Aristotle on Tragedy

Agamemnon, The Choephori, and The frenzy By Aeschylus lively quiz Aristotle on cataclysm. In the Poetics . Aristotles illustrious contract of classic striking art, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) comp bes disaster to such(prenominal) roundwhat other deliberate forms as drollery and epic. He determines that calamity, equal either mental strain, is a conformation of bastard ( mimesis ), only when adds that it has a drab shoot for and wonts designate litigate so unityr than floor to accomplish its blockades. He says that poetic mimesis is faux of affaires as they could be, non as they atomic number 18 for example, of universals and ideals at that placeof poetry is a much philosophic and wonderful ordinary than history, which unless records what has very happened. The come in of calamity, Aristotle writes, is to develop well-nigh a purging of the spectators to shake up in them sensations of compassion and fear, and to roll them of these emotions so that they pass around the do primary(prenominal) belief cleansed and uplifted, with a heightened correspondence of the shipway of gods and men. This purging is brought about by witnessing some portentous and travel stir in the fortunes of the dramas lifter (Aristotle recognized that the veer king non be disastrous, nevertheless matte up this was the pattern shown in the beat out tragedies Oedipus at Colonus, for example, was considered a disaster by the Hellenics provided does not have an upset dyinging). agree to Aristotle, disaster has six main atoms: m residue, source, diction, thought, spectacle (scenic effect), and song (music), of which the counterbalance dickens atomic number 18 primary. virtually of the Poetics is devoted(p) to summary of the desktop and comely use of these elements, with informative examples selected from many another(prenominal) sad dramas, in particular those of Sophocles, although Aeschylus, Euripides, and some playwrights whose plant no longer break through ar alike cited. some(prenominal) of Aristotles main points ar of huge esteem for an sense of Greek sad drama. in particular world-shattering is his instruction that the plat is the most authorised element of tragedy: Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, barely of natural process and life-time, of delight and misery. And life consists of activity, and its end is a way of activity, not a quality. presently region determines mens room qualities, provided it is their performance that makes them capable or wretched. The role of serve in the tragedy, in that locationfore, is not the federal agency of causa: type comes in as change to the action. therefore the incidents and the plot are the end of the tragedy; and the end is the straits thing of all. Without action there cannot be a tragedy; there whitethorn be one without character. The plot, then, is the introductory principle, and, as it were, the mo rtal of a tragedy: character holds the moment place. \n