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Aristotle was one of the disciples of Plato and
it was he who took up the challenge of Plato at the end of Republic X to show
that “poetry was not only pleasant but also useful for men and society”. The
Poetics is a systematic exposition of the theory and practice of poetry,
which has exercised men’s minds. Aristotle takes up hints and suggestions from
his teacher; re interprets them and imparts new meaning and significance to Plato's
concepts.
Aristotle and Plato differ widely in their
objectives and methods of work.
a)Plato set
out to re-organize human life whereas Aristotle reorganize human knowledge.
b) Plato was
a transcendentalist and has the temperament of an artist whereas Aristotle was
an experimentalist who arrived at his principles through observation and
analysis.
c) Plato was
an idealist who believed that the phenomenal world is nothing but an
objectification of the ideal world. According to him, the ideal world is real
and the phenomenal world is only a shadow of this ideal reality. Aristotle, on
the other hand, believed in the reality of the world and of the senses.
Both, Aristotle
and Plato have their similarities also. Now have a look on those similarities.
a) The poetry is an ‘imitative’ art for
both of them.
b) Poetry rouses the emotions
c)The poetry gives pleasure
Aristotle is
fully alive to the essential unity of art. According to him, ‘imagination’ is
the common principle of all the fine arts. Poetry, comedy, tragedy, dancing,
music flute-playing, painting, sculpture etc are all modes of imagination. Imagination for Aristotle is not a mere
mimicry or servile copying of nature, but a truly creative activity.
Though imitation
is the common principle of all fine arts, the various arts differ from each
other in three ways--- medium of imitation, objects of imitation and in the
manner of imitation.
By medium of
imitation, he means the vehicle or material through which the artist imitates.
Colour, form and sound are the various mediums.
By the
objects of imitation he means the men in action. Poetry does not imitate man as
such, but “men doing or experiencing something”. These men whose actions and
experiences are the objects of poetic imitation may be either better or worse,
or the same as they are in actual life. A poet may idealize or he may
caricature and this is the difference between tragedy and comedy. Tragedy
idealizes, imitates man as better and comedy caricatures, shows men as worse
than they actually are.
There may be three modes or ways of manner of
imitation—a)the poet may use the narrative method b) he may use the dramatic
method and c) he may use a combination of these two methods. On the basis of
the manner of imitation poetry is classified as epic or narrative and dramatic.
In dramatic poetry the dramatic personages act the story, in epic poetry a poet
like Homer narrates the story, as well as tells it through a dialogue between
assumed characters.
In chapter
six, Aristotle gave the definition of tragedy. According to him, “Tragedy is an
imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude;
in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds
being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of
narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these
emotions.”
Aristotle
analysed tragedy into six formative parts, among which three are concerned with
the objects imitated--- plot, characters, and thoughts--- two of the
elements--- diction and melody are the means of imitation and sixth element, spectacle,
is the mode of imitation by which the story is presented on a stage before an
audience. Aristotle regards the plot as the ‘life and soul’ of tragedy.
By using the
word ‘whole’ he meant that the plot of a tragedy should have a proper
beginning, middle and end. The unity of plot must be an organic one. According
to him poetry does not aim at photographic realism.
A historian recounts actual events
chronologically without showing the chain of cause and effect. History, in this
sense, merely tells us what did happen; tragedy shows us what could, or, indeed
must happen. Therefore, poetry is better than history according to Aristotle.
He distinguishes two kinds of plots, simple and complex. In a simple plot the
action moves forward continuously and uniformly without any change of direction
towards the catastrophe. In a complex plot, there is an abrupt change of
direction. A tragedy has three formative elements, peripety, anagnorisis, and
suffering.
According to
Aristotle there are six sections of a tragedy and they are 1) the prologue, the
entire part which precedes the Parode of the Chorus
2) the Parode is the entrance song of the
chorus
3) the
Episode is that entire part of tragedy which is between complete chronic songs
episode is the equivalent of an act in a drama
4) the Stasimon is a chronic ode,
5) the
commos is a joint lamentation of the Chorus and of the actors together
6) the Exode is the entire part of the tragedy
after the last song of the Chorus
The text Poetics
ends with a comparison of tragedy and epic poetry. Tragedy has been criticized
as vulgar, because its appeal is to be the crowd and acting can easily become
theatrical and exaggerated. Tragedy is superior to the epic, because it
contains all the pleasure-giving elements of epic, with music and spectacles;
in addition its effect on the emotions is strongest because, being shorter it
is more concentrated; it has greater unity; and lastly it ‘better attains its
effect’.
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