Aristotle's poetic

Aristotle’s Poetic

M.K BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY

Name: Baldaniya Vanita Velabhai

Roll: 30

 Class: M.A part-1

Topic: Poetic Aristotle

Subject: LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM

Paper no: 1

  Work: Assignment

Guidance:  D.P.Barad.       

Aristotle’s  Poetic

           Introduction:

          Aristotle was the disciple of Plato but he differs from Plato in many points. Aristotle, infect gives answer to Plato’s objection to poetry. He seems to be more open-minded and liberal in thinking about poetry and poets Plato speaks as if he were a strict Puritan whereas Aristotle   cleomes all the innovative ideas regarding poetry. Aristotle has written the book entitled ‘The Poetics’ in which he has commented upon the nature and function of poetry.

          He talks about all fine arts in general. He not only talks about poetry but also about painting and music. When Aristotle discuses poetry, he means all literary forms like Epic, Tragedy, Comedy etc. In ‘the poetics’ he at length discuses the tragedy Aristotle begins his discourse by admitting that all arts are imitation. In other words, Aristotle says that all arts are inevitable representational. Aristotle says that Plot is the soul of tragedy. He also says that in any literary form, Plot is the most important element of work of art. He says that plot may be a simple one or it may be complex one, If the action proceeds in a straight forward manner and if it is one continuous whole, than when such a plot could be identified as a simple plot Aristotle clarifies   that when the change in the hero’s fortune take place without peripety, or discover the plot could be a simple one on the other hand , when the plot involve peripety or discovery or both, such a plot would be a complex one peripety  means the change from one state of things within the play to its opposite of the king describe, similarity, discovery mean a change from ignorance to knowledge                                          very often often discovery it attended by peripety.

          Aristotle says that poetry is an imitation of an imitation twice removed from reality but it is not the carbon copy of the physical thing. He says that if the poet gives something less than life Plato missed to see that art conveys something more than life. According to Aristotle, a thing is seen in a work of art from the poet’s point of view and the poet conveys his vision of life in a work of art.

           Aristotle says that all the fine arts refer from one another in modes of imitation, He says that these fine arts, defer from one another in three ways. They are difference is in the objector in the manner of their imitations. The first difference refer to the means.

          Difference of Means:

                   In literature the use of language become the means.

In music the use of musical instruments like flute or lyre become the means. Similarly, in painting points, brush, chisel become the means sometimes, means are identified as mediums. Any artist expresses his ideas and feelings regarding things and persons through particular means or medium. The artist also chooses a particular fine art for his expression and the selection of a particular fine art goes with the mode of imitation.

          Difference of Objects:

                   The second difference is the selection of the objects. The objects the imitator represents are actions with agents who are necessary either good man or bad man. Aristotle says that bin a work of art the man presented are- either above or below in degree of their attributes. It means the chara in a work of art may be better than real people of they may be worse than real people. However, the artist delineates the characters as he finds them in real life. The difference in objects is also shown through the mood dominant. If they mood is tragic, the work will be the tragedy and if the dominant, mood is comic, the work will be the comedy.

                   Difference in manner of Imitation:

          The third difference is the manner of imitation. When a work of art in literature includes simple narration, the writer directly tells about the character and events to the readers. Thus, simple narration is one of the communicative things to the readers sometimes, the author uses the simple narrative becomes complex narration. There is also third manner of common cating things in which the writer represents, the whole story dramatical through characters as if, they were actually doing  the things described.

          Aristotle says that in tragedy the tragic events invoke the feelings of pity and fear in the minds of the audience or the readers and there by the audience or the readers and there by the writer causes the proper ‘purgation of our minds’ Aristotle gives the Greek word ‘Catharsis’ means ‘Purgation of minds’. Trough pity and fear Aristotle  also emphasizes that there should be an organic whole in a work of art. He says that plot must have beginning middle and end. He also talks about the three unities required in a work of art. They are unity of time, unity of time means there should not be a vast gap of time between, the two events, of the play should not take place at different place very far from one another. Majority of the events should take place only at me place. Unity of action means the action done by the character should be consistent and convincing. The character should be consistent and convincing and according to his or her personality type. There should be no even action exhibited by the character.

                    Like many important documents in the history of philosophy and literary theory, Aristotle’s poetic, composed around 330 BCE, was most likely preserved in the form of student lecture note. This brief text, through its various interpretation and application from the Renaissance onward, has had a profound impact on western aesthetic philosophy and artistic production.

                   The poetics is in part Aristotle’s response to his teacher, Plato, who argues in. The Republic that poetry is representation of mere appearances and is thus misleading and morally suspect. Aristotle’s approach to then phenomenon of poetry is quite different from Plato’s. Fascinated by the intellectual challenge of forming categories and organizing them as do certain public- information. Campaigns on drunk driving or drug, abuse Hans- Georg Gadamer’s  attempt to describe catharsis in his study ‘Truth and Method’ can serve both as a working definition and an introduction into the problem of establishing any determinate definition of this elusive concept:

          “What is experienced in such an excess

          Of tragic suffering is something truly

          Common, The spectator recognizes him-

          Self and his finitness in the face

          Of the power of fate what happens

          To the great ones of the earth has

          Exemplary significance. To see that

          “this is how it is’’ is a kind of self

          Knowledge for the spectator, who

          Emerges with new insight from the

          Illusion in which he, like everyone

          Else lives”

                   The practical and formal concerns that occupy Aristotle in the poetics need to be understood in relation to a larger concern with the psychological and social purpose of literature.

                   Criticism, according Aristotle, should not be simply the application of unexamined aesthetic, principles, but should pay careful attention to the overall function of a any feature of a work of art in its context within the work, and should never lose sight of the function of the work of art in its social context.

                   The guide provided here takes you through each of the twenty-six  books of the poetics and attempts to give a summary of Aristotle’s text terms, concepts, categories, and interrelationships that Aristotle introduces.

                   Aristotle begins his discussion by established a general definition of poetry a broad category including all forms of literary production and performance recognized in Aristotle’s time and by distinguishing among different genres of literary production and performance.

                   The essential feature of all forms of poetry is they are all modes of imitation or mimesis. Aristotle identified three aspects in which poetic genres can be distinguished from each other, the medium through which they present their imitation , the objects of imitation and the mode or manner of the imitation. The remainder of book is avoided to a discussion of the different media of imitation, book 2 treats the objects of imitation and book 3 discusses the mode of imitation.

                   Aristotle’s poetic is a fragmentary work, originally it was a text for which survives is mostly about tragedy. The most notable thing about Aristotle’s view of the poetical process is that he sees it as an imitation of real situations, rather than invention. But since it is a mental abstraction derived  from many single instances, it is ‘truer’ than any individual situation, because it is more ‘universal’ more general, or it participated in the ideal to a greater degree.

                   The process of Imitation 

1)   Language

2)   Meter

3)   Music

4)   Dance

     The subject mater of Tragedy

1)   Dealized

2)    Realistic

3)    Caricaturized.

Aristotle’s poetics is the earliest surviving work of

 Dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical

          treatise to focus on literary theory. In it Aristotle offers an account of what he calls “poetry”.

          They are similar in the fact that they are all imitation but different in the three ways that Aristotle describes.

1)   They differ in the music, rhythm, harmony meter and melody.

2)    The difference of goodness in the characters.

3)    The way the character are presented in which they stay in the role that they are describing as a narrative or acting as if they are doing the things that the  character are doing.

Aristotle’s work  n aesthetic  consists of the poetics and rhetoric. The poetics is specifically concerned with drama. At some point, Aristotle’s original works was divided in two each book. Written on as a separate roll of papyrus. Only the first part that which focuses on tragedy survives. The lost second part addressed comedy, scholars speculate that the Tractatus coislinianus summarizes the contents of the lost second book.

          Aristotle proceeds to his definition of tragedy:

                   “Tragedy is a representation of a serious,

                     Complete action which has magnitude, in

Embellished speech, with each of its     elements  separately in the parts and by people acting and not by narration, accomplishing by means of pity and terror the catharsis of such emotion”.

·       Aristotle’s distinguished between the genres of “poetry” of there ways:

1)   Matter:

              Language, rhythm and melody, for Aristotle, make up the matter of poetic creation. Where the epic poem makes use of language alone, the playing of the lyre involves rhythm and melody some poetical drama included a singing chorus’ and so music and language were all part of the performance.

2)   Subject:

 Also “agents” in some translation. Aristotle differentiates the work by distinguishing between the nature of the human characters that populate either from Aristotle finds that tragedy treats of serious, important and virtuous people.

          Comedy, on the other hand, treats of people who are less virtuous who are unimportant, undignified tripartite division of character in superior to the audience, inferior, or at the same level.

3)   Method:

     One may imitate the agents through use of a  narrator throughout or only occasional or only through direct speech, using actors to speak the lines directly. This latter is the method of tragedy  without use of any narrator.

  “embellished speech” I mean that which

   Has rhythm and melody, that is song by

  “with its elements separately” I means

  that some are accomplished only by

means of spoken verses, and others again by means of song”.

According to Aristotle meter/verse alone is not the distinguishing feature of poetry or imaginative literature in general. Even scientific and medical treatises may be written in verse. Verse will not make them poetry.

          “Even if a theory of medicine or physical philosophy

         Be put forth in a metrical from, it is usual to describe

         The writer in this way. Homes and Empedocles

        However, have really nothing in common apart

       From their meter, so that if the one is to be called     

      a poet, the other should  be termed a physicist

    Rather than a poet.”  

Aristotle believes that here is natural pleasure in imitation, which is in born instinct in men. He does not agree with his teacher in ‘poet’s imitation is twice removed from reality and hence unreal of truth poetry therefore, is more philosophical and a higher thing than the history, which expresses the particular, while poetry tends to express the universal.

          Aristotle does not agree with Plato in function of poetry to make people weaker and emotional sentimental. For him, catharsis is ennobling and humbles human being Aristotle, that the end of poetry is to please however, teaching may be given, such pleasing is superior to the other pleasure because it teaches civic morality. Therefore, all good literature gives pleasure that is not divorces from moral lessons.

          Poetry, definition given the David Daiches:

                   “The poet can tell a story in narrative

                     From and partly through the speeches

                     Of the characters or it can all be

                    Done in third-person narrative, or the

                    Story can be presented dramatically,

                   With no use of third person narrative

                  At all”.

          Conclusion:    

                             Says, Aristotle, can again, be distinguished according to the medium of representation. The difference of medium  between a poet and a painter is clear, one uses words with their denotative, connotative, rhythmic and musical aspects, the other uses forms and colors likewise, tragedy writer may make use of one kind of meter and the comedy writer of another. So the Aristotle, poetry, and poetics information and definition and all deeply introduction above as under.