Summary
Having discussed plot and character, Aristotle turns his attention toward
thought and then diction (he never specifically addresses melody or spectacle).
Aristotle defines thought as everything that is effected by means of language.
Thus, when agents try to prove or disprove a point, to arouse emotion, or to
inflate or deflate a matter, they are exhibiting thought. Thought is closely
linked to rhetoric, and Aristotle points to the more thorough discussion to be
found in his writings on that latter subject.
Aristotle divides the subject of diction into eight parts: letter, syllable,
conjunction, article, noun, verb, case, and speech. Though many of these terms
are identical to our modern uses of them, we should note that Aristotle is
concerned less with written language and more with spoken language. As a result,
Aristotle treats the letter—the fundamental building block of
language—as a unit of sound rather than as a single written character. The
concept of case, unfamiliar to English speakers, deals with the different uses
of a word. For instance, "with the dog" and "for the dogs" are different cases
of "dog," and "walked?" and "walk!" are different cases of "walk." Speech is
more like what we would call a clause than a sentence. It does not have to
contain a verb, but it must be made up of significant parts.
Chapter 21 is concerned with the structure and uses of the noun, though it is
concerned primarily with the uses of metaphor. Aristotle distinguishes four ways
metaphor can be used. (1) The genus to species relationship, where a more
general term is used instead of a specific term. Aristotle uses the example of
"Here stands my ship," where "stand" is a more general way of saying "is
anchored." (2) The species to genus relationship, where a more specific term is
used in place of a general term. Aristotle's example is "Truly ten thousand good
deeds has Ulysses wrought," where "ten thousand" is a specific term representing
the more general "a large number." (3) The species to species relationship,
where one specific term replaces another. (4) Metaphor from analogy, which
consists of substitutions between "x is to y"-type relationships.
For instance, old age is to life as evening is to day, so we can speak
metaphorically about the "old age of the day" or the "evening of life."
Aristotle concludes his discussion of diction with a few remarks on style. A
poet should aim for a middle ground, expressing himself with clarity but without
meanness. Aristotle suggests that the use of ordinary words and ordinary
language is mean and prosaic. Poetry can be spiced up by the use of foreign or
strange terms, metaphor, or compounded words. However, an overenthusiastic use
of such devices will render poetry unintelligible. Too many foreign words will
make the poetry barbaric and too much metaphor will turn it into a big riddle.
The key is to apply these devices in moderation. Of these different devices,
Aristotle most values the metaphor, as it cannot be taught but only grasped
intuitively. There is a certain level of genius in being able to identify
similarities between dissimilar things.
Analysis
Chapters 19–22 are almost certainly the least interesting part of the
Poetics. Thought and diction are far less important to tragedy than are
plot and character, and a good deal of the discussion is difficult to follow
without an understanding of Ancient Greek. Chapters 20 and 21 in particular,
which deal with grammatical questions, seem out of place in the larger context
of the work, and many scholars suspect that they are not by Aristotle at all.
As we recall, Aristotle makes a distinction between the character and the
thought of an agent. The thought of an agent is everything he or she expresses
verbally. This includes persuading, reasoning, and arousing emotion, among other
things. We might understand it as the impression an agent consciously tries to
make on others. What we might infer from his or her unspoken behavior is more a
matter of character.
We recall that Aristotle mentions the arousal of pity and fear as the main
purpose of tragedy and claims that the tragic poet must aim to arouse such
emotions in the audience primarily by means of the plot. In discussing thought,
he mentions that agents may arouse emotions in one another by means of language.
We find, then, an interesting parallel between the tragic poet and the
characters he creates. The plot is an implicit means of arousing emotion
employed by the poet, and thought is an explicit means of arousing emotion
employed by the agents of the plot.
In discussing metaphor, Aristotle's classifications are of some interest, though
he seems to have a rather limited sense of what a metaphor is and how it works.
He speaks of metaphor as if it were an extra spice that can be sprinkled on top
of whatever is being expressed on a literal level. He values metaphor because it
can raise poetry above the humdrum of everyday speech but worries that too much
use of metaphor can inhibit clarity.
One might first remark that metaphor is not simply and extra frill added to
speech and that it serves the purpose of enhancing clarity, rather than
detracting from it. "Juliet is the sun" gives us a much more vivid and clear
understanding of Romeo's feelings than if he'd simply said, "Juliet is very
beautiful" (See the SparkNote for Romeo and Juliet). This
raises a second question, whether metaphor can be considered a simple matter of
substituting one word for another. Calling Juliet "the sun" says a great
deal—that she is radiant, that she is the source of all life, that she
warms Romeo, etc.—and it is far from clear how this simple metaphor could
be translated into "literal" speech. Some metaphors are even impossible to
translate into literal speech.
Last, we might observe that it is almost impossible to speak without using any
metaphors at all. Aristotle himself gives us unwitting evidence of this fact
when discussing the metaphorical "Here stands my ship." He says that "stand" is
used as a metaphor for "lying at anchor," when, of course, "lying" is itself a
metaphor. This is somewhat a matter of translation, but it can often be very
difficult to find a non-metaphorical usage. Our emotional vocabulary, for
instance, is almost all metaphorical. Words like "upset," "confused," "hurt,"
"moved," and "touched" all borrow from expressions of physical states, and there
is no non-metaphorical equivalent. Metaphorical usage is so intrinsic to our
language-using capabilities that it is often very difficult to determine when we
are speaking literally and when we are using metaphor.
