plato. Yet he is so much engrossed in the Platonic ideas, that all the: time he seems to be engaged in refuting them. Atkins finds Aristotle “merely careful to frame a reply to Plato's indictment; and-with this he is apparently for the most part content”. Lascelles Abercrombie also think that almost certainly the Poeticsis Aristotle's counterblast to Plato's celebrated condemnation of Poetry as a pursuit unwor- thy of man's intellectual dignity, and radically vicious in its effect. ‘The Poetics’-- Its Value The Poetics \is the first important document in the history: of western criticism. In The Theory of Drama (p.9) Allardyce Nicoll says, ‘The fount.of all true study of the essential elements of the dramatic form lies in the Poetics of Aristotle.” The western theory of drama derives fromthe Poetics. It is not only the first thoroughly philosophical discussion of literature, but also the foundation of all subsequent discussions. The Poetics is a mine of fundamental principles relating to literary and aesthetic criticism and the conclusions on these fundamental problems have been deduced inductively and by analysis, for example tragedy is discussed separately as plot, character, diction etc. The Poetics is the first work of literary criticism, and it is written by the world’s first Scientist. Aristotle’s approach to literature has been the scientific one of Observation and analysis.The Poetics is not amere enunciation of the principles of the poetic art. Its conclusions are firmly rooted in the Greek literature, till then known,and are actually illustrated from it. Taking the whole body of extant Greek literature, Aristotle deduces conclusions from it which in varying degrees apply to literature as a whole. So they do not necessarily cover literature produced later andin other countries, There Is considerable force in Dryden's statement Concerning tragi-comedy that had Aristotle seen English plays, he might have changed his mind. This is not to deny that many of Aristotle's conclusions of the Nature of poetry and drama are of general application and are as true today as they were in his own day. The Poetics — still enjoys a world-wide popularity because it is a study of a great art by a peculiarly acute, learned, and methodical critic, fas © scanned with OKEN Scanner (34) dismisses the activity of Imitation Instead of according to It an aesthetic status, To the Greek mind, all human activity was elther doing things or making things, In doling things the action Itself was to be Judged: In making things the action was to be Judged by what It made ---the tangible object which It brought Into existence. It was In the latter case that activity was an art. The value of the art was easily Judged when the thing It produced was a shoe ora pot. But when human activity produces a picture ora poem, how was Judgement possible ? In this case, the value of a thing did not consist in Its material nor even in the arrangement of Its material; It consisted In the way the material and its arrangement stood for something. The Greeks before Aristotle said that the value of such an object consisted in the way that object Imitated something. In this sense the meaning of the word Is vague. And they vaguely explained away the existence of what we call art as Imitation. The Inevitable result of this notion was that art imitates nature. Art then Is the skilled copying of the objects of nature. This was the popular way of arguing, and It was also Plato's way. It enabled him, In accordance with his theory of Ideas, to disparage poetry and art In general. Aristotle was no doubt Inthe early part of his Poetics concemed with Plato's attack on imitative nature of poetry. He meets this charge by giving a completely different, interpretation of the whole notion of Imitation In poetry. He makes imitation on aesthetic faculty. The precise aesthetic meaning of imitation (or mimesis) Is “portrayal”. But by portrayal Is not meant literal copying of the world of reality. This Is clear _from the fact that Aristotle points_out that the artist may Imitate things as they ‘ought to be. Nor does art attempt to ambody the objective reality of things, but their sensible reality.Thus, «¢cording to Professor Butcher, art in the Aris- - ‘totelean theory Is not a symbol but a semblance of reality. To quote Professor Butcher, “The work of imitative art is an Image of the impressions made by an * independent reality upon the mind of the artist.” That all art was Imitation was a truism to Plato, though the metaphysi- * cal and psychological consequence which he drew from this in the tenth book of “the Republic were oblously his own’ Aristotle repeats the main principle that all kinds of poetry, music and dancing, and the plastic arts as welh are forms of Imitation. He, too, states this not as ‘a theory to be established but as something to be taken for granted and a basis for further theories. There is no suggestion that he Is using the word mimesis in any novel sense; clearly he means that .. the situations, actions; characters and emotions portrayed or evoked must strike one as true to life. As so often, however,.Aristotle broadens and clarifies the Platonic theory where he later says that, when accused of untruth, the Poet may reply that he Is imitating things as they are, as they were,as they ought to be, or as men thought they were, |.e., representing the present , the past , the Wdeal, or men’s beliefs about them. Even so, however, we must still feel the picture to be true to something actual, which Is the essence of the theory and the |ustification of the continued use of the word mimesis as imitation; this feeling Is lost in the alternative translation as “representation”. By thus broaden- ing the concept, however, Aristotle: avolds the narrow interpretation of mimesis copying Which Plato’ use of p: ams at times to Imply and wh ‘ x ‘ © scanned with OKEN Scanner (35) If all art Is Imitation, then different arts are species of that genus and should be distinguished by meaningful differences ‘In ‘the nature of-the Imita- ° tlon". So Aristotle proceeds to suggest that the basis. for such classification should be three essential principles. of difference between various kinds : differences In the model they imitate, In the means or medium they use, and in manner In which they do It.’ Now all musical and: literary’ arts imitate by means of speech, rhythm and music, whether used together or separately, as dancing uses rhythm alone. The manner of imitation is whether the poet uses impersonation only, narrative only, or a mixture of: the two. The differences based on the nature of the model correspond: to. what. we. would call differences In subject matter, but Aristotle ‘gives a curlousdwist to this when he goes on to say that the . differance here depends on whether the artist represents men as they are, as better or as worse. This becomes a moral difference : epic and tragedy represent man as _ better, comedy end parody as worse. Pauson the painter represented men as they are. y Aristotle’s point Is that any classification of kinds of literature based on these three principles of differance will be far more significant than the usual distinctions into prose or verse or according to particular metres (Homer and Empedocles both wrote hexameters but they have nothing significant In~ common). Having made It clear, however, he does not himself offer us such a classification except that he uses the differences in the model as a main ! distinction between tragedy and comedy, for ‘tragedy imitates. men who are better, comedy imitates men who are worse than we know them today’. With Plato, he seeks the origins of poetry in human nature itself, and differences in human nature also account for the two main divisions of poetry as — It developed. He attributes the birth of poetry to two main causes, first, that man Is by nature the most imitative of animals, and that humanity is gifted with a , sense of rhythm and melody. Because he is so imitative, man will enjoy both the | making of imitations and the contemplation ‘of them. This. latter pleasure is often due to the pleasure of recognizing the model inthe image, though there are other pleasures involved in the conteinplation of the image’s workmanship, and here presumably the sense of rhythm and ey Is. Involved. Differences of. human character account for the fact of two-main i streams of poetry when . : se “The more serious-minded imitated the noble deeds of rioble man; the more common imitated the actions of the less noble,” - One stream accounts for invective, lampoons, and. ultimately comedy; the. other leads to hymns, encomla, the epic and ultimately tragedy. Yet both streams are said i> derive from Homer, whose Margites Is in the same relation ~ to comedy as the Il/ad. and the Odyssey are to tragedy. Tragedy and comedy are then the culminating forms of each stream, Comedy developed. from the phallic songs, and tragedy from the dithyramb. Aristotle’ S repudiation of Plato’s theory of Ideas Plato. discussed the problem of imitation: in art and poetry in accor- © scanned with OKEN Scanner a Ga dance with his theory of Ideas. In Book X of the Republic Plato argues roughly as follows: “There are many tables in the world, but there Is only one idea or form (Platonic Idea) of atable. When a Carpenter makes a table he 2 mere semblance of this idea which is the one “real” table lying , beyond ail the tables which have been or can be made: so that the Idea, for our present very general purpose, is outside the world altogether. And when an artist sts down in front of the carpenter's table to paint a picture of It, the picture that resulls is a copy of something which is itself a kind of shadow of the real object. Thus the artifact is removed at two stages from reality.” Aristotle refuted this argument of Plato that imitation takes the artist away from reality; he asserted that it brings him nearer to reality. Aristotle replied this argument of Plato by saying that tables are matter-and-form compounds; matter Is the brute stuff of their make-up and form their intelligible essence. We all know a table when we see one, but we do not know what we are doing when we see-and- know a table. The artist, who may or may not know what he is doing, Is concerned with the intelligible essence, the form, in a manner which distin- guishes him both from philosophers and from ordinary men. His activity Is the contemplation of a form followed by rendering of it into the medium of his art. In this way, Asistotle’s artist sits before the carpenter's table in brooding consideration of its form, and then he tries to coax the form on the canvas. This interpretation, of the artist's imitation of the ideas, raised the status of the-artist in the exalted sphere of philosophy. Imitation means creating something according to the Idea Imitation, in the sence in which Aristotle applies it to poetry,is equivalent to ‘producing’ or creating according to the ‘Idea’. The poet seeks to give ft more complete expression, to bring to light the ideal which is only half- revealed in the worid of reality. Imitation, so understood, Is a creative act. In this sense Aristotle’s theory of imitation is the ‘representation’ of a type of human action and re-presenting it in a new “medium”, or material--that .of words. It also means repoduction of a natural object. His concept of ‘postic imitation’ includes his concept ‘of Nature ‘which Is the creative force, the praductive principle of the universe. Poetry, which is the highest form of imitative - art, imitates Nature. It is an expression of the universal element in human life. . Pleasure in imitation — _ _ Aristotle says that an artist imitates because he gets pleasure in imita- tion and this faculty is an inborn instinct in man. Itis this pleasure in imitation that _ enables the child to learn his earliest lessons In speech and conduct from those around him. They are imitated by himbecause there Is a pleasure in doing so. A poet or an artist is Just a grown-up child indulging In imitation for the pleasure it affords. When Aristotle says that the aim of art is to provide pleasure, he is perhaps laying the foundation of art for art’s sake. For Plato the purpose of a work of art is not to provide pleasure alone, but also to teach us. Art, in his view, has a moral aim, and because of this view he denounced poets as liars and corruptors of mankind. Today this view does not get much : support. Lascelles Abercrombie has rightly observed, “Aristotle's way of interpreting poetic imitation Is possibly tha Most valuable of all his. Contributions to aesthetic © scanned with OKEN Scanner (39) “Tragedy, then, Is an Imitation of an action that Is serious, complete, and ofa certain magnitude; In language embellished with each kind of artistic content, the several kinds being found In separate parts of the play In the form of actlon, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the catharsis or the proper purgation of these emotions.” Aristotle himself explains that the phrase ‘language embellished’ refers to rhythm, song and music and ' for each part separately’ means that some parts of a tragedy have only the rhythm of poetry while other parts (the choral odes) have song and music as well. Unfortunately, he does not help us directly with the expressions that are really controversial, but if we concentrate on what Aristotle actually says, and not on what' we should like-him to say, there Is little ground for controversy. i Some commentators think that Aristotle's criteria in the Poetics are purely aesthetic and that he Is quite free .of what they call ‘the moral faliacy’ In’ the appreciation of poetry. This would be very strange, for Aristotle ls a Greek, and he is certainly not free of the ‘Platonic fallacy’ in the Politics, But even if we restrict ourselves to the Poetics, there are a number of moral judgements. ‘A tragedy Is the Imitation of a good action’, |.¢., morally good. The Greek adjective Is spoudaios, and It is, of course, the action of the whole drama that Is in question. When the world is applied to characters, or men, or thelr actions elsewhere inthe Poetics, it has always moral connotations. So has the inferior model of comedy, and this meaning carries over when, a few lines later, tragedy Is said to be the imitation of men who are more spoudaios. This means better men. To. translate this as ‘men of a higher type’, or ‘superior men’, is very puzzling: It would certainly have puzzled Aristotle to understand how one can be a higher type of man without being a better man morally, intellectually and in every other way. And so with actions. Commentators are equally divided nowadays, between ‘a morally good action’ and a ‘serious action’, but if we lay aside our prejudices, the first is the only correct translation. The other, main difficulty is the meaning of ‘catharsis’. Here the choice lies, between ‘the purging of such emotions’ and’ ‘the purification of such emotions’. The first Is a medical metaphor, the second an Orphic one; both are possible meanings. Here again, we have no right to ignore the passage ‘at the end of the Politics where the sense of purgation is perfectly clear, and which specifically refers to the Poetics for a ‘clearer’ explanation, not for a completely different meaning. Perhaps we need not pursue the matter further, for most modern commentators now interpret it as ‘purging’. Even if we did not have the Politics, the purification of pity and fear Is a strange idea for Aristotle, the son of a physician, and the most un-Orphic and unmystic of men. Some have probably been misled by the modern notion of disinterested pity, which is quite un-Aristotelian. To Aristotle, pity, a kind of fear, Is not disinterested and Is Nota desirable thing at all. Purging Is clearly right. We shall later on note that some of the modern, American commentators have explained ‘catharsis’, by advancing the clarification theory. eo The rest of the definition Is clear. We agree with his meaning of © ‘Imitation’, and we fully appreciate that a tragedy should be an entity, [ts action complete and of a certain length. Nor Is there’ any reasonable doubt that the ‘pity and fear and such emotions, are those of the spectator. The rousing of © scanned with OKEN Scanner (40) pity and fear in their audience was the recognized goal of the art of words, of orator, rhapsode and poet. Besides, Aristotle, In the Politics at least, was answering Plato and evolved the theory of catharsis In that context. Thore Is no doubt as to whose emotions are there purged. Parts of Tragedy Aristotle recognizes six, and only six,-significant ‘parts’ or eloments of tragedy. In order of Importance, they are plot (muthos), character (ethos), thought (dianola), dictlon (/exts), melody (melos), and spectacle (opsis). Thase arts are produced by the basic principles of Imitation, manner, means, and object, [a] Plot To Aristotle, plot, the structure of the action, Is the most Important. Since tragedy Is the Imitation of an action, the action Is the imitation, the ‘soul of a tragedy. Aristotle says that it Is possible to have a tragedy without charac- terization, but without plot there can be no play. e The story or plot must be one; there must be unity of plot. This Is the only kind of unity Aristotle requires but this he insists emphatically. And it must be a real unity which Is not achleved, as some people think, by merely being the story of one person. The unity must be such that If any one incident Is deleted or displaced, the whole tragedy Is dislocated. In other words, the unity must be organic with a definite place and function for every part and every part in Its place, and the connection between them must be Inevitable, or at least probable. This connection should not be too obvious beforehand, for there ‘should be an element of surprise, but the design must be seen clearly after the event. An appearance of inevitability may be sufficient to achieve unity as in the story of Mitys’ statue falling upon:and iilling his murderer. Plots that are episodic, i.e., without probable or necessary connection between events, must at all costs be avoided. As far the length of the story, it must be short enough to be grasped and easily remembered as a whole, and it must be long enough to allow for the necessary change of fortune in accordance with what Is probable or inevitable. Within those limits, the longer the better. The Story of ‘Oedipus’ Oedipus. was the son of Laius, king of Thebes, and Jocasta. Laius had brought a curse upon his family and was informed by an oracle that he must perish at his son's hahds and consequently ordered the destruction of the child.Oedipus was exposed, hung to a tree by a twig passed through his feet (where his name, ‘swollen-foot') but was rescued by ashepherd. In ignorance of his parentage, Oedipus later slew Laius his father, and having solved the riddle of the Sphinx, obtained Jocasta, his mother, for his wife, by whom he had _ two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, and two daughters, Ismene and Antigone. Having discovered the facts of his parentage,Oedipus, in horror at his crimes, put out his own eyes, while Jocasta hanged herself. He retired, led by his daughter Antigone, to Colones. in Attica, where he died. The story of Oedipus is thetheme of tragedies by Sophocles. (Dorothy Eagle) © scanned with OKEN Scanner (41) Reversal (‘Peripeteia’ or ‘Peripety’) and Recognition (‘Anagnorisis’) Aristotle distinguishes between simple and complex plot. A simple plot is one in which a change of fortune takes place without Reversal of the situation and without Recognition, and in a complex plot the change of fortune is accompanied by a Reversal or by a Recognition or by both. Reversals and recognitions are incidents. They turn upon surprises. They are parts. of the plot and therefore--like the other incidents-- “must develop directly from the construc- tion of the plot itsel”. This condition can be met only if they are related by necessity or probability to what has gone before. They can be directly caused by the preceding incident--as the blinding of Oedipus is caused by the revelation of the messenger--or they can be consequences of the general principle underly- ing the action just as the victory at Agincourt in , Shakespeare's Henry V is caused by the co-operation of providence and English virtue. Reversal (‘Peripeteia’) Reversal is a change by which the action veers rounds to its opposite. It ls “a change of fortune in the action of the play to the opposite state of affairs.” An action seems to be proceeding toward succass and suddenly veers round in the direction of misfortune. We call this type of plot “fatal complex". Aristotle illustrates it with the arrival of the messenger in Oedipus. The messenger arrives to help the king but actually destroys him by revealing the key to his true identity. Altemately, an action seems to be proceeding toward misfortune and suddenly veers round in the direction of happiness. This type of plot is “fortunate- complex”. It is illustrated by the Lynceus in which the principal character is about to be executed, but is suddenly saved. {phigenia in Tauris is also a “fortunate-complex” play, because at the last moment Orestes is recognized by his sister and saved from death. Recognition (‘Anagnorisis’) Recognition is a change from ignorance to knowledge brought about by the incidents of the plot. It must be the ‘necessary or probable” result of the preceding incidents. Moreover, it results in a change in the action--a change from “friendship” to “hostility” or the reverse. After the recognition, the plot must veer off in a new direction affecting the “friendship or hostility” of the characters. Recognition in this sense is closely akin to reversal. The two are Closely allied, and they are easily combined in a single incident. Aristotle says that the combined form is the “most effective”. Aristotle gives Oedipus as his example. The reversal is the arrival of the messenger, which leads to the downfall of the king. The recognition is the discovery by Oedipus of “who he actually is" in consequence of which he blinds himself. In fact, in Oedipus, rec- ognition and reversai are so closely interwoven that it is academic to attempt to Separate them:The-climax of Oedipus is not a reversal plus a recognition but something closer to a “raversalrecognition".. We call this type of episode a “compound recognition.” “Change from ignorance to knowledge" is the most general definition of Recognition. it can be brought about, as suggested by Aristotle, by three types : recognition of inanimate things, recognition of events, and recognition of Persons. The first two types are common place in detective stories and are represented by the investigator's discovering clues or learning of concealed © scanned with OKEN Scanner (45) We can say that the story must be one. A double plot, as in the Odyssey where the good'are rewarded and the’ bad punished Is therefore not the best kind, and this kind of denouement, which Is put to please’ the groundings, is closer to comedy where the greatest enemies are reconciled and “nobody kills anybody”. Only that kind of plot will arouse pity and fear (except In so far as suffering Is in itself pitiful) where the suffering Is inflicted by people whose relationship should Imply affection. The relationship may be known all the time and the suffering inflicted in spite of it (Medea); it may be recognized after the event (Oedipus); it may be discovered before the event and the deed done in spite of It; or it may be discovered and the deed prevented. The worst of all is where the facts are known from the beginning and then the deed is not done. Every reader now expects Aristotle, who has insisted.on an unhappy ending and compared the opposite to comedy, to say that the best is where the full discovery comes after the deed is done(Oedipus) but, by-one of the strange reversals of which he is sometimes capable, he suddenly says that the best type is where the relationship is discovered in time and the deed prevented. Aristotle has a strong dislike of the supernatural, since every event must follow the other as probable or inevitable. He wants to restrict. the supernatural to events outside the play, thatis, in the pastor the future. Gods may be allowed to tell of the distant past or to foretell the future, but \ supernatural interventions within the play like the chariot sent by Helios for Medea’s escape (and he might have added Poseidon’s bull who kills Hippolytus) must be avoided. Within the play itself, there must-be nothing irrational or inexplicable. Aristotle is critical of contemporary tragedians, and when,. at the end of his discussion of the plot, he suddenly speaks of four types of tragedy, these are types by which actual and probably contemporary tragedies may be classified because of their exaggerations of a particular aspect, for he clearly disap- proves of every type but one. The first Is the complex tragedy, l.e., the tragedy witha complex plot (with peripiety and recognition and of this he approves), itis in fact this type he has ‘been building up and recommending all along; the second Is the tragedy of mere suffering, and he has told us that pathos or suffering Is not enough; the third Is the tragedy of character, but to him character should remain subordinated to plot; the fourth is the spectacular tragedy which he has earlier dismissed with contempt as not tragedy at all. He admits that each kind has had good poets but he reaffirms that the basic requirement of tragedy Is the plot, and one may surely conclude that his own classification by different types of plot, simple, complex, etc., Is much to be preferred. [c] Spectacle Since the dramatic manner requires that the agents, not the poet, Perform the imitation, drama includes an element that Aristotle calls spectacle. As spectacle is produced by the poet, not by the costume designer or actors, spectacle refers first and foremost.to the way that a dramatic text Is written. The text of a play by Shakespeare, for instance, Is worked out In a way quite different , © scanned with OKEN Scanner (46) from the text cfa novel. The dramatist cannot describe--he must rely entirely on dialogue; he must adjust dialogue to the actions that he imagines the characters performing; he must provide minor characters such as messengers to Telate matters beyond the ken of his major figures; he must avoid actions that are Impossible or palpably ridiculous; he must limit the number of characters and avoid placing the same character in two locations at the same time; and so forth. Noteworthy as they are, these adjustments contribute little to the “ragig pleasure. Moreover, costumes, masks, stage sets, and actors are not actually Spectacle. They merely “realize” the possibilities inherent in the tragic text as written, At the end of Chapter VI, Aristotle observes that tragedy can produc Its proper pleasure without being acted, and that spectacle Is not the essential element of tragedy. To quote Aristotle, “The spectacle does indeed stir the emotions of the audience, but it Is the least artistic element; It has least to do with the poet's craft, for the power of the tragedy can be felt even without porformance of the actors. The working out of visual effects belongs more to the Properly man’s craft than. to that of the poet.” He also deprecates the rousing of pity andfear by spectacular means rather than by the plot structure, and a play which relies entirely on the spectacle to stirthe audience has nothing in common with a tragedy, for the effect Is not so much fear as amazed horror. He does, however, allow elsewhere that the poet must pay attention to the staging asa necessary concomitant of tragedy, and try to visualize the performance, particularly the positions and gestures of the actors. ‘ [dj] Thought Aristotle says, “By thought’ Imeanthat which Is found in whatever things men say when they prove a point, or, it may be; express a general truth.” He makes a difference between two types of speeches--firstly, those which are expressive of his moral purpose, showing what things he chooses or avolds; Secondly, those which are argumentative and aim at proving or refuting a point or enunclating some truth or maxim. It Is the second variety which comes under the category of thought. Aristotle has borrowed his concept of thought from rhetoric. This Is confirmed later in chapter VI when Aristotle states that thought is related to “the art of politics and rhetoric.” For the expression of thought, which Is In effect the art of rhetoric, Aristotle simply alludes to his Rhetoric. in Book If of the Rhetoric, Chapters XIX-XXIV, Aristotle discusses the ways that thought manifests itself in speeches. The three most important ways are by maxims, by enthymemes, and by general ‘lines of argument’ that can be applied to any subject. ‘ [e] Melody Aristotle does not discuss melody separately. It is like spectacle, an adornment rather than an essential. Melody is\a minor. element and must be ‘brought out’ by the performer's an. Aristotle Says that melody is the pant of ‘the poetic art’ because. Greek tragedians composed the choral sections - of their dramas, and these sections were to be chanted. It is implicit in the metres ee In the choral sections, However, It only achieves Its full effect in. perform- 8, : [f] Language Aristotle deals with language or diction in three chapters (20-22) which ara. mostly about grammar and linguistics and are of little broader interest except for two things, the treatment of metaphor and a few but illuminating remarks on diction proper. : ue i e © scanned with OKEN Scanner (47) “The language, to be effective, should be lucid without being com- mon. Now the most lucid language consists of current words but It Is - common.......Unusual words, on the other hand, give dignity to the language and avold the commonplace. By unusual | mean strange words, metaphors, lengthened forms anything contrary to common usage, but if all one's words are of that kind the result Is riddles or gibberish ...What we need Is a mixed diction." This Is exactly the same advice as he gives to prose writers In the Rhetoric. The difference Is of degree only as poets are allowed a good deal more ornamenta- tlon. ; " The discussion of metaphors shows that Aristotle uses the word in a wider sense than we do, and he seems to Include any kind of transference of epithet and the like. His classification of metaphors Is somewhat mechanical: (proportional, from genus to species, species to genus, etc.) and he nowhere says what a metaphor Is: ; The Tragic Hero i ease ; With the exception of the definition of tragedy itself, probably no pas- sage in the Poetics has given rise to so much criticism as the description of the ideal tragic ‘hero In chapter XIII. Aristotle's requirement of the tragic hero have given rise to much controversy but berfore we discuss them, we should have a clear understanding of what Aristotle says about the tragic hero . Aristotle says, “There remains, then, the intermediate kind of personage, a man not pre- eminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, Is brought upon him not by vice and depravity but_by some error cf judgement, of the number of those in the enjoyment of great reputation and prosperity ; @. g., Oedipus, Thyestes, and the men of-note, of similar families. The perfect plot, accordingly, must have a single, and not a double issue; the change in the hero's fortunes must not be from misery to happiness but on the contrary from happiness to misery; and the cause of It must lie not In any depravity but in some great error on his part : the man himself being either such as we have described, or better, not worse than that.” Qualifications of a tragic hero The tragic hero, says Aristotle, should be a person of great reputation and prosperity. He should be. above common level, a man of high moral reputa- tion and dignity, but he is not a paragon of virtue, He Is neither a perfectly virtuous character nor a confirmed villain. If he is a virtuous person, his fall from prosperity to adversity may arouse pity but not fear. If ha Is a villain, it would arouse neither pity nor fear. In this way, the tragic character must be good, but not eminently good and-the fault which brings him to musforturne must be his own His misfortune must not be an unmerited one. He should be the author of his own downfall. He should come to disaster, not because of vice, depravity and an unseen power, but through fault, error or frailty of his own . The rebound of his own act must be the cause of his ruin. “An eagle,” writes Aesop, “that was watching upon a rock for a hare, had the ill hap to be struck by an arrow. This arrow, it’seems: was feathered from her own wing, which consideration went © scanned with OKEN Scanner (50) the rites demanded by religion to her brother's corpse; and Is punished, as she know she would be, by death, She appeals to the “unwritten laws” whieh man's conscience must obey against all earthly laws; but Kreon appeals 10 the Jaws which the State has a right to make In vindication of its existence, Now, says Hegel, Antigone Is in the right, but only from her point at view; she represents the rights of individual conscience. But Kreon . is equally right from his point of view; he represents the rights of the State. The conflict Ig Inreconcilable, Both must suffer: that is the tragedy. This, like Aristotle's theory, Is one of the possible cases of tragedy; but it no more provides a universal rule than Aristotle does. Antigone itself does not bear ft out; though Hegel's theory certainly reminds us that in order to understand Sophocles's tragedy, we must sympathise with Kreon as well as with Antigone. But the tragedy is nevertheless, that Antigone (s right and Kreon Is- wrong: and that the wrong has power to condamn tha right. However, plausible, and Indeed profound, Hegel's © theory may be, perhaps there is no tragedy that exactly accords with it. Tho possibility of a religious tragedy such as Shaw's Saint Joan and Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral have added new dimensions to ‘Aristotle's doctrine of the tragic hero. Aristotle stated that the tragedy of salnts and martyrs would create no feeling but instinctive aversion. Today the Idea of suffering has undergone a change. This new idea of suffering is expressed by Thomas_A. Becket in Eliot's Murder in the Cathhedral. “We are not hare to trlumph by fighting, by stratagem or by resis- tonce. . Not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast And have conquered. We have only to conquer Now, by suffering.” Aristotle's concept of the tragic flaw does not apply to modem social tragedies; such as Justice by John Galsworthy. Tragedy in social tragedies is the outcome not so much of frailities in the character but as the result of mal-social-adjustment and social forces working agairist the main character. Moreover, in social tragedies the place of a heroic and dignified protagonist is taken by the common man. Aristotle’s concept of the tragic hero is a narrow one. We have religious and social tragedies; a saint and an ordinary person can be the protagonist of a tragedy; the function of tragedy is not~ merely to excite emotions of pity and fear, Moreover, there are psychological tragedies in which tragedy occurs because of the conflict of the conscious and the unconscious forces of the psyche as in O'Neill's The Great God Brown, Days Without End, and by conflict with society or other individuals caused by a character's Inner unconscious drives like homosexuality in Mordaunt Shaltp's The Green Bay Tree and Edovard Bourdet's _ The Captive. Finally, In an era Intensified class struggle drama added the struggle between capital and labour as class war to Its stock of tragic forces, Hence, Aristotle's theory of the tragic hero is not of universal application. © scanned with OKEN Scanner (49) act, and an Ignorance. Thus hamartia is a single great error or def can be both an intellectuat and a moral error. This concept of fisertane: in fact, based on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, 5 Criticism of Aristotle's doctrine of the tragic hero Aristotle's doctrine of the tragic hero has been widal a udi in the 20th century. It has been stated that Aristotle’s theany at hasta does not apply to a number of tragedies. Aristotle said that the tragic character should be good but not too good and his catastrophe should result of his own act, frailty or error. But jt has been seen that our right and prudent actions do not always lead too gdod nor the contrary to what is bad. In this incalculable world to act and to blunder are not two but one. The wisest and the best are but children, and there is no truth in the doctrine either in life or tragedy, the mirror of its grievous mischances, that the afflictions of the good are necessarily the fruits of their own acts, of imperfect character or faulty judgement, that errors never creep into the reckonings of Fate or that her awards are impeccable. “We cannot find by experience,” says Bishop Butler, “that all our sufferings are owing to our own follies.” On the contrary, experience tells us that pious men have been hated for their piety and crushed, persecuted for their services to humanity, imprisoned, tortured and assassinated for their sagacity and nobility. Galileo was punished for having seen the earth revolve round the sun. In Prometheus Bound Prometheus suffered not for his faults but for his : virtues, He was punished because he wanted to do good to humanity. ; Aristotle maintains that the tragic character should not be faultless © and he should suffer misfortune for Some - fault or weakness of his own. Lascelles Abercrombie and J.S. Smart have not accepted this view. They argue that so offen innocent persons suffer undeservedly. Abercrombie Says that the truth is, that he ignored, in the interest of his theory, the unmistakably tragic effect of innocence suffering undeservedly, of Right punished by Wrong— and punished for being Right. If his theory of tragic function had taken into account the rousing of love and admiration as well as of pity and fear, he would scarcely have failed to peyceive the tragic Possibilities in the suffering of innocence.’ Perhaps also he would have done. justice to the other case which he denies to be tragedy--the opposite Of the downfall of the heroic villain. For, as Macbeth shows us, itis possible to admire a villain; possible even to feel for him a sympathy which is not, in the end, very far from love. el has modified Aristotle's theory by saying that a character it t be an absolute May suffer for being in the right because the right may no Tight. Both the cantios (one who suffers. and the other who causes suffering) May be right from their own point of view. This om ba aereied trom intigone “of Sophocles. Antigone’s brother has conn ne ie ae pee Sible crime against his country, and has been killa i ° te ite. tulet of Thebes, has refused him the rites of burial, thus au Werlig an atrocious wrong ‘by another equally atrocious. Antigone ¢ Heg a ihe © scanned with OKEN Scanner (50) ded by religion to her brother's corpse; and is punished, as bid Cee oul: cane death. She appeals to the “unwritten laws” which man's consclence must obey — against all earthly laws; but Kreon appeals to the laws which the State has a right to make in vindication of its existence. Now, says Hegel, Antigone is in the tight, but only from her point of view; sho represents the rights of individual conscience. But Kreon. is ; he rights of the State. The equally right from his point of view; he represents t pathy irreconcilable. Both must suffer: that is the tragedy. This, like Aristotle’s theory, is one of the possible cases of tragedy; but It no more provides a universal rule than Aristotle does. Antigone itself does not bear it out; though Hegel's theory certainly reminds us that in order to understand Sophocles’s tragedy, we must sympathise with Kreon as well as with Antigone. But the tragedy is nevertheless, that Antigone Is right and Kreon Is: wrong: and that the wrong has power to condemn the right. However, plausible, and indeed profound, Hegel's © theory may be, perhaps there is no tragedy that exactly accords with it. The possibility of a religious tragedy such as Shaw's Saint Joan and Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral have added new dimensions to Aristotle's doctrine of the tragic hero. Aristotle stated that the tragedy of saints and martyrs would create no feeling but instinctive aversion. Today the idea of suffering has undergone a change. This new idea of suffering is expressed by Thomas_A. Becket: in Eliot's Murder in the Cathhedral. “We are not hare to triumph by fighting, by stratagem or by resis- tence. ‘ Not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast And have conquered. We have only to conquer Now, by suffering.” . Aristotle’s. concept of the tragic flaw does not apply to modem social tragedies; suchas Justice by John. Galsworthy. Tragedy in social tragedies isthe outcome not so much of frailities in. the character but as the result of mal-social-adjustment and social forces working against the main character. Moreover, in social tragedies the place of a heroic and dignified protagonist is taken by the common man. Aristotle's Concept of the tragic hero is a narrow one. We have Jeligious and social tragedies; a saint and an Ordinary person can be the Protagonist of a tragedy; the function of tragedy is not- merely to excite emotions of pity and fear. Moreover, there are psychological tragedies in which tragedy occurs because of the conilict of the conscious and the unconscious forces of the psyche as in O'Neill's The Great God Brown, Days Without End, and by conflict with society or other individuals caused by a character's inner unconscious drives like homosexuality in Mordaunt Shairp’s The Green Bay Tree and Edovard Bourdet's . The Captive, Finally, nan era Intensified class struggle drama added the struggle between capital -and labour as class war to its stock of tragic forces. Hence, Aristotle’s theory of the tragic hero is not of universal application. © scanned with OKEN Scanner (51). Relative Importance of Plot and Character in Tragedy Aristotle says that there are six parts of tragedy: muthos (plot), ethos (character), dianonia (thought), exis (dictlon), melas (song), and opsis (spectacle). Of these six parts of tragedy plot holds the first place. By plot he understands the arrangement of Incidents; It Is thé way in which action works Itself. He defines tragedy in view of theImportance of plot. He says, “tragedy Is an Imitation, not of man, but of action and of life.” Action which determines character Is nothing but plot. In this way character Is subordinate to plot. Aristotle also says,'The plot Is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy: character comes second.” This statement of Aristotla should be ‘understood In the sense that plot gives meaning, vitality and vigour to the play. In the words of Prof. Else, “For plot is the structure of the play, and around which the material parts are laid, just as the soul is the structure of a man.” Aristotle's theory that plot Is of supreme importance is based on the view that "Tragedy is an‘imitation not of human beings but of action, and life, of happiness and misery. Happiness and misery are realised in actlon; the goal of life Is an action, not a quality. Men owe their qualities to thelr characters, but it is In their actions that they are happy or the .reverse.“And. so the stage figures do not act in. order to represent their characters; - they include their characters for the sake of their action.” Aristotle .goes td the extent of saying that ‘without action there cannot be a tragedy; there may be without.characteer.” Aristotle explains it by saying that there can be tragedies which “fail in the rendering of character.” Furthermore “if you string together a set speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point of diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however, deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically con- structed incidents.” -- ec Let us now cofisider Aristotle's meaning of the word “ ‘character’ which is very much different: from the traditional conception of ‘character’. By ‘character we understand a dramatic porsonage such as a Hamlet, a Macbeth, a Viola etc., but for. Aristotle character is a synthesis of ethos and dianoia. Ethos is the moral side’ of a man, while dianoia represents the intellectual aspect of ‘human being. ‘Aristotle thinks that character is the bent or tendency or habit of mind which can be revealed only in what a dramatic personage says or does. In drama as in life, both the moral bent of a person and his thoughts reveal.themselves in his speeches: and in his actions. In this sense a chatacter means a character in action and action is nothing but plot. If aman knows what is good, but does not act up to his ideal, he cannot be called a man of good character. He can be called good only when he can practise virtue. This concept of Aristotle has been nicely explained by Humphry House. He says, “Character Is a bent, a tendency, a legacy of past acts, Is not fully ‘actualized’ or ‘realized’, It is only fully realized when it is ‘in act’, as it is not, for Instance, when we ate asleep”. In the Poetics: Aristotle has clearly expressed this view : “All human. happi- ness or misery takes the form of action ; the end for which we live is a certain ce © scanned with OKEN Scanner (52) kind of acvtivity, not a quality. Character gives us qualities, but it is in o actions--what we do--that we are happy or the reverse.” In this wee Aristotle uses the word ‘character’ not in the strictly conventional sense te dramatic personage. For him a character is a combination of ethos and dianoia, and it is subordinate to action because it is a product of action is influenced by action, and reveals itself through action. : Having demonstrated the primacy of plot, Aristotle pauses for four additional “confirmations” -of his position: . 1. His first .confirmation is that tragedy is possible without character but not without action. The impossibility’ of having a tragedy without action is almost self-evident. We know that _ for Aristotle action means “process”, not “activity”. A play without action, in his sense, would be a play in which nothing happens--in ‘which’ there is no difference between the beginning and the end. The episodes in a play are there to © bring out the steps in the process that is taking place. So a play’ without action would provide no basis for the selection and. arrangement of the episodes. Episodes could be added or subtracted at will, and presented in any order. The result would be a series of disparate units--a collection of brief sketches rather than a drama. On the other hand, a play with action has a definite form and agents that perform the action. The poet will add “character” if he wishes to achieve the best possible effect, but this is not absolutely necessary. 1 The point is confirmed by two examples. “Modern poets,” says Aristotle, “generally write tragedies that are characterless.” The ‘possibility of tragedies without character is proved by the fact that such tragedies exist: Early Greek writers were slow in discovering the art of constructing plots. Satyr-plays used “short plots”; Aeschylus . added a second actor, and Sophocles added a third. The pattern is a movement from the inadequate plots of early poets to the sophisticated plots of later ones. If we extend this pattern to Euripides and Agathon, the inventor of the fictional tragic plot, Aristotle's meaning is plain. It is not “younger poets” but “modern poets” who stress plots heavily. Who the “modern poets” are, remains ambiguous. They may be poets of Aristotle’s own generation whose works have not survived. What is plain is that they have simply carried the. evolutionary _ tendency apparent. in the history of drama from dithyramb to. Sophocles to its logical conclusion.“ Their preoccupation with plot is so great that their plays can be called characterless”. r A second example is now cited from: painting. Polygnotus includes «character and- action in his pictures: Zeuxis © omits character. The exis: tence: of the paintings of Zeuxis like the existence of the tragedies of the moderns proves that imitation Is possible without character. : 2. Having shown that drama’ is possible without charactel, Aristotle. observes that character without actlon “.......: Will NOt «+08 achieve he end of tragedy.” A group of “speeches, that show character” aif, a drama. Unless the ‘speeches are incorporated into a plot, remain “set pieces”, no matter how. interesting they may be © individually: © scanned with OKEN Scanner (53) "The great soliloquies” chosen from six plays by Shakespeare, for . ex- sen Site oe entertaining reading, but no one .would thin em a drama, Even the poorest melodra unity than ten soliloquies from six plays. yey sa 3. The third confirmation introduces two terms that are new to the Poetics. These are reversal (peripetia) and recognition (anagnorisis). Aristortle believes that they are the most powerful means of securing the tragic effect. Because they are parts of plot rather than character, they confirm the view that plot is more. important than character. : 4. The fourth confirmation is historical. It is based on Chapter IV. Aristotle says that “those who attempt to write tragedies are able to perfect diction and character before the construction .oj'the incidents, as we see, for example, in nearly all our early poets.” The reference is clearly to the slow evolution of. manner or imitation: ‘The first form inthe dramatic manner -is_ the dithyramb. It emphasized song and dance rather than plot. The satyr-play was an improvement, but its plots were “short”. The tragic dramatists used “long” plots; and they learned this technique from Homer, not their immediate predecessor. The discussion of plot and character and the arguments for the primacy of plot are now complete. Aristotle. summarizes his conclusion with the statement : “The first principle, then, sand to speak figuratively, the soul of tragedy is the plot, and second in importance is character.” In the. De Anima «soul (psyche) is defined as ‘the cause or source of the living body”. Itis the formal cause in that. it is the principle that, determines the harmony of the material parts of an animal or men; and it is the efficient cause in that it is the inner principle of motion. Aristotle is careful to point out that the parallel between the soul and.the plot of a drama is an analogy, and we should not, perhaps, push the analogy too far since it implies an organism some what foreign to the Poetics. The main point of the analogy is that plot isthe form of drama. Aristotle turns to painting for an illustration:"If someone should paint by applying the most beautiful colours but without reference to an over-all plan, he would not. please us much as if he had outlined the figure in black and white.” Plot, in other words, is to character what design is to colour. Colour splashed on a surface without design - produces something incoherent; but a sketch in outline Is pleasing _ even without colpur, Incidently, the example may hold. true for non-objective art as well.as for the type of painting familiar to Aristotle. In some non-objective paintings the formal element is emphasized almost: exclusively, as witness the paintings of Piet Mondrian. The Function “of Tragedy: “Catharsis” Aristotle's concept of catharsis Is the concept of the effect that tragedy’ or serious poetry produces on the readers or spectators. Plato banished the poets from the Ideal state on two’ grounds. First, they are “imitators of the life of the visible nature and so paint an Inferior view of . turth”. Secondly, “they feed and ‘water the emotions and passions of men instead. of'restraining them’ by reason.” Against the second charge © scanned with OKEN Scanner (56) rejected Plato’s view. For him, the emotions are much a part of the human beings as_ the intellect. They are not bad; they are merely capable of doing harm if they are not properly controlled. Therefore, they mist be trained and conditioned. This line of thought: gives rise to the purification theory. The Purification Theory sy Because the advocates of the. purification theory think of Gatharsis as a general principle applying to emotion in. general, they prefer to translate the catharsis clause as “catharsis of such (rather than “these”) emotions”. This translation transforms pity and fear into representative examples of the whole range of emotions that can be harmful if not properly “purified”. The purification theory is attractive because it does not’ involve “driving out” emotions. After all, pity is usually considered a “good” emotion, and fear-in its proper place--is healthy. . They should be con- trolled, but not “driven out”. yaar - The purification theory ‘is usually ‘supported by reference to the argument “found in the Nicomachean Ethics that. mental health is a mean...between too: extremes. The following passage is typical: "virtue must have the quality of aiming at the intermediate. | mean moral virtue, for it is this that is concerned with passions and actions, and in these there'is excess, defect, and the intermediate. For instance, both fear and confidence and ap- petite and “anger and pity and in-general: pleasure and pain may be felt both too-much and too little; and in both cases not well: but to feel them at the right times, with reference to the right objects, toward the right people, .with the right motive, and in the right way, is “what is characteristic and best, and this is characteristic, of virtue:” (Ethics) — ' In the light -Of this passage, catharsis is. a kind of moral conditioning. When witnessing a tragedy, the spectators learn the proper use of pity, fear, and similar emotions. Like the'purgation theory, the purification theory can be considered an answer to Plato, but it is one based on Aristotle’s understanding of emotions, not on Plato's. . Butcher's’ whole essay is to consider catharsis as a principle of art and “purification” is. the meaning he derives. from the metaphorical usé _ of‘ catharsais. “In the medical language of the school of Hippo¢rates’. . Butcher points out,. “it strictly . denotes the removal. of a painful or disturbing _ element from the organism, and hence the purifying of what remains by the elimination of alien matter.” Butcher further says, “A tradition almost “unbroken through centuries found in it reference to a moral effect which ‘tragedy produces through the purification of the passions,” and that Cor “neilléy' Racine and Lessing, In spite of thelr different interpretations: assuming the purely ethical Intention of the drama.” xplains purification of emotions like pity and fear on the © scanned with OKEN Scanner Ae} principle of impersonalization or universalization, which Aristotle take: be the characteristic merit Of poetry. The artistic treatment of pity cates thus purifies these emotions of their admixture of pain. “In accepting this interpretation,” Butcher says, “We do not ascribe to tragedy a direct moral purpose and influence. Tragedy, according to the definition, acts on the feelings, not on the will. It does not make men better though it removes certain hindrances to virtue.” Aristotle thinks of the aesthetic function of art- rather than of the moral effect when he uses the term catharsis as the ‘ effect of tragedy, formerly applied by him and Plato to music only. Butcher notes three instead of two meanings of the word cathar- sis: (a) a medical purgation, (b) the religious or liturgical, “lustratio” or “expiato” and (c) the moral, “purification,” and says that there is difficulty sometimes in keeping them apart. But he does not agree with Zeller who says in “Philosophy of the Greeks” that it is not important whether the medical or the religious use of Catharsis is primarily, intended, for he says that the medical catharsis implies relief upon previous excitation, which is of vital importance for the argument. Catharsis is purification of emotions __ by purging them of painful and disturbing elements, which is possible by impersonalizing or universalizing these emotions. Besides the religious and medical interpretations of Catharsis there have been moral or ethical, psychological or psychiatric and aesthetic interpretations also. The Ethical Interpretation The ethical interpretation of catharsis has been predominant since the Renaissance.. The cathartic experience gives the spectator both “de- light and profit”. The spectator is purified by the tragedy as deterred from ’ performing such evil acts as he has been witnessing. Catharsis produces a reasonable moderation of the. passions, the just mean, the relieving balance. A qualified tragedy produces a kind: of harmony after dn excess of emotions and thus the reader or.the spectator becomes wise. This moral enterpretation was accepted by Corneille, Racine and Lessing. The psychological approach ~ oi F.L. Lucas and Herbert Read consider Catharsis- a safety-valve for a safe outlet for troublesome passions in life. Neither pity and fear can be safely indulged on reall life, nor they can be completely suppressed. So the tragic theatre provides an emotional outlet by exciting the emotions of Pity and fear. In this connection|F.L.Lucas says, "In fine, the catharsis of such, passions’. does not mean, thatthe passions are puritied and en- nobled, nice as they might be; it ‘does not mean that men are purged of their Passions; it means simply that passions themselves are reduced to healthy, balanced proportion.” |, A. Richards in his book Principles of Liter- ‘ary Criticism (P. 245) also says,"Pity, the impulse to approach, and Terror, the impulse to retreat, are brought in Tragedy to a reconciliation, which they find nowhere else, and with them who knows what other allied groups, of equally . discordant impulses. Their union in an ordered single response is the Catharsis by which tragedy is recognized, whether — Aristotle meant © scanned with OKEN Scanner (58) anything! of this Kind or not. This is the explanation of that sense of release, of repose inthe midst of stress, of balance and composure, given by Tragedy for there is no other way in which such impulses, once awakened, can be set at rest without suppression.” The Clarification Theory “ In 1957 Gerald F.Else said that Catharsis was in the action and the plot of the drama. He says that Catharsis has something to do with an enhanced understanding of the events depicted in tragedy. The tragic poet presents them free of accidents that obscure their larger meaning, leaving the spectator face to . face with universal law. The tragic poet beings by selecting a series of incidents that are intrinsically pitiable or fearful. He may derive them from history of legend but he can also follow the lead of Agathon and make them up, as do most modern writers. He then presents them in such a way as to bring out the probable of necessary principles that unite them ina single action and determine their relation to this action as it proceeds from its beginning to its end. When the spectator has witnessed a tragedy of this type, he will have learned something--the incidents will be clarified in the sense that their relation in terms of universals will have become manifest--and the act. of leaming, says Aristotle, will be enjoyable. : Merits of the Clarification Theory This interpretation of the catharsis clause in Chapter VI was first proposed by Leon Golden. It has many virtues: In the first place, it makes the clause a reference to the technique of tragedy, not to the psychology of the audience. Secondly, it relates catharsis both to the theory of imitation outlined in Chapter 1-IV and to the discussion of probability and necessity in Chapter IX. Moreover, it coincides with much current aesthetic theory. This is.not to say that the “clarification theory” of catharsis is right because it makes Aristotle © agree ‘with modern aestheticians, but ‘rather to say that Aristotle and modern aestheticians, but attempt to define the same thing and that one need not be surprised to find parallels in their conclusions. The modern aesthetician might say that aj work of art is successful in so far as it achieves “coherence” and the discovery of this “coherence” is the essential aesthetic pleasure. Francis Fergusson considers “perception” the third and climactric stage both of the tragic action of the spectators experience; James Joyce uses the term “epiphany” (a vision of truth) to describe the effect created when a series of apparently disparate. events suddenly assume coherence in the mind; and Austen Warren uses the phrase"rage for order” to describe both object of the poet's quest and the need'in the reader that is satisfied by poetry. What these critics have in mind is what depth-psychology «calls an “insight experience”. Atistotle’s comments in Chapters IV, IV and IX indicate that he considered the experience of tragedy a kind of “ insight experience” : (1) The experience is pleasurable, not painful as the same events would be if experienced in “real life”, (2) the pleasure {s the kind that results from learning; (3) thie learning is related to the discovery of the relation between the particulars of the plot via the univer sals that make the particulars coherent; and (4) the term designating the tragic function is catharsis--something like ‘clarification’. © scanned with OKEN Scanner (61) concer aman ora family and hence to Imply at least such antecedents as ancestors (who may of may not be mentioned in a prologue or retrospective narration). The acceptable sense of the statement that a story must have a beginning would seem to be that the story must start more or less where its antecedents may be taken for granted, that Is,. where they are generic rather than specifically relevant.” Aristotle's conception of a well-constructed plot paving a beginning, a middle and an end will not accept an episode ina tragedy which hangs loosely and contributes nothing to the tragic ending. Tragic plot arouses emotions of pity and fear It Is necessary for a good tragic plot to arouse the emotions of pity and fearin the spectator. ‘The change of fortune’ should be not from bad to good, but, reversely, from ‘good to bad’. The unhappy ending is the only right ending, for It Is the most tragic in its effect. The effect of tragedy can be enhanced by an element of surprise in the fall of misfortune over the head of the protagonist and it will be all the greater ifthe surprising turn of event seems to be reducible to the law of cause and effect. Aristotle instances the “Statue of Mitys at Argos” which fell upon his murderer while he was a spectator at a festival and killed him forth with, 9 '~ “ Complication and denouement The plot is divisible into two parts--complication and its unravelling orDenouement. Complication covers that part of action which extends from the beginning to the point where it takes a turn for good or evil. Thedenouement is that part of action which extends from the turning point to the end of the play. The discussion of plot concludes with the remark, “The chorus too should be regarded as one of the actors; it should be an integral part of the whole, and share inthe action, in the manner not of Euripides but of Sophocles.” The Three Unities Aristotle emphasised only the Unity of ‘Action It is generally supposed that the classical drama observed the three unities--the unity of action, the unity of time and the-unity of place--and they are. spoken of in popular writing as a rule of the Poetics. The observance of the three unities has been insisted on the high authority of Aristotle but he nowhere in the Poetics insisted on allthe three unities. He was concerned mainly with the unity Of action. r $.M. Schreiber says, “To Aristotle there was one unity and one only, Unity of Action (or, a better translation, of Plot). Of the so-called Unities of Time and Place he says nothing; for ‘him they are no part of the conception of unity at all. He never once, in the whole of the Poetics, uses the word ‘unity’ in any connection but that of plot. The doctrine of the ‘unities of Time.and Place’ was the invention of late sixteenth-century neo-classicism." ' ___ Aristotle emphasized the unity of action as a precondition for the unity of pfot. In his words, “If you -string-together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point of diction and thought, you will not produce © scanned with OKEN Scanner (62) the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with play which, however deficient in tbose respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents”, He affirmed the necessity of unity of plot. He knew, as he observed in the eighth chapter of the Poetics, that “Unity of plot does not, as Some persons think, consist in the unity of the hero. For infinitely various are the incidents In one man's life which cannot be reduced to unity; and so, too, there are many actions of one man out of which we cannot make one action.” The unity of plot can be achieved by unity of action. The Unity of Action The unity of action is an organic unity which gives form and meaning of tragedy. It makes the plot concrete and significant. It does not admit of plurality of action as “Tragedy is an imitation of an action that Is complete in itself, ' as a whole of some magnitude.” It has a beginning, a middle and anend. “The end,” says R.A. Scott- James, “is already present in the beginning and from the moment the action starts, the author who accepts Aristotle’s principle will introduce no event, situation or piece of dialogue that is not there as an element essential to the dominant motive, playing its part in the process which leads to the tragic ending. Nothing will be thrown in irrelevantly. All must be shown, as in perspective, so that the mind can grasp the whole and see it as one.” The tragic plot does not admit plurality of action. Aristotle concludes by saying that, “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. of; them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed.” * eS The Unity of Time yes - It is admitted that Aristotle prescrived and emphasized the Unity of Action as essential to poetic imitation, but his name is also a&sociated with two other unities--the Unity of Time and the Unity of Place--though it has been argued that these have nothing what-soever to do with Aristotle. About Time, he said while comparing the magnitude of the Epic and Tragedy that the Epic has ‘no fixed limit of time whereas Tragedy endeavours to keep as far as possible .within a single circuit of the sun, or something near that’, It is nota prescription but ‘an incidental recognition of a fact in the theatre in his age’. He states a fact as to What Greek drama does. He does not, as he does with Plot, prescribe a rule as to what all drama ought to do. But the Italian Renaissance critics, especially Castelvetro, took it as the injunction of Aristotle and tried to limit the action of @ play ‘within a single circuit of the sun on the principle of verisimilitude. Assuming the fallacy that a play, to be credible, must be mistaken for reality they argued that it was impossible while sitting in the theatre to believe that moré hours had passed than the play had taken to perform. There was also a gO deal of controversy about whether the single circuit of the sun means twenty-fou! hours or twelve. We may assume that by a single circuit of the sun Aristoll@ Intended twenty-four hours and nottwelve, The Unity of Place Ce ae While comparing the structure of the Epic with that of Tragedy Aristotl © scanned with OKEN Scanner (63 ) remarked, ‘In a play one cannot represent an going on simulianeously; ona Is limited to the Haft on he eens and connected with tha actors’. The Italian renaissance critics interpreted the above remark as Aristotle's insistence on the unity of Placo, timiting the scene to a single place or city. Infact, Aristotle was simply mentioning the general practice of Greek dramatists who mostly observed the unity of Place because of the presence of the Chorus, which are characters in the play, and could never leave the stage for it was thelr function to chant Choric Odes between the acts. In this connection S.M. Schreiber says, “And the presence of the Chorus accounts, too, for the usual limitation of the action to one place: obviously If a group of citizens of Thebes is continuously present on the stage the scene cannot suddenly become Corinth, or how would the Thebans have got there ? The only possibility of change of scene Is that the Chorus themselves, in the course of their Choric Ode. between two acts, should be supposed to be making the journey from one city to the other. And this does happen in the Eumenides; the Chorus are the Furies. and in the Interval between two acts they pursue Orestes from Delphi to Athens; when the next act opens we accept the fact that the scene is now Athens and no longer Delphi. Thus (a) there was no rule that the action should be confined to one place, and (b) even when It was so confined It was of practical necessity and had no connection with Unity.” h a number of parts $$ We come to the conclusion that though the three unities are called Aristotelian Unities, there is no sanction for such an Interpretation in Aristotle, who never connected the Unities of Time and Place with Imitation, even if by imitation he might have meant varisemblance, and who spoke of them only In course of acomparison of the structure of Tragedy with that of Epic. However, it should be noted that whereas Racine, the greatest neo-classic French playwright, and Tennessee Williams, the modern American playwright, in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof observed them, Victor Hugo was forthright in the condemnation of the Unities of Time and Place and violated them in Cromwell and Hernani. A. Ralli rightly says, “To make unity of time and place cross each other like the bars of a cage, and force into it all sorts of facts and peoples is to maim men and things and distort history.” Aristotle's Views on Comedy Aristotle has referred to comedy only casually In the Vth chapter of the Poetics ‘as if comedy were a minor genre, a reverse or grotesque of serious - poetry’. He has been at pains to analyse It, to exmine its component parts, to discuss its characteristic merits and defects. At first reading we might suppose that he has passed over it so lightly, with Just a little of the superiority of the “highbrow”, as undeserving of ‘further attention’. It Is also possible that _ like catharsis comedy might have received proper and detailed treatment in the second part of his Pootics which we have not received. There ary Tune " critics who believe that Aristotle's views on comedy are expressed In The Dialogue :0n Poets and the Tractatum Goislinianus. But most of the critics nave _ deduced Aristotle's conception of Comedy from the stray references found in the Poetics, © scanned with OKEN Scanner ( 66 ) dy orepic, both are important to epic as they ara to tragedy. The Iliad jg cle plat and exhibits suffering. Its argument Is “the Me Achilles”, Having been aroused by the death of his friend Patroclus, Achilles sets oyt Gonsciously to destory Hector, and by the end of the poem he has done go, There. Is no reversal or recognition in the plot, although some of the episodes added for variety, which are thus “outside the plot” include these elements. The Iliad is also an “epic of suffering”. From the beginning, the emphasis is on the “tragic deed” that is the “end” of the plot -- the slaying of Hector-- and this deed is an episode of suffering. The Odyssey, on the other hand, Is .an epic of recognition and of character. But it can be said that the Odyssey has not both these forms simultaneously. Rather, the plot of the Odyssey is complex, involving several recognitions of Ulysses (by Telema- chus, the neathered, the nurse, and, eventually, the suitors). In this sense there Is, as Aristotle remarks, “recognition throughout”. The parts of the Odys- " sey that emphasize character are, however, “outside the plot”. The most important such “part” is Ulysses’ tale of his wanderings in Books IX-XIl. This story has an episodic plot that is simple in form and “fortunate” in its movement . ~ the type of plot that Aristotle seems to have in mind for the « ragedy' of character”. . Having classified Homers epics, "Aristotle adds that Homer outstrips all others in diction and thought. Main differences. between Epic and Tragedy The first difference between epic and tragedy arises from means and =manner of imitation. Epic: uses words alone’and a single = meter throughtout, while tragedy uses words, rhythm and harmony, and employs a variety of meters in the choral sections. Epic also uses the “mixed” narrative Manner of Homer, whereas tragedy uses the “dramatic” manner only. Another difference relates to the size and constituent parts of the two forms. Although both imitate the same object (noble actions), the fact that they do so using different means and manners ‘affect the way in which they present their material. Tragedy is intended for Stage presentation (manner) and has parts not found in epic (means). ~ _ Inthe neo-classical period Aristotle's. comment on the length of tragedy © to the doctrine of unity of time.. Ac : According. to this doctrine, which became literally a critical dogma in. seventeer J ic nth century France and in the Restoration England;* when Aristotle asserts that “tragedy attempts, as far as he Is referring to the time covered by the dramatic action of the play. This interpretation accords with the rationalist bias of the neo-classic critics. Spectators, they argued, would not eee re Ls i action that compressed several days or, in the rean drama, several years Into a three hour drama. And if the spectators did Not believe in the } Bicroper fae oe ve he many ofthe action, tragedy would not have Shakespeare and his Elizabethan cont tled to’absurd extremes. In England lemporaries were severely criticized or even Condemned as barbarous because f ; SFrarice the contr Of thelr-Indifference to Y took a bi t unity of time. In Zarre ~Samest as to whether! lum when critics began debating In ‘one circuit of the sun” meant a twenty-four hour day (our natural) or the twelve hour period of daylight (jour atrificia). The melancholy © scanned with OKEN Scanner (67) results of his ingenuity can be seen inthe documents relating to the controversy over Pierre Cornelllo's The Cid, which used a thirty-hour period. Ideally, of course, the neo-classicist belleved that there should be an exact cor- respondence between the time of the dramatic actlon and the time of the events being imitated so that a play lasting three hours would depict historical events that took only three hours to work themselves out. The unity of time is one aspect of a larger neo-classic concern for what is called verisimilitude-likeness to truth. This concept Is based equally on a highly rationalistic theory of what audience will and will not believe, and ‘a Platonic (not Aristotelian) theory of Imitation as copying. It underlies all the three “unities” attributed to Aristotle by neo-classical critics--unity of action, unity of time, and unity of placa--and also’ has Important Implications for characteriza- tion, language, and even versification. y ¢ : The tendency of twentieth-century critics has been to reject the notion - that Aristotle formally advocated unity of time In the Poetics. In the first place, not all Greek tfagedies confine their action to a “single circuit of the sun” in this sense. The Agamemnon and Eumenides are well-known examples of plays that cover several days. In the second place, neo-classic verisimilitude is a demonstrably false doctrine and one that Is inconsistent, with Aristotle's explicit rejection of the theory that poetic imitation is (or should be) a “coping” of-history. The most common solution to the problem is summed up in Bywater’s ‘observation, "What Aristotle actually says is not a precept, but only an incidental recognition of a fact inthe practice of the theatre of his age.” This may be _ satisfactory, for it is true that Greek tragedy has a general tendency to limit the - time of the dramatic action. An alternative solution proposed by’ Prof. Else- is, however, more in keepirig with the context of the passage. He says that both manner and means affect the ways that epic and tragedy present actions. The most obvious influence is manner, Epic is recited in the.mixed manner, whereas tragedy is written to be presented by the agents, that'is, for performance on the” stage. The reference to the length of tragedy, then, may very well bé to its length as determined by its mann#vand not to the imaginary time that elapses between the beginning and the ‘ Uvof its plot. If this.is so, the meaning of Aristotle’s comparisén is both cleurvand simple. Since Greek theatres had no artificial illumination| a tragic text had'to be written so that it could be performed during the ‘daylight, or dt least “not depart.from this by much”. This Is not the typicat length -of tragedy; itis the rnaximum length, as determined by the manner. In practice, Greek-plays were much shorter, taking an average of perhaps two hours. Epic, on the other hand; has no theoretical limit An epic Is like a novel in this respect. Some epics can be read (or recited) at one sitting, butthe fliad is some ‘10,000 lines long; and-there is nothing in the epic manner of imitation to prevent an Me: 30,000 or even 1.00,000 lines, a point corroborated, by Spenser's Faerie ueene. oie The fact that there is an Inherent limit to the length of tragedy but not of epic is consistent with Aristotle's general tendency’to consider the most com- . Plex--that is, the most fully determined—from the highest manifestation of the Working of first principles. It is also consonant with the fact that epicis, more i © scanned with OKEN Scanner (68) interpretation has added merit of clarifying the oe a poets procoaded in a in — ae as they es tn) Ark ter IV that the satyr-play was the precursor didin epic. ” Ce roy eed “short oa and “absurd Sesion’. The ; Fy erie oer a staga in the development of the tragic manner between yar’ and formal tragedy. Before tragedy could emerge, poets had to learn how to put together “long plots” and write elevated dialogue. They learned this from Homer, who isthe only epic post to achieve unified plots and also pre- eminent for his use of the dramatic part (dialogue) of the mixed narrative mariner. Aristotle does not mention: any writer of tragedy before Aeschylus, Evidently, he felt- that Aeschylus led the way Incorporating ‘Homeric techniques intotragedy. If we ask in what sense the plays of Aeschylus and his contemporaries are longer than those of later Greek dramatists, the answer Is that they are not longer in dramatic time but inthe time required to perform them. At the dramatic ‘contests, Greek tragedians presented three tragedies ’ followed bya satyr-play. During the first era of tragedy--the age of Aeschylus-- the three tragedies were sometimes combined in single overplot to form an unified trilogy. Evidence is scarce, but what there Is indloates that the unifled trilogy became increasingly rare inthe. later era of tragedy. At any rate, the only unified trilogy that. has survived is the Oresteia of Aeschylus. It Is probably significant that the Oresteia continues the Iliad by teling of the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra (Agamemnon); the slaying of Clytemnestra by her.son Orestes (Choephoroe);_ and. the cleansing of Orestes by the Athenlan tribunal (Eumenides). The Oresteia is Homeric in size and content, Although far from requiring “one circuit of the sun” for performance, it points toward the maximum limit, in contrast’ to the rather brief separate” play. As tragic poets assimilated the. Homeric influence more fully, the trilogy lost popularity and was replaced in the contests by three separate tragedies, each requiring about two hours to perform. ‘ \ ae The last contrast between epic and tragedy is that there are six “parts” or constituent elements in tragedy: three derived from object of Imitation, two derived from means, and one from manners. Epic has:only four “parts”.-Tragedy b Uses one additional means, song (using rhythm and harmony), and employs Spectacle (derived from the dramatic manner ). According to Aristotle, we judge 4 poem in terms of its parts. A reader of tragedy can Judge an epic also because he understands all the.parts of epic from his exposure to them in tragedy. The reverse, on the other hand, Is. impossible. A judge of epic can only evaluate ee tragedy’s six parts. Hence, Aristotle treats tragedy before epic in spite na act that epic preceeded-tragedy In history. Tragedy Includes epic. Most tmagctyee ie Concepts related to epic. can be.brought up on connection with Aristotle's preference {or tragedy The question now arises which | ‘ of the two--epic and tragedy--is Tecan. Fahd other. Aristotle voted in favour of Tragedy. Aristotle oacanes Point in Chapter XXVIof the Poetics. in his words, "If the more refined art = He higher and, the more refined in every case Is that which appeals to the ae primitive thar -. observation that © scanned with OKEN Scanner