Understanding Aristotle’s Poetics: A Summary Outline

Section I:

Part I

Aristotle proposes to discuss poetry and its various types.

Epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry, and instrumental music are all modes of imitation but they differ in the medium, objects, and manner of imitation. In the arts, imitation is produced by rhythm, language, and/or harmony. Some people use poetry as a general term for anything written in meter. Dithyrambic and nomic poetry use rhythm, tune, and meter in combination while tragedy and comedy use them one at a time.

Part II

Men are depicted in imitation as either better than, worse than, or the same as they are in real life. Comedy represents men as worse, tragedy as better.

Part III

Poets may narrate in first or third person or present the characters as living and moving before us. Dramas are poetry representing action. The Dorians claim the invention of comedies and tragedies.

Part IV

Man’s two instincts that gave birth to poetry: Instinct of imitation and instinct for harmony and rhythm.

Poetry diverged in two directions: Grave-spirited writers imitated noble actions, and trivial-spirited writers imitated the actions of meaner persons and composed satires.

Homer combined dramatic form with excellence of imitation and was the pre-eminent comedian by dramatizing the ludicrous. Tragedy succeeded epic poetry, and advanced slowly. Aeschylus introduced a second actor and Sophocles a third. Greater plots, stately diction, and iambic measure were adopted.

Part V

Comedy imitates the ludicrous- some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive. Comedy does not have as well known of a history as tragedy. Both epic poetry and tragedy imitate characters of a higher type in verse. Epic poetry, unlike tragedy, admits only one kind of meter, is narrative, and has no limits of time.

Part VI

Tragedy imitates action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude in artistically embellished language. The six parts of tragedies are plot, character, thought, diction, song, and spectacle, in that order of importance.

Part VII

A plot must be whole and neither begin nor end at haphazard. A plot must be great enough in magnitude to be beautiful but not so long that it cannot be remembered in one view.

Part VII

The plot should imitate one action with structural union of the parts- incidents whose presence or absence makes no difference need not be included.

Part IX

Poetry relates not what has happened but what may happen according to the law of probability or necessity. Poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular. The worst plots are episodic plots, in which acts succeed one another without probable or necessary sequence. The best plots follow cause and effect yet cause surprise and tragic wonder.

Part X

Plots are either simple or complex. Complex plots have a change of fortune with a reversal of the situation or recognition.

Part XI

Reversal of the situation is when, by the rule of probability and necessity, the action veers round to its opposite. Recognition, a change from ignorance to knowledge, can combine with reversal to produce either pity or fear. The plot includes a scene of suffering, a destructive or painful action.

Section II:

Part XII

The parts of a tragedy are: Prologue: before the Parode of the Chorus; Episode: between complete choric songs; Exode: the part with no choric song after it; Choric song: the parode is the first undivided utterance of the chorus, the stasimon is a choric ode without anapaests or trochaic tetrameters.

Part XIII

A perfect tragedy should be complex, have a single issue, and excite pity and fear. The change of fortune should be from good to bad due to error or frailty.

Part XIV

Superior plots arouse fear and pity by their inner structure rather than by spectacle and extraneous aids. Tragic actions invoke more pity or fear when they occur between people who are near and dear to each other. Tragic deeds can be done or not done, wittingly or unwittingly.

Part XV

Character should aim at goodness, propriety, trueness to life, and consistency. The poet should follow the necessary or the probable and limit use of Deus ex Machina.

Part XVI

Recognition comes about by signs, the will of the poet, memory when the sight of some object awakens a feeling, by process of reasoning, or by natural means from the incidents themselves. The last way is superior.

Part XVII

The poet should try to place the scene before his eyes as if he were a spectator of the action, and should work out his play with appropriate gestures. The poet should first sketch the general outline of the story and then fill in the episodes and details.

Part XVIII

The two parts of a tragedy are the Complication which extends from the beginning to the turning-point of fortune and the Unraveling or Denouement which extends from the beginning of the change to the end. There are four kinds of tragedy: Complex: entirely reversal of the situation and recognition; Pathetic: motive is passion; Ethical: motives are ethical; Simple. The poet should not attempt to make an Epic structure, with multiple plots, into a tragedy. The chorus should be an integral part of the tragedy and share in the action.

Part XIX

Thought includes every effect produced by speech such as proof and refutation, the excitation of the feelings, and the suggestion of importance or its opposite. Thought also includes dramatic incidents that need no verbal exposition.

Part XX

The general parts of language are: Letter: an indivisible sound that can form part of a group of sounds,; Syllable: nonsignificant sound composed of a mute and a vowel; Connecting word: nonsignificant sound which neither causes nor hinders the union of many sounds into one significant sound; Noun: composite significant sound, not marking time, of which no part is in itself significant; Verb: composite significant sound, marking time, of which no part is in itself significant; Inflection: expresses relation ‘of,’ ‘to,’ etc. or of number; Sentence or phrase: composite significant sound with at least some significant parts

Section III:

Part XXI

Simple words are composed of nonsignificant elements and compound words are composed of a significant and nonsignificant or multiple significant elements. Words are current, strange (foreign), metaphorical, ornamental, newly-coined, lengthened, contracted, or altered. Nouns are masculine, feminine, or neuter based on their endings.

Part XXII

Perfect style is clear without being mean. Style consisting wholly of metaphors is riddle; style consisting wholly of strange words is jargon. In moderation, the lengthening, contraction, and alteration of words and occasional deviation from the normal idiom adds stylistic distinction.

Part XXIII

Narrative poetic imitation in single meter should have a plot constructed on dramatic principles with a single, whole and complete action.

Part XXIV

Epic poetry has the same kinds and parts (except song and spectacle) as tragedy, but epic poetry is on a greater scale and uses heroic meter. The poet should speak as himself as little as possible. Epic poetry, more than tragedy, can get away with the irrational since it is not presented on stage. This increases the element of the wonderful. Still, probable impossibilities are preferable over improbable possibilities. Diction should be elaborate in pauses of action; diction should not overshadow character and thought.

Part XXV

Poets imitate either things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. Faults are either essential or accidental. Language usage should be examined carefully. Critical objections are drawn on the impossible, irrational, morally hurtful, contradictory, or contrary to artistic correctness.

Part XXVI

Epic poetry is addressed to a cultivated audience and tragedy to an inferior public. In this respect, tragedy is unrefined and the lower of the two. However, tragedy is superior in other respects. It includes music, spectacular effects, vividness in reading as well as in representation, pleasurable narrower limits, and unity.