We saw in the post about Classicism that one of its characteristics is the return to the classics of Greek and Roman cultures. We will approach the main authors of this period, starting with Aristotle.
Aristotle, a Macedonian philosopher and scientist, was one of the greatest intellectual figures in Western history. He systematized the knowledge of Ancient Philosophy, classifying existing opinions and reflecting on them. Without knowing his work, it is not possible to understand Western philosophy. Even after the intellectual revolutions of the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment, Aristotelian concepts remained embedded in Western thought. Unfortunately, of the more than 200 treatises he wrote, only 31 remain.
Aristotle was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became the framework and vehicle of both Christian scholasticism and medieval Islamic philosophy. A disciple of Plato and teacher of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great, he founded a school of philosophy called the Lyceum. In charge of some of the most competent heads of Greece, he would form in his Lyceum the first center for applied scientific research, anticipating the data production apparatus of contemporary academies.
Aristotle's intellectual reach is vast and covers most of the sciences and many of the arts, including biology, botany, chemistry, ethics, history, logic, metaphysics, rhetoric, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, physics, poetics, political theory and zoology. He was the founder of formal logic (the science of the laws of thought and the art of correctly applying them in the search and demonstration of truth.), devising for it a finished system that for centuries was considered the sum of the discipline. A pioneer in the study of zoology, some of his work remained unsurpassed until the 19th century. His Encyclopedic Corpus defined the epistemology that underpins higher education curricula around the world.
Aristotle's Poetics
In his work Poetics, Aristotle seeks to approach the different types of poetry, the structure and division of a poem into its component parts. He defines poetry as a means of imitation (mimesis) that seeks to represent or duplicate life through character, emotion or action. The work presents a careful analysis not only of the elements that make up poetry, but also of the qualities that shine in good poetry.
After a period of millennial hibernation, the work would be reborn incomplete in the eyes of modern humanists. Popularized as a manual of dramatic composition, it proved crucial to the formation of Italian opera and baroque and neoclassical theatre, arousing more than one literary controversy. Even today, many Hollywood screenwriters resort to the lessons of Poetics to improve their art.
Tragedy, epic, comedy and poetry
Also known as, On Poetics is one of the most important literary theory books of all time, a reflection on the aesthetics of two of the most popular literary genres of that time: Greek tragedy and epic. Critics consider that the initial work was divided into two parts. The first on tragedy, the epic, and the second on comedy and poetry. The second part, however, was lost.
Aristotle created a kind of manual on tragedy indicating its characteristics and the definition of the genre. In them, we also find the comparison of the genre with other arts and reflections on mimesis in the creation of artistic objects. The author's main objective was to teach and show the guide that must be followed to write a good literary text.
Poetics should be understood as a discussion about the way of composition of the poem. The work seeks to approach the different types of poetry, the structure of a good poem and its division into its component parts.
Mimesis and art
Mimesis is used through language, rhythm and harmony. In the case of dance, for example, the rhythm used aims to imitate passions, feelings, personalities, etc. For Aristotle, Literature is the art that imitates reality through language.
At every stage of its evolution, mimesis has been a more complex variable and a deeper concept than its conventional translation of “imitation” can convey. This concept is by no means a static conception of artistic representation. Mimesis spawned many different models of art, spanning a spectrum of positions from realism to idealism.
Under the influence of Platonic and Aristotelian models, mimesis has been a crucial point of debate among advocates of representation theory reflecting and simulating the world in the visual, musical, and poetic arts.
Aristotle never makes an explicit analysis of the term "imitation". Plato coined the term because he believed that art was copying of copying, twice removed from the truth. Aristotle's conception of imitation is a corrective to Plato. Art imitates the world of man's mind, but it is not mere imitation. It is a recreation. Poetry is something more philosophical and of more relevant importance than history, for its claims are of nature and not universal, while those of history are singular.
Catharsis, one of the fundamental concepts in Poetics
In ancient Greek religion, medicine and philosophy, the word catharsis means liberation, expulsion, purge of what is foreign to the essence, or nature of a being and that, therefore, corrupts it. In the strict religious sense, catharsis is the state of spiritual purgation that the individual seeks, for example, through confession. The emotions manifested by the participants of a religious ritual are also demonstrations of catharsis or purification of the soul.
In aesthetics and theater, catharsis means purification of the spectator's spirit through the remission of their passions, especially the feelings of terror or pity experienced in the contemplation of the tragic spectacle.
For Aristotle, the concept of catharsis represented the purification of souls. It occurred through a great discharge of feelings and emotions, provoked by the visualization of theatrical works. Although, for example, the recognition of Oedipus is tragic, it still redeems him, for the character is no longer living in ignorance of his tragedy because he has accepted fate.
The three Aristotelian units
One of the major influences on Aristotle's Poetics was the doctrine of the three units that was promoted by Agnolo Segni and V. Maggi:
Unit of time: all work should take place on the same day, within a maximum of 12 hours.
Unity of Action: There could be only one action in the plot or, at most, two, but they were strongly related.
Unit of space: the space in which the work was developed also had to be reduced to one or two.
he rule of three units is still an interpretation of Aristotle's Poetics, but it was very important to the history of Western theater. In fact, it remained for many years and in Spain, it was Lope de Vega with his New Art of Making Comedy that broke with that tradition.
The influence of Aristotle's Poetics lasted until the mid-eighteenth century, that is, until the arrival of the Romantic Movement, as the poets of Romanticism defended that the poetic act was not something creative, but a subjective and profound act, therefore, he discarded the thesis on the mimesis of art.
Definition and purpose of poetry
Poetry is an “expression of feelings”, while prose “tells a story”. This response reflects, in a way, the public’s idea of the purpose of poetry: to express feelings, create images, suggest affections. While novels, short stories and novels tell stories with a beginning, middle and end.
Poetry is a means of imitation that seeks to represent or duplicate life through character, emotion, or action. Aristotle defines poetry very broadly, including epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry, and even some types of music. Dithyrambic refers to the dithyramb, which consisted of an enthusiastic and exuberant ode addressed to the god, danced and performed by a choir of 50 men dressed as Satyr. In Greek mythology, Satyrs were lesser deities of nature with the appearance of wanton and lustful men, with the tail and ears of an ass or goat, small horns on their foreheads, flat noses, thick lips and long beards. The Satyrs played drums, lyres and flutes and sang as they danced around a sphinx of Dionysus. Some say they wore false phalluses.
In the literary tradition, the essential distinction between prose and poetry is due not so much to the content as to the form, and above all to the meter (from the Greek metron, “measure”), a definite rhythmic structure on which the verse is built, that is, the poetic line.
The meter was the essential criterion in poetic creation until the 19th century, with the emergence of poetic prose and followed by the appearance of free verse, whose rhythm is stripped of any metrical coercion.
Origin of poetry
Aristotle devotes the whole of chapter 4 to discovering the origin of poetry and its development. According to him, poetry arises because man tends to imitate reality and because of the existence of rhythm and harmony. These two natural factors are what gives rise to poetry or the art of imitation with language. In this sense, the author justifies his theory by indicating that noble men (nobility understood as part of a person's character, not his social condition) imitate noble actions. The most vulgar men, on the other hand, imitate the actions of the grossest men. This differentiation of types of people also leads to the creation of two literary genres: nobles cultivated heroic and tragic verses and vulgar men created comedy or iambic verses.
The nature of poetry
Plato, notorious for his apparent dislike of poets, refers to the meter as a garment or armor that covers “naked words” (logoi psiloi), that is, prose. In his Poetics, Aristotle recognizes the meter as the common denominator of the different genres of poetry (Aristotle, Poetics 1447b 14-20).
Pasting the verb poiein to the name of the meter, they call some “elegiac poets”, others “epic poets”, not by representation (mimesis), but according to the meter they use. In fact, it is also customary to call those who treat, using the meter, medicine or nature. However, there is nothing in common between Homer and Empedocles other than the meter, so it is fairer to call the latter a specialist in nature than a poet.
As this passage illustrates, the use of meter in ancient Greece was much broader than the modern idea of poetry. In its first centuries, all Greek Literature was poetic; even scientific and philosophical treatises such as On Nature by Empedocles of Acragas were written in verse.
Aristotle was the first to question the conventional identification of text in meter = poetry, placing at the center of his definition of poetry the notion of mimesis, translated either as “representation” or as “imitation”. Empedocles writes verses with a scientific (or didactic) purpose, not mimetic: nothing in his work imitates or represents human action. He, therefore, should not be considered a poet, but a “scientific writer”. The essence of the poetic, according to Aristotle, lies in its mimetic character. The meter alone is not enough for poetry.
Poetry and its rhythmic structure
The essential distinction between prose and poetry is due not so much to the content as to the form, and above all to the meter: a defined rhythmic structure on which the verse, that is, the poetic line, is built.
Representation is natural to us, as are melody and rhythm (the meter is part of the rhythm). From the beginning, those more naturally inclined to such things gradually developed poetry out of improvisation. Here we have a central point of Aristotelian aesthetics, which, at no time, claims to be art for art's sake. Mimesis, inherent to human nature, does not only bring pleasure to man, it is a way of learning. Poetry, as a mimetic expression, maintains this function and thus assumes a moral importance.
Currently, Aristotle's definitions may seem outdated when art no longer always has a mimetic duty and considers itself, since Nietzsche, independent of morality. However, at a time when history is written in tweets, where journalists have become ideologues and YouTubers, it is comforting to remember the old philosopher and to know that, at least in poetry, there are truths that remain unchanged.
The truth of Oedipus the King is not that of an ancient king of Thebes (who probably never existed) who killed his father and married his mother. What the spectator (or reader) learns by seeing the characters' actions and their consequences represented is the truth about human arrogance, about the dangers of power, about the inexorability of fate.
Differences between poetry and history
In Aristotle's time, texts were always written in verse. Scientific texts were also constructed through verse. This meant that, initially, anyone who wrote in verse was considered a poet. Nevertheless, Aristotle, in his Poetics, distinguished between artists who wrote Literature in verse and specialists who were in charge of writing scientific texts in verse. Writing Literature is not the same as writing science or history and, therefore, Aristotle created the division between the two modalities.
The poet's duty, says Aristotle, is not to tell what actually happened, but what might happen, out of necessity or probability. The historian reports facts and events, many of which are the result of chance or cannot be explained. It is up to the poet to express, in his representation of these facts and of the men who participate in them, what, in the circumstances and in the action of a man, is useful to all men (Poetic, 1451a 38 – 1451b 10). That is why poetry is also more philosophical and elevated than history, since poetry tells the general and history the particular.
The myth that spawned Greek tragedy
Greek tragedy was born out of the cult of Dionysus. There are many legends about the birth of Dionysus. The main one is that he was born in Thebes and was the son of Zeus by a mortal named Semele, daughter of Kadmos (king of Thebes). Heras, wife of Zeus, was very jealous because of the affair between her husband and Semele. She convinced Semele to beg Zeus to appear before her with all her might. Zeus, willing to please his mistress, appeared in front of her accompanied by thunder and lightning. With that, he started a fire in Semele's house and caused the death of his lover. Zeus took from Semele's womb the unfinished fruit of their love and placed it on her thigh until pregnancy was complete.
When the child was born, Zeus entrusted him to the Nymphs and Satyrs of Mount Nisa. In addition, in a cave, surrounded by dense vegetation, the son of Semele and Zeus lived happily. Once, Dionysus plucked bunches of grapes, squeezed the fruit into golden cups, and drank with the Nymphs and Satyrs, who, drunk along with Dionysus, danced in Bacchic delirium (of the god Bacchus) and fell to the ground in a swoon.
The devotees of Dionysus, after the dizzying dance, believed that they came out of themselves through the process of ecstasy. This stepping out of oneself, overcoming the human condition, required diving into Dionysus, through the process of enthusiasm. The simple and mortal man (Anthropos), in ecstasy and enthusiasm, communing with immortality, became a hero, a man who surpassed the meter, that is, he crossed the invisible line that separates the human from the divine.
Tragedy, comedy and epic poetry
The form of poetry to which Aristotle devotes most attention in the Poetics is tragedy. Tragedy, according to Aristotle, came from the efforts of poets to present men “nobler” or “better” than in real life. Comedy, on the other hand, portrays an “inferior type” of person and reveals that humans are worse than average. Epic poetry, on the other hand, imitates noble men like tragedy, but it has only one type of mediator – unlike tragedy, which can have many – and it is narrative.
There are some differences between tragedy and epic. An epic poem does not use music or spectacle to achieve its cathartic effect. Epics can usually be presented in one sitting, while tragedies often use other forms of mediators to match the speech rhythms of different characters.
Comedy in Aristotle's Poetics
Comedy was the genre extensively dealt with in the second part of the Poetics. However, the text is believed to have been lost during the Middle Ages and, to this day, we are unaware of its existence. The book The name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco, talks about the loss of this important text. However, although we do not have the text, it is true that during the first part there are some indications of what Aristotle considered about this genre. He defines it as an imitation of the most ridiculous characters of the human being, that is, something like an imitation of the worst that defines our species.
The tragedy - the imitation of painful realities
Tragedy, according to Aristotle, is an imitation of a serious and complete action, endowed with extension, in seasoned language for each of the parts (imitation that is carried out) through actors and that operates, thanks to terror and pity, the purification of such emotions. For the author, tragedy is the imitation of painful realities, and its raw material is myth, in its raw form. It is opportune to say that the Western theory of drama still maintains strong ties with its reflections on poetics and they remain opportune and valid.
The epic and tragedy
At the time of Aristotle, the concept of Literature did not yet exist, that is, the art that was created through language was called poetry. According to the author, there were two ways to perform this mimesis:
Epic poetry - through the narration of events in the first person (as in Homer's Iliad or Odyssey).
Tragedy - the exposure of human feelings and emotions.
It is important to highlight what differentiates the two genres. Both its length, the type of metric used, as well as the narrative character of the work are different regardless of the genre we are. For the philosopher, tragedy is the high imitation, which is, idealized, of an action and has six parts that characterize it:
1. The fable
2. The characters
3. The diction
4. The thought
5. The spectacle
6. The melody
A tragic play is not responsible for mimicking external reality, but focuses on mimicking actions performed by humans as well as emotions. In the last chapter of the Poetics Aristotle launches a debate on whether tragedy is superior to epic or vice versa. He ends up arguing that tragedy is superior to epic because it has all the elements of epic and, in addition, it has scenic effects and music that reinforces its message.
Six elements in tragedy
Plot - is "the soul" of tragedy, because action is central to the meaning of a drama, and all other elements are subsidiary. It needs to have a beginning, a middle and an end. It must also be universal in meaning, have a determined structure, and maintain a unity of theme and purpose.
In other words, to create a good tragedy, it is necessary to maintain the unity of the plot. In addition, that means a well-organized sequence of necessary or probable events. The beginning must not follow on from previous events, and the end must tie up all loose ends and not produce the necessary or likely consequences.
Plot - is the soul of tragedy, and the character comes into the background.
Thought - means what a character says in a given circumstance, followed by musical diction appropriate for the spectacle.
Plot elements include completeness, magnitude, unity, determinate structure, and universality.
Completeness - refers to the need for a tragedy to have a beginning, a middle and an end. A beginning is defined as an origin by which something naturally happens.
Magnitude - refers simply to the length (duration) - the tragedy must have a length that can be easily embraced by memory.
Unity - refers to the centering of all plot action around a common theme or idea.
Determined structure - refers to the plot and sequence of causal and imitative events.
Universality - refers to the need for a character to act according to the way humans would act or react in a given situation.
The tragic hero is neither an eminently good nor a bad man. He must be a paragon of virtue that is overthrown by adversity, whose origin is in his own “fragility” or failure, which is evident from the beginning of a play, which the audience must be able to identify with. Misfortune is brought about by an error of judgment. Oedipus is his example of a hero who undergoes this reversal and, therefore, has a cathartic self-recognition.
Reversal - it is the modification that determines the inversion of actions, and this must take place, according to the plausible or necessary as in Oedipus. The messenger arrives thinking that he is going to comfort Oedipus and free him from the dread he feels in face of his mother, but as he reveals who in fact Oedipus was, he produces, precisely, the opposite...”
Realization of tragedy
We can say that tragedy only takes place when the metro is crossed. It is the moment when the actor transforms into another. An example of this were the Maenads, priestesses of the god, the Bacchae, the Possessed, also called “furious” or “impetuous”, who reached delirium possessed by the god Dionysus.
Characters who suffered from hubris, which is a common theme in Greek mythology and tragedies, suffered the consequences of their transgression, were punished by the gods. Hubris or hubris is a Greek concept that can be translated as "everything that goes beyond measure; immoderateness" and that currently alludes to excessive confidence, exaggerated pride, presumption, arrogance or insolence (originally against the gods), which often ends up being punished.
Tragedy occurs when man crosses the metro, and this gives rise to nemesis, divine jealousy, causing the hero's reason to be blinded. He will be subjugated without appeal by moira, that is, by madness.
Literary prose or “fiction”
The art that performs mimesis with pure language, without rhythm, is what we would today call literary prose or fiction and would encompass the novel, the short story, the novella, etc. Non-fiction, which is, scientific, philosophical, essayistic prose, etc., makes use of pure language, but does not perform mimesis. The ancient philosophical treatises in verse, such as that of Empedocles, fulfill the formal conditions of poetry, for they use language and rhythm, but they are also not mimetic and thus exclude themselves from Aristotle's poetic theory.
How Poetics Influenced Literature
It must be said that, at the time it was published, the work was not very successful, as it coincided with another work by the philosopher: Rhetoric. However, over the years, its influence has been indisputable and many of the issues raised in the text have been debated: especially the concept of mimesis and the division of the arts proposed by Aristotle.
We see one of the first influences of Poetics in Horace, the poet who, following the guidelines of Aristotle, created his own Poetics that also had a normative intention, but on this occasion, did not focus only on the dramatic, but on the entire narrative sector. Horace brings some interesting concepts such as the need for credibility in the action of the characters and argues that divine intervention is not always necessary to resolve the plot.
