Chapter I. The art of poetry

A. is one of the arts that imitate men in action 1. belonging with instrumental music and dancing ii a. as using rhythm and melody besides words B. has two typical modes iii 1. narrative 2. drama a. tragedy b. comedy C. developed historically iv 1. from the instincts of imitation and rhythm 2. toward a. idealizing what men may be (1) as in epic and tragedy b. satirizing what men are (1) as in lampoons and comedy c. differentiation of form (1) drama tending toward unity of plot v (a) through the successive improvements of Æschylus and Sophocles (2) but keeping variety in verse.

_The second section discusses plot as the mainspring of tragedy_ (chapters vi-xviii)

II. In the mode of drama, tragedy A. (definition) is an imitation of an action vi 1. serious 2. determinate 3. in language enhanced by rhythm, melody, and song 4. by action, not by narrative 5. issuing in emotional catharsis B. is primarily plot 1. the subsidiary elements being character, diction, thought, spectacle (including make-up), and song 2. (definition) Plot is a course of action planned to move causally from a beginning through a middle to an end vii 3. Plot is thus animated a. not merely by one main person viii b. but by such consistency (1) as arises from truth, as distinct from facts ix (2) as is opposed to the episodic (3) as is necessary to the catharsis 4. Plot may be complicated by reversal or recognition x a. arising causally from the plot itself xi b. and has as a third element emotion and suffering 5. Plot is the consistent working out, in an illustrious personage, of some human error to its issue a. Prologue, episode, etc., are merely formal parts xii b. Plot is not mere reversal of fortune in a character altogether good or bad xiii (1) for consistency, plot should be single, not divided by reversal to make a “happy ending” (a) as in inferior tragedies (b) and in comedy c. Plot achieves catharsis by its own consistency xiv (1) not by spectacular means (2) for the effect of fear and pity arises from the clash of motive with circumstance d. Plot imposes consistency also on characterization xv (1) generally consistency with (a) goodness (b) the moral habit of the class (c) the received idea of the particular person (d) itself; i.e., actions must be clearly motivated (2) particularly consistency with the causal weaving of the plot (a) excluding the _deus ex machina_ e. Plot is the true measure of the various kinds of recognition xvi (1) The least artistic is recognition by bodily marks (2) No better is mere disclosure (3) A third, by recollection, arises from some incident in the plot (4) A fourth is through the inference of the personæ (5) But the best of all is that which arises causally from the course of the action 6. Plot, in the actual process of playwriting a. demands a habit of visualizing xvii (1) furthered by the dramatist’s acting out of his own scenes b. begins in the dramatist’s mind with a scenario (1) for the amplifying incidents must be fewer than in epic c. is worked out as complication and solution xviii (1) This is the technical point in which tragedies are similar or dissimilar (2) The four typical kinds of tragedy, i.e., (a) those that depend mainly on reversal and recognition, (b) on emotion, (c) on character, (d) on spectacle, show the four elements of interest which the dramatist should seek to combine d. precludes the extensiveness of epic e. involves making the chorus one of the actors (1) not a mere singer of interludes C. The subsidiary element of thought, the rhetorical element in tragedy, includes the effects produced directly by persuasive speech, as distinct from those produced by action xix D. The subsidiary element of diction, to set aside what belongs under delivery, includes letters, syllables, connectives, nouns and verbs (with their inflection), and word-combinations xx 1. Words may be classified as xxi a. single or double b. ordinary or extraordinary (figurative, coined, etc.) c. masculine or feminine 2. Virtue in the choice of words consists in being clear without being colorless xxii a. Though extreme or habitual deviation from ordinary use is a fault, occasional deviation is necessary to distinction b. Though it is a great thing to use variations of diction with propriety, the greatest thing is to be master of metaphor.

_The third section defines epic and compares it with tragedy_ (chapters xxiii-xxvi).

III. In the mode of narrative, epic A. has some general likeness to tragedy xxiii 1. in that its [component] stories should be single, complete, having beginning, middle, and end a. giving the pleasure of a living whole b. not following the method of history (1) as inferior poets do, but not Homer 2. in that it may be simple or complex, emphasize either character or emotion, and has some of the same elements as tragedy xxiv B. differs in length and in meter 1. Its characteristic advantages are scope and variety 2. The respective meters are the result of experience in appropriateness C. shows in Homer the superiority of making the characters reveal themselves without explanation D. can make freer use of the marvelous 1. by vividness of description 2. from the fact that the causal sense is weaker in reading or merely listening than in witnessing stage representation E. may be defended against the typical charges that it is impossible, improbable, corrupting, contradictory, or artistically incorrect xxv F. is inferior to tragedy xxvi 1. The charge that tragedy is more vulgar and exaggerated applies not to tragedy, but to acting 2. It has fewer elements of appeal a. lacking music and spectacle 3. It is less vivid than tragedy read [much less than tragedy acted] 4. It is less concentrated [and so less intense] a. lacking dramatic unity.

I

The principle of poetic art is imitation. Its two kinds are drama in several forms and that other kind which ranges from epic to dialogue and which has no single generic name. All its forms in both kinds—tragedy, comedy, dithyramb in the one; epic, mime, dialogue in the other—are grouped with the arts of the flute, the lyre, and the dance, and apart from those of painting and singing. Thus begins Aristotle’s _Poetic_ with that chapter of definition which, as in the _Rhetoric_, opens and illuminates the whole subject.

As to poetic art[11] I propose to discuss what it is in itself and in the capacity of each of its species, how plots must be organized if the poem is to succeed, furthermore the number and nature of the parts, and similarly whatever else falls within the same inquiry, beginning systematically with first principles.[12]

Epic and tragedy, comedy also and the [dramatic[13]] art of the dithyramb, and most of the art of the flute and of the lyre are all, taken together, imitations. They differ one from another in three respects: in the means of imitation, in the object, or in the mode [i.e., all are essentially imitation; in imitation they are generally alike, and in imitation they are specifically different].

For as there are those who by colors and outlines imitate various objects in their portrayals, whether by art or by practise, and others who imitate through the voice, so also in the arts mentioned above. All [these] make their imitation by rhythm, by language, and by music, whether singly or in combination. Thus only rhythm and music are used in the art of the flute, of the lyre, and in such other arts, similar in capacity, as that of the pipes. Rhythm itself, without music, [suffices for] the art of the dancers; for by ordered rhythms they imitate both character and emotion and action [i.e., dancing compasses the whole scope of representation]. Words alone, whether prose or verse of whatever kind, are used by an art which is to this day without a name. We have no common name for the mime of Sophron or Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogue. Nor should we have one if the imitation were in trimeters or elegiacs or some other kind of verse.... [For it is not verse, Aristotle goes on to say, that makes poetry, but imitation.]

So much for differentiation. There are some arts that use all the means mentioned above, i.e., rhythm, music, and verse, e.g., dithyrambic and nomic poetry and also both tragedy and comedy; but they differ in that the first two use all the means in combination, whereas the latter use now one, now another. Therefore I differentiate these arts by their respective means of imitation.

To proceed surely from this opening chapter, it is evidently necessary to grasp what Aristotle means first by imitation, secondly by that nameless art which uses only words, thirdly by classifying the art of poetry with that of music and that of the dance.

By imitation Aristotle means just what the word means most simply and usually, but also and more largely the following of the ways of human nature, the representation or the suggestion of men’s characters, emotions, and actions.[14] At its lowest, imitation is mimicry; at its highest, creation. The latter is often implied in the Greek word _poetic_.[15] Poetic is one of the fine arts. By whatever means, in whatever forms, it is a direct showing of life, as distinct from any account of life through experiment or reasoning. The artist enhances our impressions of life by the suggestions of music or of story, the representations of dance or of drama. All these ways are called by Aristotle imitation because they follow the movements of human life. It is noteworthy that he presents imitation primarily as a constructive or progressive principle. The more obvious imitation achieved by a single phrase, a single melody, or a single dance-movement is reserved for later discussion of detail.[16] The poet is a maker, as indeed he was called by our Elizabethans as well as by the Greeks, in the sense that he is creative. Poet, poetry, poetic, all are used by Aristotle with this broad implication of creative composition,[17] of “imitating men in action.”

Secondly, Aristotle specifies as kinds of the poetic art tragedy and comedy, which belong together as drama, and on the other hand epic, mime, dialogue, which also belong together, but have no common name. We lack, he says, a generic name for those forms of poetic art which, however various, are alike in having for their sole means of imitation words. The generic name that Aristotle desired to cover all prose and all metrical compositions in which the imitation is through words alone is still to seek. Yet that the genus is distinct through many varieties of form is even clearer to-day than in his time. The imitation of dancing and of all forms of drama is through representation; the imitation of music without words is through suggestion. Now so is the imitation of words without music. True, the words in the latter case carry something besides imitation; they convey ideas; but in so far as they achieve imitation, they do so by suggestion, and it is this suggestive imitation that makes them poetic. What is needed, then, is a term to cover all composition in words that proceeds by suggestion. Perhaps the nearest term in modern English is _narrative_. Using narrative widely enough to include, as in common modern use it often does include, dialogue and description, we have the term that Aristotle desired. _Story_ would serve if it were not often used of the plot of a play or of an account in a newspaper. _Narrative_ usually connotes a distinct method. A distinguishing generic term is more important to-day than in the time of Aristotle. Modern authors have developed narrative in directions little explored by the ancients. We have thus a variety of narrative forms which was quite unknown to Aristotle. Still, through all this variety, runs what he discerned as a common controlling method, the method of suggestion. In this fundamental _Gulliver’s Travels_ and the _Sentimental Journey_ and _The Lady of the Lake_, to take examples as different as possible, belong together; and together they belong apart from _Othello_.

Thirdly, what is the significance of grouping all these forms of poetic art with music and dancing? Painting, which even in Aristotle’s day was a fine art, is mentioned only as an analogy from another group. Singing, or chanting, also is only mentioned for analogy, perhaps because it is not creative. Architecture may have been omitted as being primarily at that time a useful art; but sculpture was both a fine art and, perhaps most obviously of all arts, imitative. Though we need not assume that Aristotle intended here a comprehensive classification of the arts, it is clear that he intended to group poetic art with the arts of music and dancing. Nor is his principle of division far to seek. Clearly he regards poetic as one of the arts of movement in time, and as distinct from the static arts of line and color, balance, mass, and pose. True, music and dance entered largely into early Greek drama and were still present in the drama of Aristotle’s time; but that fact does not explain the grouping together of “epic, tragedy, comedy, dithyramb, flute-playing, and lyre-playing,” with the later inclusion of dancing. Aristotle does not say that these occur together; and the mention of epic precludes any such interpretation. He says that they are alike. He saw all poetic art, especially drama, as primarily an art of movement. What is implied here in the opening chapter is carried out consistently, in doctrine and in terms, through the whole book. No one should deny a certain fundamental likeness among all the arts; but the likeness is not in technic except among those arts which have like “means” of expression, such as “rhythm, language, and music.” Modern application of terms from architecture and painting to drama and story has spread no little confusion. Aristotle will have us think along right lines; and, as in his _Rhetoric_, the first chapter is the most important of all. We are to think of poetic composition not as structure, but as movement.

[Chapter ii differentiates the epic and the tragic art, which idealize “men in action” by seeking higher types of manhood and exhibiting men’s aspirations, from the comic art, which exaggerates human failings. Chapter iii differentiates the two typical modes of poetic imitation as the narrative and the dramatic. Chapters iv and v, starting from the common impulses toward imitation, toward music, and toward rhythm, summarize the history of tragedy and of comedy. The conclusion is that tragedy differs from epic not only in proceeding by representation instead of narrative, but by being focused on a short period of time, normally twenty-four hours; in a word, by being intensive. Thus we arrive at the famous analysis of the essentials and the elements of tragedy.]

A tragedy,[18] then, is an imitation of an action that is (1) serious and, (2) as to size, complete, (3) in language enhanced as may be appropriate to each part, (4) in the form of action, not of narrative, (5) through pity and fear effecting its catharsis of such emotions.... Every tragedy,[19] therefore, must have six constituents, according to which we estimate its quality: plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, and music.

The greatest of these is the plan of the actions (the plot); for tragedy is an imitation not of men, but of action and life ... and the end [for which we live] is a certain form of action, not a quality. By their characters men are what they are; but by their actions they are happy or the reverse. [In a play] therefore they do not act in order to imitate character; they include character for the sake of the actions. Hence the actions and their plot are the end of tragedy; and the end is greatest of all. Furthermore, without action there may not be tragedy; without character there may be.... By stringing together speeches expressive of character and well made as to diction and thought you will not achieve the tragic function. Much rather is it achieved by a tragedy which, however deficient in these, has plot and plan of actions. Besides, those things by which tragedy moves us most, scenes of reversal and of discovery, are parts of the plot. A further proof is that novices in dramaturgy can put a fine point on diction and characterization before they compose deeds; and it is the same with nearly all the early dramatists. The principle and, as it were, the soul of tragedy is plot.

Second is character.... Third[20] is thought, i.e., the ability to say what is necessary and appropriate, which in public address is the function of politics and rhetoric.... Characterization is what shows habit of mind.... Thought appears in formal reasoning.

Fourth is diction, i.e., the expression of meaning in words, which is essentially the same in verse as in prose.

Of the remaining elements, melody is the greatest of enhancements; and spectacle, though moving, is [in general] the least artistic and [in particular] has the least to do with the art of the drama.

The history of criticism involved in the successive interpretations of this much discussed section and the following may be postponed. The immediate concern is the meaning of the definition and the division for dramaturgy, i.e., for the actual composition of a tragedy and for the analysis of tragedy in terms of composition. Aristotle begins with the subject-matter. The theme itself must be tragic, and is so if it is first serious and secondly complete within its own extent. A playwright considering the possibilities of such-and-such material is to ask first whether it is serious. The Greek word[21] means not solemn in the sense of sad, but such as to interest the composer and the audience by its importance. It might be rendered _humanly significant_. The question, Is there drama here? becomes, then, first of all, Is there action here that will engage emotional participation? That is the first question; for it is fundamental.

Secondly, is this action dramatically manageable as to extent? Will it finish within the time of a drama, come to its issue, focus; or is its interest such as to demand more extensive development in time; in a word, is it a drama plot or an epic plot? The epic of “much-enduring Odysseus” demands extent of time; the tragedy of Œdipus, compression of time. _Complete_[22] here means concluded, i.e., susceptible, within dramatic limits, of a conclusion emotionally satisfying. To be dramatic, the action must be self-consistent and self-determining. Tragedy is characteristically intensive.[23]

So far our tragedy has no words; it may even do without them. Nevertheless in its higher ranges it expresses itself also through suggestive language. In the third place, then, tragedy uses the whole range of “enhanced utterance,” i.e., rhythm, and occasionally music and song. In conception a tragedy must be significant and complete; in expression it may be variously suggestive.

The fourth distinction of tragedy is its characteristic movement, which is acting, not narrative. The process of drama is representation; the process of story is suggestion. Drama shows men and women doing; story tells what they did. That is essentially dramatic, then, which is best brought home by actual representation. In this regard imaginative conceptions of human life differ essentially. Some are best conveyed by the indirect but abundant suggestions of narrative; others have their poignancy only through the few direct strokes of visible action.

Finally, tragedy is defined by its effect, the tragic catharsis. Tragedy “through pity and fear achieves its purgation of such emotions.”[24] It is complete, then, not only in action, but in emotion. Emotion is not merely aroused; it is satisfied; it is carried through to a release. Tragedy is thus thoroughly emotional, more emotional than any other form of art. It is emotional not incidentally, but essentially; for it offers not merely emotional excitement, but emotional satisfaction. As all art enhances by imitation our impressions of life, so tragedy reveals our motives and moves us onward through vicarious experience. We yearn toward our fellows moved as we are, only more deeply; we fear in some great crisis what obscurely threatens us all day by day; and we know the inevitable end not with our minds, but with our awakened hearts.

From definition of tragedy by its essential characteristics Aristotle proceeds to enumeration of its constituents. Of these the _sine qua non_ is plot. The insistence on this is so ample and so convincing as hardly to need interpretation. Characterization comes second. Third is the expression of thought, as distinct from the expression of emotion or of character. The persons of the play not only reveal their individualities; they have also occasion to expound or persuade, and here poetic leans on rhetoric. For drama, though its movement is imaginative, though it primarily expresses emotion and character, cannot dispense with logic. Fourth is diction. Here again it is noteworthy that Aristotle puts this fourth, though tyros, he says, can master it before they can manage plot. Whether the diction be verse or prose he regards as negligible at this point. With the same brevity he enumerates finally musical and scenic accompaniments. What he enlarges upon is plot and characterization, and upon plot as the essential and determining factor.

These distinctions made, let us thereupon discuss of what sort the plan of the actions (the plot) must be, since this is both the first and the greatest [constituent] of tragedy. We have shown tragedy to be imitation of an action complete and whole which has a certain magnitude. Though there is such a thing as a whole without any appreciable magnitude, we mean by a whole that which has beginning, middle, and end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something else naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by causal necessity or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it. Plots that are well planned, therefore, are such as do not begin or end at haphazard, but conform to the types just described.[25]

Plot, then, is what makes a play “complete and whole”; it is a planned sequence of actions. Aristotle’s terms connote, not space and structure, but time and causal movement. The beginning is the point at which the cause is set in motion; the end is the result; the middle is the course from the one to the other. Plot is thus a significant course of action determined by permanent impulses; it imitates, not the mere surface movements of life, but its undercurrents. It is not a “slice of life,” such as the experience of this day or that, but a course of life, moving from a “serious” crisis of determining emotions, through actions that carry these emotions out, to the final action in which they are seen to issue. Plot gives us what we often miss in actual experience, and consequently seek in the vicarious experience of drama, a sense of progress to completion. Experience is interrupted and complicated; drama moves steadily on a single course. Plot is the means by which dramatic art simplifies life, in order from the facts of life to extract the truth.

Furthermore, plot means technically management of a significant course of action within a practicable time. The tragedy must be long enough to show the action as progressive, yet short enough to be grasped as a single whole. “Beginning, end, middle” are thus very practical considerations. Every playwright considers every plot in this aspect. Where is he to take hold in order to make the situation clear? What final action is, for his conception, the inevitable end? What are the stages between, leading one to another, in which the action will best be seen as a progressive course? Without limiting his consideration to the time-rules of the actual dramatic competitions of his day, Aristotle seeks

the limit determined by the very nature of the act; the greater, within the limits of clearness, the finer by its scope. To define roughly, that scope is sufficient within which the sequence of events according to probability or necessity may change from ill fortune to good, or from good to ill.[26]

What Aristotle finds necessary is time enough to make the action convincing, to carry out the dramatic consequences to their conclusion. Compressed within too short a time-lapse, the plot may remain fragmentary; stretched out too long, it may sag or trail. “Beginning, end, middle,” then, constitute a formula for plot.

A plot does not gain unity by being, as some think, all about one person.... For as in the other imitative arts, the imitation is unified by being of one thing, so also the plot, since it is an imitation of an action, must be the imitation of an action which is one and entire and whose parts are so composed of acts that the transposition or omission of any part would disjoin and dislocate the whole [That, indeed is what we mean by a part]; for a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible difference is no part of the whole.

From what has now been said it is plain that the function of a poet is this, to tell not the things that have happened, but such things as may happen, things possible as being probable or necessary. The historian and the poet differ not by writing in verse or in prose. The work of Herodotus might be put into verse, and none the less it would be history, with verse or without. No, the difference is in this, that the one tells the things that have happened; the other, such things as may happen.[27]

Consistency of plot, consistency of characterization also, as Aristotle goes on to show, imply that the poet interprets. He is not merely a recorder. The acts (πράγματα) of his _personæ_ are not statistics; they are parts of the consistent presentation of a single whole. Every one of them, quite differently from the acts of real life, is seen to be significant. In thus including the significant and excluding the insignificant, the poet interprets according to his conception of the springs of action. He simplifies life according to his view of causes and motives, “according to probability or necessity.”

In this the poet differs from the historian more generally. Tragedy is true to life not by rehearsing what men have done, but by revealing in significant action what men do, what they must do, being the men that the dramatist shows them to be. History records a man’s deeds, and reasons from this evidence; drama directly represents the doer doing what he should do “according to probability or necessity.” Plot, then, implies actions shaped to a unifying consistency. It imitates life: but it imitates by creative interpretation.

Therefore poetry is something more philosophical and more serious than history; for poetry speaks rather in universals, history in singulars. By universal I mean what such or such a man will say or do according to probability or necessity.... It is evident from these considerations that the _poet_ must be rather a _poet_ of plots than of verses. He is a _poet_ by virtue of imitation; and what he imitates are actions. Even if he chance to _make_[28] history, none the less for that is he a _poet_; for nothing hinders some historical events from being just what they should be according to probability or possibility, and it is [only] in that aspect of them that he is their _poet_.[29]

That dramatic composition is thus primarily the devising of a convincing sequence is seen conversely when the sequence is defective.

Of all plots and actions the episodic are the worst. By an episodic plot I mean one in which the sequence of the episodes is not determined by probability or necessity. Actions of this sort are composed by bad poets through their own fault, and by good ones on account of the players; for as they compose for competitive presentation, and stretch a plot beyond its capacity, they are often compelled to twist the sequence.[30]

The essential dramatic force, then, is sequence, steady onward movement to a convincing issue. Scenes merely episodic, however vivid or clever each may be in itself, weaken this essential force. The episodic fault, whether it arise from weakness in the composer or from an actor’s insistence on having a “part” to suit himself rather than to suit the play, makes the worst plays because it is a fault at the source.

Finally on cogency of plot depend the tragic pity and fear. The catharsis depends on our feeling the issue to be inevitable. Unexpected to the actors it may be, and most strikingly; but it cannot be fortuitous. While it is surprising to them, it must be satisfying to us as the outcome of their action.

Considering the imitation as not only of a complete action, but also of events arousing fear and pity, we find these too at their height when they are [at once] unexpected [by the _dramatis personæ_] and consequential. For so we shall be more struck than by what happens of itself or by chance.[31]

[“Reversal[32]” or “recognition,”[33] Aristotle goes on in chapters x and xi, if the plot is so far complicated, must arise from the plot itself, not be merely added.]

Two parts of the plot, then, reversal and discovery, are such as has been shown; a third is [actual] suffering ... action destructive or painful, such as deaths on the stage, tortures, wounds, and the like.[34]

This latter passage is tantalizingly brief. So far as the context shows, _suffering_ is used here to denote single scenes of unusually violent action. Why should such a scene be called a “part of the plot”? The word πάθος is used generally—and in the plural it is used repeatedly throughout the earlier chapters of this work—to mean emotion. Emotion is not a part of the plot in the sense that reversal or recognition may be a part. Rather it is a pervasive principle and an object. _Suffering_, to translate the singular noun so, may be regarded as a part of the plot in the sense that it may be an element of tragedy. So taking it, we may suppose Aristotle to countenance here such scenes of violence as were more familiar on the Elizabethan stage than on the Greek.[35] At any rate, Aristotle here inserts a chapter[36] on the formal parts (prologue, episode, exodus, etc.), before proceeding with the methods by which the plot may be worked out.