Page 12 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

British Drama

Notes

The treatise we call the Poetics was composed at least 50 years after the death of
Sophocles. Aristotle was a great admirer of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King,
considering it the perfect tragedy, and not surprisingly, his analysis fits that play
most perfectly.

Aristotle begins his analysis of tragedy with this famous definition: Tragedy, then, is an imitation of
an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of
artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of an action, not of
narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation for these emotions.
Collectively, throughout the Poetics, Aristotle divides his analysis into six basic parts: plot-making,
character delineation, speech (diction), thought and language, spectacle, and song (melody). Aristotle
confined most of his analysis to play-making, mentioning the final three merely as components of
the whole. Therefore, to understand Aristotle’s definition of tragedy more clearly, consider the
following facets of his analysis:
1. The writer of tragedy imitates a serious and complete action, of a certain magnitude, represented
by what characters on stage say and do.
2. “Action” is the motivation from which deeds emanate, or the rational purpose of the play.
3. The element of pathos is essential to the whole.
4. Plot is the arrangement of carefully selected, carefully sequenced, tragic incidents to represent
one complete action.
5. The plot consists of parts or types of incidents in the beginning, middle and end of the play.
(a) Quantitative parts: Prologos (introduction to the play), Parados (Chorus, in unison, tells
us what has happened before the beginning of the action of the play), Episodes (The sections
of storytelling within the play, usually characterized by what information is revealed in
them), Choric Odes (Chorus speaks about something connected with the theme of the story,
but not necessarily about the story itself, and Exodus (As or after the characters leave, the
chorus tells us what we have learned from the story).
(b) Organic Parts: Reversal of the situation—a change by which the situation turns around
toward its opposite.
(1) Recognition—a change from ignorance to knowledge.
(2) Pathos (or scene of suffering)—a moment of passion which may be aroused by
spectacular means, or may also result from the inner structures of the play.
6. Plots vary in kind:
(a) Complex versus simple—Complex plots include reversal and recognition; simple plots do
not include these elements.
(b) Ethically motivated versus pathetically motivated.
7. The story must seem probable.
8. Plot is divided into two main parts.
(a) Complication—the part of the play which extends from the Prologos to the turning point.
(b) Unraveling or Denouement—The part of the play which extends from the turning point to
the end.
9. A play can be unified only if it represents one action, and the best plays are unified by a single
plot and a single catastrophe.

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