A-1 English

Aristotle and Tragedy: Notes

The philosopher Aristotle was an amazing figure. Without exaggeration, he could claim to have mastered every branch of knowledge known to ancient Greek society—science, natural history, logic, philosophy, poetics, physics, biology, theology, ethics, mathematics, politics. Later in life he had what must have been a top job for a teacher—tutor to the young Alexander the Great. Dante called Aristotle “the master of those who know.”

One of Aristotle’s famous writings is his Poetics. Many of the terms and definitions he uses have entered into our modern discussions of literature, and the critical language we use. In the Poetics, he says that poetry is more philosophical than history, since it deals with universals, not particulars.

He also claims that the goal of all the arts is basically imitation, and that poetry springs from an instinct for imitation, and from an instinct for harmony and rhythm that is natural to people. This imitation does not have to be exact, but rather to the purpose of beauty or enlightenment. The objects of imitation in poetry, he says, are men in action. If they are presented as better than they are in actual life, then this is tragedy. (If they are presented as worse than in real life, this is comedy.)

The word tragedy comes from the Greek for “goat-song”. No one is exactly sure about how these dramas started, but probably in some kind of sacrifice at which choral songs were sung. Those songs probably were in honor of the god Dionysus, the god of the fields and vineyards, wine and fertile crops. These rituals seem to have developed into the contests held at ceremonies in honor of Dionysus, where Greek playwrights would present their poetic dramas in performance. The dramas were spoken, chanted, and sung, and consist of acts called episodes, which carry the action of the drama; the episodes alternate with stasima (“stationary songs”; the singular form of stasima is stasimon), or odes, in which a chorus stands and (in the case of the dramas of Sophocles) comments on the action in song. The word chorus is actually Greek for “dance”.

Tragedy, to Aristotle, had to follow certain rules. For example, a true tragedy needs to take place in a single time and place (preferably, the action should take place within a single revolution of the sun). A tragedy should build or “excite” the emotions of pity and fear, with the result, near the end, being a release or catharsis of those emotions, so the audience gets those strong emotions kind of drained out of them. (We use the word catharsis in English to mean this release of emotions that happens at the end of a particularly emotional or even suspenseful film or drama, that feeling of being all worn out just from involvement in the action or emotions of characters.)

He also developed the concept of a tragic hero. A tragic hero is not what you may think of as a hero. A tragic hero needs to be capable of great and noble things, a figure larger and better than an average person. This tragic hero needs to struggle greatly against forces within himself, or against the forces of Fate or the will of the gods…and most importantly in a tragedy, this hero will fail in the struggle.

Often, the problem is that the tragic hero has a character flaw, or hamartia, which is the cause of his downfall. The most common flaw is the kind of excessive self-pride which is disturbing to the gods; this excessive pride is called hubris. (The word hubris has come into modern English to describe this kind of extreme pride in real life, too.) Many classical—and later—tragic heroes suffer from excessive pride, and ruin themselves and their own lives because of it.

Aristotle insisted that a proper tragedy follows a particular pattern. Among others, he identified two things that will happen to the tragic hero in the course of the drama: There will be a reversal of fortune, or a fall, for the hero. The term for this reversal is peripeteia. Aristotle invented this term, as far as we know, and particularly mentions our play: “for instance in Oedipus: here the opposite of things is produced by the Messenger, who, coming to gladden Oedipus and remove his fears as to his mother, reveals the secret of his birth.” (Bywater translation) And his fortune reverses, from proud king to self-hating exile. Similar to this is the term anagnorisis, which is the term Aristotle used to describe the moment of recognition, when ignorance gives way to knowledge. According to Aristotle, the ideal moment of anagnorisis is at the same moment as peripeteia. The classic example of this is, of course, again in Oedipus Rex, and his discovery that he is indeed the man who murdered his own father, and slept with his own mother.

Main sources: A Dictionary of Literary Terms, by J.A. Cudoon; Benét’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Third Edition