Page 45 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Unit 3: Aristotle: The Poetics-Catharsis and Hamartia

3.3 Hamartia Notes

Hamartia is a concept used by Aristotle to describe tragedy. Hamartia leads to the fall of a noble
man caused by some excess or mistake in behavior, not because of a willful violation of the gods'
laws. Hamartia is related to hubris, which was also more an action than attitude. Hamartia is an
injury committed in ignorance (when the person affected or the results are not what the agent
supposed they were). In tragedy, hamartia is often described as a hero's fatal flaw. It is a term
developed by Aristotle in his work Poetics. The word hamartia is rooted in the notion of missing
the mark (hamartanein) and covers a broad spectrum that includes ignorant, mistaken, or accidental
wrongdoing, as well as deliberate iniquity, error, or sin.
This form of drawing emotion from the audience is a staple of the Greek tragedies. In Greek
tragedy, stories that contain a character with a hamartia often follow a similar blueprint. The
hamartia, as stated, is seen as an error in judgment or unwitting mistake is applied to the actions
of the hero. For example, the hero might attempt to achieve a certain objective X; by making an
error in judgment, however, the hero instead achieves the opposite of X, with disastrous
consequences.
However, hamartia cannot be sharply defined or have an exact meaning assigned to it.
Consequently, a number of alternate interpretations have been associated with it, such as in the
Biblehamartia is the Greek word used to denote "sin." Bible translators may reach this conclusion,
according to T. C. W. Stinton, because another common interpretation of hamartia can be seen as
a "moral deficit" or a "moral error". R. D. Dawe disagrees with Stinton's view when he points out
in some cases hamartia can even mean to not sin. It can be seen in this opposing context if the main
character does not carry out an action because it is a sin. This failure to act, in turn, must lead to
a poor change in fortune for the main character in order for it to truly be a hamartia.
In a medical context, a hamartia denotes a focal malformation consisting of disorganized
arrangement of tissue types that are normally present in the anatomical area.
History of Hamartia
Aristotle first introduced hamartia in his book Poetics. However through the years the word has
changed meanings. Many scholars have argued that the meaning of the word that was given in
Aristotle's book is not really the correct meaning, and that there is a deeper meaning behind the
word. In the article "Tragic Error in the Poetics of Aristotle," the scholar J.M. Bremer first explained
the general argument of the poetics and, in particular, the immediate context of the term. He then
traces the semasiological history of the hamart-group of the words from Homer (who also tried to
determine the meaning behind the word) and Aristotle, concluding that of the three possible
meanings of hamartia (missing, error, offense), the Stagirite uses the second in our passage of
Poetics. It is, then a "tragic error", i.e. a wrong action committed in ignorance of its nature, effect,
etc., which is the starting point of a causally connected train of events ending in disaster. Today
the word and its meaning is still up in the air; even so the word is still being used in discussion of
many plays today, such as Hamlet and Oedipus Rex.
Major examples of Hamartia in Literature
Hamartia is often referred to as tragic flaw and has many examples throughout literature, especially
in Greek tragedy. Isabel Hyde discusses the type of hamartia Aristotle meant to define in the
Modern Language Review, "Thus it may be said by some writers to be the 'tragic flaw' of Oedipus
that he was hasty in temper; of Samson that he was sensually uxorious; of Macbeth that he was
excessively ambitious; of Othello that he was proud and jealous-and so on… but these things do
not constitute the 'hamartia of those characters in Aristotle's sense". This explains that Aristotle
did not describe hamartia as an error of character, but as a moral mistake or ignorant error. Even
J.L. Moles comments on the idea that hamartia is considered an error and states, "the modern view
(at least until recently) that it means 'error', 'mistake of fact', that is, an act done in ignorance of
some salient circumstances".

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