Aristotle’s

POETICS (Criticism)
(Exam Notes by Arpita Karwa)

These are sample notes for B.A & M.A (English) Exams. You can take guidance & prepare your own notes in the similar manner.

ARISTOTLE
• Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher who lived in the 4th century BCE.
• Although he was accomplished in dozens of disciplines, Aristotle is often remembered as the
founder of political science as an academic field, largely due to his writings on the link between
politics and ethics: systems of morality.
• Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) was a student at Plato's Academy from the time he was seventeen until
Plato's death some twenty years later.
• He spent the next twelve years engaging in scientific research and serving as tutor to the then
teenaged Alexander the Great.
• He returned to Athens in 335 B.C.E., and founded his own school on the steps of the Lyceum.
• None of the works of Aristotle that we have today were actually published by Aristotle. He wrote a
number of treatises and dialogues, but these have all been lost.
• What survives are collections of notes, possibly from lecture courses Aristotle gave at the Lyceum,
which are often unclear or incomplete.
• The Poetics, in true form, was likely a much longer work than the one we have today. Aristotle
supposedly wrote a second book on comedy, which is now lost.

AGE

• Greek tragedy was a type of play that likely has its origins Ancient Greek celebrations in honor of
Dionysius and goats.
• During the Greek Golden Age, tragedy was a constantly developing animal--always improving and
expanding under a series of different playwrights.
• The early playwrights included Thespis, the first playwright and performed at the first
competition. (according to Aristotle and Plato) and Aeschylus, the first real master of the tragedy
who standardized its format by adding a second actor, which allowed for on stage conflicts.
• Sophocles came after Thespis and Aeschylus and built on the format Aeschylus had developed by
adding a third actor and scenery, and worked more closely with the chorus.
• Finally, there was Euripides, who was the first to add female leads. Despite it now being
considered a cliche by many, Euripides also developed the concept of deux ex machina, which
means 'God from the machine', or a moment where divine power (or, a god) comes down to solve

Aristotle’s

POETICS (Criticism)
(Exam Notes by Arpita Karwa)

These are sample notes for B.A & M.A (English) Exams. You can take guidance & prepare your own notes in the similar manner.

the problems the characters are experiencing. Starting with simple ceremony, it moved into a
living recreation of the Greek myths and legends and became a reenactment of people and places.

POETICS

• Aristotle's Poetics is dedicated to investigating aesthetics, a branch of philosophy concerned with

the concept of beauty and other artistic principles. Though the Poetics is not one of Aristotle's
major works, it has exercised a great deal of influence on subsequent literary theory, particularly
in the Renaissance.
• The Poetics is Aristotle's attempt to explain the basic problems of art. He both defines art and
offers criteria for determining the quality of a given artwork.
• Later interpreters unfortunately turned many of Aristotle's suggestions into strict laws, restricting
the flexibility of drama in ways that Aristotle would not have anticipated. The tragedies of Racine
and Corneille in particular are formed according to these demands. Even though such great
playwrights as Shakespeare often went against these laws, they were held as the model for writing
tragedy well into the nineteenth century.

INTER TEXTUAL REFERNCE

• The Poetics stands in opposition to the theory of art propounded by Aristotle's teacher, Plato. In
his Republic, Plato argues that "poetry is a representation of mere appearances and is thus
misleading and morally suspect". In the poetics, Aristotle, Plato's student, attempts to refute his
teacher by exploring what unites all poetry: its imitative nature and its ability to bring an audience
into its specific plot while preserving a unity of purpose and theme. The tone of the Poetics reflects
its argumentative spirit as Aristotle attempts both to explain the "anatomy" of poetry and to
justify its value to human society.
• The writer Bharata Muni, in his work on dramatic theory A Treatise on Theatre identified
several rasas in the emotional responses of audiences for the Sanskrit drama of ancient India.
• G.W.F. Hegel, the German philosopher most famous for his dialectical approach
to epistemology and history, also applied such a methodology to his theory of tragedy. In his essay
"Hegel's Theory of Tragedy," A.C. Bradley first introduced the English-speaking world to Hegel's
theory, which Bradley called the "tragic collision", and contrasted against the Aristotelian notions

Aristotle’s

POETICS (Criticism)
(Exam Notes by Arpita Karwa)

These are sample notes for B.A & M.A (English) Exams. You can take guidance & prepare your own notes in the similar manner.

of the "tragic hero" and his or her "hamartia" in subsequent analyses of the Aeschylus' Oresteia
trilogy and of Sophocles' Antigone
• In modernist literature, the definition of tragedy has become less precise. The most fundamental
change has been the rejection of Aristotle's dictum that true tragedy can only depict those with
power and high status. Arthur Miller's essay "Tragedy and the Common Man" argues that tragedy
may also depict ordinary people in domestic surroundings.
• The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche has been said to have taken nearly all of his political
philosophy from Aristotle.
• While Aristotle insisted on the primacy and unity of plot, Samuel Beckett has achieved fame as one
of this century's greatest playwrights by constructing plays that arguably have no plot at all. Closer
to Aristotle's time, Euripides often violated the Aristotelian principles of structure and balance in a
conscious effort to depict a universe that is neither structured nor balanced. Not surprisingly,
Aristotle seems to have preferred Sophocles to Euripides.

WORKS BY SAME WRITER

• Aristotle wrote one of the first great treatises on rhetoric, aptly titled, Rhetoric. This treatise was
written in the 4th century BCE, and it outlines the three main rhetorical appeals: logos, pathos,
and ethos. These three persuasive strategies make up the rhetorical triangle. Logos is the use of
logic, facts, or truth. Pathos is the appeal to your audience's emotions. Ethos is the speaker or
writer's character, credibility, and authority.
• Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with concepts like being, substance, cause and
identity. Aristotle's very ancient metaphysics often centered on the four causes of being. They are
the material, formal, efficient, and final cause. In metaphysics, Aristotelianism profoundly
influenced Jewish and Islamic philosophical and theological thought during the Middle Ages and
continues to influence Christian theology. Aristotle was well known among medieval Muslim
scholars, and has been revered as "The First Teacher" and Cicero referred to his works as a 'river
of gold.'

QUOTES
• Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.
• Accordingly, the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities

Aristotle’s

POETICS (Criticism)
(Exam Notes by Arpita Karwa)

These are sample notes for B.A & M.A (English) Exams. You can take guidance & prepare your own notes in the similar manner.

• All human happiness or misery takes the form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind
of action.
• Tragedy is an imitation not just of a complete action, but of events that evoke pity and fear
• Poetry utters universal truths, history particular statements

INTRODUCTION

• Poetics seeks to address the different kinds of poetry, the structure of a good poem, and the
division of a poem into its component parts.
• He defines poetry as a 'medium of imitation' that seeks to represent or duplicate life through
character, emotion, or action.
• Aristotle also lays out the elements of successful imitation. The poet must imitate either things as
they are, things as they are thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The poet must also imitate
in action and language (preferably metaphors or contemporary words).

TYPES OF DRAMA

• Aristotle defines poetry very broadly, including epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry,
and even some kinds of music.
• According to Aristotle, tragedy came from the efforts of poets to present men as 'nobler,' or
'better' than they are in real life.
• Comedy, on the other hand, shows a 'lower type' of person, and reveals humans to be worse than
they are in average.
• Epic poetry, on the other hand, imitates 'noble' men like tragedy, but only has one type of meter -
unlike tragedy, which can have several - and is narrative in form.
• Aristotle lays out six elements of tragedy: plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, and song.

PLOT

• Plot is 'the soul' of tragedy, because action is paramount to the significance of a drama, and all
other elements are subsidiary.

Aristotle’s

POETICS (Criticism)
(Exam Notes by Arpita Karwa)

These are sample notes for B.A & M.A (English) Exams. You can take guidance & prepare your own notes in the similar manner.

• Paintings are neither infinitesimally small nor monstrously big because they must be of such a size
as to be taken in by the eye. Similarly, a tragedy must be of a moderate length so as to be taken in
by the memory. Usually, time limits are set by the audience or other outside factors, but Aristotle
suggests that the longer the play the greater the magnitude, provided the poet can hold the
tragedy together as one coherent statement.
• Rather, the poet must select some series of events from a character's life—as Homer does in
the Odyssey—and craft them into a coherent whole. Any part of a story that could be added or
removed without any great effect on the rest of the story is superfluous and takes away from the
unity of the piece.
• Aristotle goes on to discuss the structure of the ideal tragic plot and spends several chapters on its
requirements. He says that the plot must be a complete whole — with a definite beginning, middle,
and end — and its length should be such that the spectators can comprehend without difficulty.
• Moreover, the plot requires a single central theme in which all the elements are logically related to
demonstrate the change in the protagonist's fortunes, with emphasis on the dramatic causation
and probability of the events.
• Plot also must contain elements of astonishment, reversal (peripeteia), recognition, and suffering.
• These are "reversal" (peripeteia), where the opposite of what was planned or hoped for by the
protagonist takes place, as when Oedipus' investigation of the murder of Laius leads to a
catastrophic and unexpected conclusion; and "recognition" (anagnorisis), the point when the
protagonist recognizes the truth of a situation, discovers another character's identity, or comes to
a realization about himself. This sudden acquisition of knowledge or insight by the hero arouses
the desired intense emotional reaction in the spectators, as when Oedipus finds out his true
parentage and realizes what crimes he has been responsible for.
• All three elements coalesce to create "catharsis," which is the engenderment of fear and pity in the
audience: pity for the tragic hero's plight, and fear that his fate might befall us.

CHARACTER

• Pity & Fear: In the course of a successfully tragic work, Aristotle says that the audience should be
moved by the actions of the hero to experience the emotions of pity and fear. For instance, you
may pity the plight of the star-crossed lovers who cannot be involved due to their familial ties.
• Relatability: Tragic heroes (or heroines: i.e. Juliet) are able to elicit emotions in people because
they are just that: people. Even if the characters were deities, Aristotle would argue that they are

Aristotle’s

POETICS (Criticism)
(Exam Notes by Arpita Karwa)

These are sample notes for B.A & M.A (English) Exams. You can take guidance & prepare your own notes in the similar manner.

still relatable to audiences because they are displaying very human characteristics (i.e. jealousy,
sadness) in human situations (i.e. infidelity, war, etc.). Being able to see ourselves in their
positions is what makes tragic heroes capable of bringing on the appropriate emotional release.
• Goodness: Although we can relate to the tragic hero through his innate humanity, there are some
aspects of his character that should be somewhat foreign to us. Aristotle claims that he must be a
'good' man, which to the Ancient Greeks meant much more than it might today. For them, this
meant that the hero would be well-known, perhaps even of high stature (i.e. Romeo or Wayne's
famous families), but not overly virtuous or morally upright. Aside from money or titles, he may
also possess extraordinary abilities (i.e. Hercules' strength). All of these things, of course, make the
inevitable decline all the more tragic as the hero's transition from good fortune to bad.
• Hamartia: Many people who discuss tragedy often mention the hero's 'fatal' or 'tragic flaw.'
However, Aristotle would never accuse a hero of such a personal defect. Instead, he asserted that
they were guilty of hamartia, or missing the mark. This means that the hero has made a bad
decision or miscalculation (typically with good intentions) as a result of poor reasoning or an
external stimulus (i.e. divine madness).
Ø Othello was a powerful leader who deeply loved his faithful wife. He was tricked into believing
his wife had cheated on him. His suspicion then overpowered him and he murdered his wife in
a jealous rage, never even giving her a chance to defend herself. When he discovers he was
deceived, he remains a noble character. In this case, Othello's hamartia, or internal tragic flaw,
is his extreme jealousy. It is this jealousy that enables him to be tricked and allows him to
create his own destruction.
• Consistency: They should be consistent. Even if the person being imitated is inconsistent, Aristotle
says, he must be inconsistent in a consistent fashion. So if a character is mad and so behaves in a
disordered fashion, that’s fine – but he can’t be mad in one scene and then sane in the next.

ENDING

• There are a few differences between tragedy and epic, however. First, an epic poem does not use
song or spectacle to achieve its cathartic effect. Second, epics often cannot be presented at a single
sitting, whereas tragedies are usually able to be seen in a single viewing. Finally, the 'heroic
measure' of epic poetry is hexameter, where tragedy often uses other forms of meter to achieve
the rhythms of different characters' speech.
• Aristotle concludes by tackling the question of whether the epic or tragic form is 'higher.' Most
critics of his time argued that tragedy was for an inferior audience that required the gesture of

Aristotle’s

POETICS (Criticism)
(Exam Notes by Arpita Karwa)

These are sample notes for B.A & M.A (English) Exams. You can take guidance & prepare your own notes in the similar manner.

performers, while epic poetry was for a 'cultivated audience' which could filter a narrative form
through their own imaginations. In reply, Aristotle notes that epic recitation can be marred by
overdone gesticulation in the same way as a tragedy; moreover, tragedy, like poetry, can produce
its effect without action - its power is in the mere reading. Aristotle argues that tragedy is, in fact,
superior to epic, because it has all the epic elements as well as spectacle and music to provide an
indulgent pleasure for the audience. Tragedy, then, despite the arguments of other critics, is the
higher art for Aristotle.