Page 27 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Unit 2: Aristotle: The Poetics: Introduction, Tragedy

them, and such understanding is the very essence of philosophy. A Historian recounts actual Notes
events chronologically without showing the chain of cause and effect. History, in this sense,
merely tells us what did happen; tragedy shows us what could, or, indeed, must happen. The
poet, whether in epic or in drama, shows us what persons of a certain type inevitably or probably
do and say and suffer. The truth he tells is of universal application, even though he is telling the
story of events which actually happened to real people, for even so he is the ’maker’ of the story,
because he so selects the incidents as to show how and why they occurred. It is this inevitable
sequence of cause and effect which arouses the emotions proper to tragedy. A mere accident does
not arouse so much fear and pity as a disaster which we see to be inevitable in the sequence of
events.
There is thus in the nature of tragic art no reason why the poet should not invent both names and
incidents. “The reason why this was so seldom done in Greek tragedy is to be found in its
religious origin. Its original object was to retell the old sagas in a new form and with new meaning.”
It was this which limited the choice of plots to tradition, history and mythology. Aristotle, however
makes no allusion to this historical fact. Tragedians, he says, need not rigidly and in detail adhere
to the traditional stories, but are well advised to keep the historic, or traditional names, for their
representation, because that helps ‘to give artistic, verisimilitude and credibility’. “What has
happened is manifestly possible, else it would not have come to pass.”
The Greek word for, ‘poet’ means a ‘maker’, and a poet is a maker not because he makes verses, but
because he makes his plots. Even when he takes his subject from history and tradition, he subjects
it to artistic ordering and selection, and so still remains the maker of his plot. The plot is thus
distinguished from the story; the story may be traditional and borrowed, but the poet always makes his own
plots. The plot lies not in the incidents, but in the arrangement of incidents. Aristotle condemns
‘episodic’ plots. An episodic plot is one which has events and incidents without any probable or
necessary connection, and which can, therefore, be removed without causing any injury to the
plot.
Ch X: Kinds of Plots: Simple and Complex
Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of plots, simple and complex. Here ‘Simple’ and ‘Complex’ are
technical terms. In a simple plot the action moves forward continuously and uniformly, without
any change of direction, towards the catastrophe. In a complex plot, there is an abrupt change of
direction. The hero’s fortunes rise upto a certain point, the climax, and then fall rapidly downwards.
There are reversals (perepeteia) and recognitions or discoveries (anagnorisis). Peripety and anagnorisis
are incidents and as such they are connected with the plot, and have nothing to do with character.
The exact significance of these terms is explained and defined in Chapter XI.
Ch XI: Peripety, Anagnorisis and Suffering
The plot of a Tragedy has three formative elements—Peripety, Anagnorisis (or Discovery or
Recognition) and Suffering. In a complex plot there is a climax or turning-point at which some sort
of discovery leads directly to the change of fortune, and this change of fortune, Aristotle calls the
‘peripety’, a sudden reversal of fortune’s wheel. The most effective form of peripety is one that is
exactly coincident with anagnorisis, i.e. the discovery of some fact as in the Oedipus Tyrannus,
where Oedipus’s fortune is reversed at the point where he discovers his parentage.
‘Peripety’ can also be interpreted to mean the reversal of the agent’s intention, i.e., a situation in
which the consequence of the hero’s action is the opposite of what he intended. This boomerang
device is certainly effective and full of tragic irony. It is present in the peripety of the Oedipus.
Duncan’s murder in Macbeth is another example, since the results were not what Macbeth intended.
In this sense, Peripety becomes a kind of tragic irony forming the very basis of the plot.
Discovery and peripety, as thus explained, are constituent elements of the most effective kind of
tragedy. A third element of tragedy, is ‘suffering’, i.e. the depiction of tragic incident or calamity,
as murder, torture, mimicry, wounding, etc.

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