Summary
Aristotle proposes to approach poetry from a scientific viewpoint, examining the
constituent parts of poetry and drawing conclusions from those observations.
First, he lists the different kinds of poetry: epic poetry, tragedy, comedy,
dithyrambic poetry, and most flute-playing and lyre-playing. Next, he remarks
that all of these kinds of poetry are mimetic, or imitative, but that there
are significant differences between them.
The first kind of distinction is the means they employ. Just as a painter
employs paint and a sculptor employs stone, the poet employs language, rhythm,
and harmony, either singly or in combinations. For instance, flute-playing and
lyre-playing employ rhythm and harmony, while dance employs only rhythm. He also
addresses the question of non-poetic language, arguing that poetry is
essentially mimetic, whether it is in verse or in prose. Thus, Homer is a poet,
while Empedocles, a philosopher who wrote in verse, is not. While Empedocles
writes in verse, his writing is not mimetic, and so it is not poetry. In
tragedy, comedy, and other kinds of poetry, rhythm, language, and harmony are
all used. In some cases, as in lyric poetry, all three are used together, while
in other cases, as in comedy or tragedy, the different parts come in to play at
different times.
The second distinction is the objects that are imitated. All poetry represents
actions with agents who are either better than us, worse than us, or quite like
us. For instance, tragedy and epic poetry deal with characters who are better
than us, while comedy and parody deal with characters who are worse than us.
The final distinction is with the manner of representation: the poet either
speaks directly in narrative or assumes the characters of people in the
narrative and speaks through them. For instance, many poets tell straight
narratives while Homer alternates between narrative and accounts of speeches
given by characters in his narrative. In tragedy and comedy, the poet speaks
exclusively through assumed characters.
Analysis
The very first paragraph of the Poetics gives us a hint as to how we
should approach the work: it is meant to be descriptive rather than
prescriptive. That is, Aristotle is not so much interested in arguing that
poetry or tragedy should be one thing or another. Rather, he wants to
look at past examples of poetry—tragedy in particular—and by
dissecting them and examining their constituent parts to arrive at some general
sense of what poetry is and how it works.
This is the same scientific method that Aristotle employs so successfully in
examining natural phenomena: careful observation followed by tentative theories
to explain the observations. The immediate and pressing question, then, is
whether Aristotle is right in applying his scientific method to poetry. Physical
phenomena are subject to unchanging, natural laws, and presumably a careful
study of the phenomena matched with a little insight might uncover what these
natural laws are. Aristotle seems to be proceeding with the assumption that the
same is true for poetry: its growth and development has been guided by
unchanging, natural laws, and the Poetics seeks to uncover these laws.
The results are mixed. In some cases, what Aristotle says seems quite right,
while in others his conclusions seem very limiting. We will examine this
question further when Aristotle delves deeper into the elements of tragedy.
Before going any further, we might do well to clarify some terms. When Aristotle
talks about "art" or "poetry" he is not talking about what we might understand
by these words. "Art" is the translation of the Greek word techne and is
closely related to "artifice" and "artificial." Art for Aristotle is anything
that is made by human beings as opposed to being found in nature. Thus, poetry,
painting, and sculpture count as "art," but so do chairs, horseshoes, and
sandals.
Our conception of "art" is more closely (but not exactly) approximated by what
Aristotle calls "mimetic art." The Greek word mimesis defies exact
translation, though "imitation" works quite well in the context of the
Poetics. A chair is something you can sit in, but a painting of a chair
is merely an imitation, or representation, of a real chair.
Paintings use paint to imitate real life, and sculptures use stone. Poetry is
distinguished as the mimetic art that uses language, rhythm, and harmony to
imitate real life, language obviously being the most crucial component.
This raises the question of in what way poetry imitates, or "mimics," real life.
The events in Oedipus Rex did not actually happen in
real life. In fact, it is important that tragedy be fictional and that there be
an understanding that the events taking place on stage are not real: no one
should call the police when Hamlet kills Polonius.
Still, tragedy deals with humans who speak and act in a way that real humans
conceivably could have spoken and acted. It is important that there be an
understanding that the account is fictional, but it must also be close enough to
reality that it is plausible.
There are significant differences between the kind of poetry discussed here and
our conception of poetry. In modern times, the definition of poetry is closely
linked to its being written in verse. Aristotle directly contradicts that
definition, pointing out that Empedocles' philosophical verses are not poetry;
they present ideas rather than imitate life.
Further, narrative is essential to Aristotle's definition of poetry. Not only
comedy and tragedy, but also the epic poetry of the Greeks tells stories, as we
find in the Iliad and the
Odyssey. Both drama and epic poetry are fictional
accounts that imitate real life in some way. On the other hand, a great deal of
poetry in the modern world does not imitate life in any obvious way. For
instance, the Robert Burns line, "My love is like a red, red rose" may be said
to "imitate" or represent the poet's love for a woman, but by that token,
Empedocles' verses might be said to "imitate" or represent certain philosophical
concepts.
Aristotle is not trying to condemn Robert Burns for writing love poems; he is
simply trying to catalog the different kinds of poetry that existed in his time.
They all employ language, rhythm, and harmony in some way or another, they all
deal with people who are engaging in certain kinds of action, and they all
involve some sort of direct or indirect narrative. Whether something is an epic
poem, a comedy, or a tragedy depends on how it fits within these categories. For
instance, a tragedy is a composite of language, rhythm, and harmony that deals
with agents who are on the whole better than us, and the poet speaks directly
through these agents.
