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Hi, my name's Tom. Welcome back to my
channel and to another episode of What
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the Theory?, my series in which I aim to
provide some sometimes fun but always
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accessible introductions to key theories
in cultural studies and the wider
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humanities. Today, we're gonna be taking a
look at Aristotle's The Poetics, a treatise
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composed by everyone's favourite
Greek philosopher sometime between 335
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and 350 BC (depending on who you ask).
Within it, he looks at the social role of
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storytelling as well as setting out to
understand exactly how Greek Tragedy was
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able to make its audiences feel such
extreme emotion. As always, if you have
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any thoughts or questions as we go along
then please do feel free to drop those
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down in the comments. And, if this video
seems like your kind of thing and you'd
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like to see more, please do consider
subscribing and hitting that little
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notifications button. With that out of
the way however, let's crack on with it!
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It's hard to overstate the influence of The
Poetics. The treatise as we read it
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today is likely either a set of notes
prepared in preparation for delivering a
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lecture by Aristotle himself or taken by
a student while listening to Aristotle
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speak within the Academy. And what
survives is only a fragment of a
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slightly longer piece of work. As we'll
see, the surviving portion of The Poetics
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sets out to understand how Greek Tragedy
(or, for our purposes, storytelling
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slightly more generally) works.
However, Aristotle references within it a
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companion piece on Comedy which,
unfortunately, has been lost to time.
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Nonetheless, as the earliest surviving
piece of cultural criticism that we have
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(alongside the Natyashastra which is a
treatise on Sanskrit theatre written
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around the same time), The Poetics holds
something of a special status amongst
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creators and critics of theatre, film,
television, novel-writing and all other
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kind of narrative forms. And The Poetics
is often introduced as a kind of
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rulebook; a guide to plotting out the
perfect narrative. This was certainly the
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view of the French neoclassicists in
the 16th and 17th century who very much
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used The Poetics as the foundations for
their formula for creating the perfect
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theatrical play. And, even more recently,
Robert McKee—a screenwriting tutor whose
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1997 book Story is considered by many to
be the definitive book on screenwriting—
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has built a small fortune on Aristotelian foundations. Nonetheless, we don't
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know for sure whether Aristotle's
intentions in writing The Poetics was
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really to create this kind of
prescriptive model for narrative
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structure. While, within it, he certainly
separates out some work which he
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considers to be good from that which he
considers to be bad, we don't know
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whether he was suggesting that this is
the way that all tragedy should work or
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whether he was simply commenting on what had worked and what hadn't amongst the
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plays that he had seen. What is clear,
however, is that Aristotle believed in
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the power and importance of
storytelling. He thought that it had a pivotal
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role to play in society and, before we go
through understanding Aristotle's
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conceptualisation of narrative structure,
I think its first important to
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understand this slightly broader
argument in The Poetics; in which
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Aristotle attempts to theorise why we
tell stories in the first place. And, in
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order to do so, we need to begin with
Plato, Aristotle's teacher to whom The
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Poetics is essentially a response. In The
Republic, Plato's book in which he aims
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to set out his vision for an ideal
society, Plato had suggested a strict
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censorship of poetry and drama. In one
passage he suggests that we must "delete
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lamentations and pitiful speeches on the
part of famous men. We surely assert that
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the good man does not think death to be
a dreadful thing to another good man his
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friend". Plato in fact saw little value in
the mimetic arts (those which seek to
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reflect or represent real life) at all.
But, here, his main concern is that seeing
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a heroic figure in a moment of despair
or distress would make the citizens of
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his Republic feel sad or angry or
distressed. And this just wouldn't do.
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Why would a society want its citizens to
feel such negative emotions? Plato was
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concerned that, if I were to use my
afternoon off to go to the amphitheatre
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and, while there, watch Electra and
Orestes avenge their father by
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murdering Clytemnestra, I might come away from the amphitheatre so spiked up on
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the spirit of revenge that I might go
about killing anyone who's ever done me
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wrong too. Aristotle, however, had a
different view. While he agreed that
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poetry and drama could certainly stir up
these extreme emotions in us, he
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suggested that we don't simply carry
these emotions back with us into our
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daily lives. Instead, Aristotle argues
that experiencing such emotions
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within the amphitheatre (or indeed in the
cinema, in front of the TV or whilst
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reading a book) enables "through pity and
fear the proper purgation [or catharsis]
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of these emotions".
In short, Aristotle argues that fiction
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and storytelling create a space for us
where we can explore and experience
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these extreme emotions in order to get
them out of our system. My watching
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Orestes murder Clytemnestra, then,
allows me to experience that feeling and
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burn off some of that pent-up rage that
I might be feeling precisely in order
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that I don't go about avenging people in
real life.
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Thus, in Aristotle's view, Tragedy (or
storytelling more generally) allows us to
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purge ourselves of these extreme
emotions and thus plays a positive
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societal role in allowing us to live
more happily alongside one another.
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Aristotle, however, was not content with
simply arguing that storytelling
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provides a positive social function. As
well as suggesting that it is able to
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bring about this catharsis or purgation,
he also wanted to explore exactly how it
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is able to do so. How is it that me
sitting in an amphitheatre watching
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a troupe of actors pretending to hate
each other or be in love enables me to
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feel those emotions too? In The Poetics,
then, Aristotle sets out to analyse
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numerous pieces of Greek theatre in
order to consider why some of these were
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able to stir up such emotion in their
audience and why others weren't so much.
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And Aristotle's specific focus is on
Greek Tragedy which he very much saw as
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the highest form of storytelling. And so
his first task is to define exactly what
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he means by Tragedy. For Aristotle, then,
tragedy was defined in opposition to two
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things primarily. The first being comedy.
And, always looking for a more eloquent way
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of expressing himself other than "one is
funny, the other often sad", he writes that
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"the distinction which marks of tragedy
from comedy is that comedy aims at
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representing people as worse, tragedy as
better than in actual life". While, as I've
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mentioned, Aristotle's specific treatise
on Comedy is unfortunately lost to time,
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what's clear from this statement is that Aristotle considers
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comedy to focus on characters who are
irrevocably flawed, they are never going
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to become better people. Whereas the mark of tragedy is that it focuses on heroic
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figures who give eloquent speeches and
enact acts of great significance. He
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mentions a number of times throughout
The Poetics that Greek Tragedy tended to
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focus on a select few families from
Greek legend. And he saw this as very
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much right and proper. The second thing
that Aristotle is keen to define tragedy
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against is Epic Poetry: works such as
Homer's The Iliad or The Odyssey. And the
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first distinction he draws between these
is fairly uncontroversial: that of form.
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For, while the Epic poet, Aristotle states,
"imitates by narrative", the tragedian
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"presents all his characters as living
and moving before us". As we might expect,
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one relies on dictation and narration
while the other relies on performers
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acting out events in front of us. So far,
so uncontroversial. However Aristotle
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also draws another distinction between
Epic Poetry and Tragedy which has proven
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slightly more contested in the centuries
since. And these further distinctions
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relate not to form—recited or acted out—but to the way in which the narrative of
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the two is structured. Firstly, Aristotle
argues that Tragedy "endeavours as far as
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possible to confine itself to a single
revolution of the Sun or but slightly to
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exceed this limit; whereas the Epic
action has no limits of time". Secondly, he
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suggests that an Epic Poem has a
"multiplicity of plot" whereas a Tragedy
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has a "unity of plot". Or, to put it in
other words, an Epic Poem tended to have
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numerous narrative elements all
interweaving whereas a tragedy focused
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on a single, focused chain of events. And
it is from these very short observations
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that we get the notion of the Three
Classical Unities of Action, Place
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and Time. This notion, that a play should
take place within a day, be set in a
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single location and have a very focused
dramatic action, was very popular during
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the 16th and 17th centuries and even has
a significant influence on some more
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recent playwrights such as Henrik Ibsen
and Arthur Miller. However, while it
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remains a popular point of reference, we
should probably take this notion of the
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three unities with a pinch of salt. For Aristotle never once
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mentions a unity of place and only
mentions this unity of time once. And,
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furthermore, again, we don't know whether
Aristotle is simply commenting on the
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plays he has seen rather than trying to
set out this formulaic way of setting
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out a narrative structure. So, we should
probably take the notion of the Three
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Classical Unities as more an invention
of the French neoclassicists'
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interpretation of The Poetics rather
than an idea inherent in Aristotle's
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own writing. Having defined what he
means by Tragedy, then, Aristotle finally
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comes to exploring what it is that made
certain Greek Tragedy so evocative for
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their audiences. And, in doing so, he
introduces a number of terms for
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analyzing narrative structure which
remain incredibly significant and
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influential today. As you may have
gathered from the way I've been talking
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so far, Aristotle's focuses very much on plot
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over character. While he does acknowledge
that creating complex, interesting
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characters is important in writing a
decent play, he suggests that "character
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determines people's qualities but it is
by their actions that they are happy or
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the reverse. Dramatic action, therefore, is
not with the view to the representation
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of character: character comes in as
subsidiary to the actions. Plot, then, is
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the first principle, and, as it were, the
soul of a tragedy: character holds the
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second place". Aristotle believes that it
is not through well drawn-out characters
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giving wordy speeches that this process
of catharsis or purgation is
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brought about but through the successful
"arrangement of the incidents". And what
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always strikes me when returning to The
Poetics is how little has changed in how
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we discuss the arranging of events to
make for a decent plot since Aristotle
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laid out this work. Even the most casual
filmgoer will have heard of the notion
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that most mainstream films tend to be
composed around a three-act narrative
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structure. And, while the notion that a
story should be split into a sequence of
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acts is more correctly attributed to the
Roman poet Horace (who advocated for five),
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many of the more specific moments that
proponents of a three-act structure
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theory suggest should be there within
that structure very much come from
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Aristotle's Poetics. So, Aristotle
observes that "every Tragedy falls into
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two parts: complication and unraveling".
The first half of a Tragedy, he suggests,
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usually contains a number of events
where a protagonist progresses towards a
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certain goal with their path towards
achieving that goal becoming more and
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more complicated as time wears on. Once a plot has begun to unfold, however,
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Aristotle suggests that there will be a
moment referred to in Ancient Greek as
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"peripeteia" or reversal: a change of
circumstance which fundamentally shifts
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the world of this play and causes the
hero's journey to go in a very different
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direction. In Oedipus Rex, for
example, the complication consists of
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Oedipus trying to track down the
murderer of Laius, the former king of
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Thebes. All of this changes in Episode
Four, however, when Oedipus discovers
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that it was in actual fact he who killed
Laius, that Laius was his father and,
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therefore, Jocasta, his wife, is his
biological mother. In Oedipus Rex,
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this moment of peripeteia or reversal is
conjoined with a moment of what's
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referred to as "anagnorisis" or recognition
in which Oedipus finally discovers the
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true nature of his situation. It is these
moments of peripeteia and anagnorisis
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(reversal and recognition) through which
Aristotle suggests that the play goes
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from complication to unraveling, and it's very much in the
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process of unraveling that Aristotle
suggests that catharsis comes about. But
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there are two more moments which are
vital according to Aristotle in
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bringing about this catharsis. And the
first is a scene of "pathos" or suffering,
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during which the protagonist and other
characters wrestle with the consequences
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of that great reversal. This scene, he
suggests, "is a destructive or painful
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action, such as death on the stage,
bodily agony, wounds and the like". In
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Oedipus Rex, we get a bit of both
when Jocasta hangs herself and Oedipus,
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disgusted at himself for sleeping
with his own mother, stabs out his own
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eyes with the pin of her brooch. And,
finally, these moments of reversal,
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recognition and suffering lead to the
moment of catharsis itself. In
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Oedipus Rex, this takes place when Oedipus, so disgusted at himself, asks to be
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exiled from Thebes. So, complication
reversal, recognition, suffering and
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catharsis. These, to Aristotle, are the
moments which we must include in a plot
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in order to bring about that catharsis
or purgation amongst an audience. It is
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the proper arrangement of these
incidents which allow storytelling to
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have that power of making us feel
emotions through simply watching or
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reading something. And these terms (or at
least the notion of them) very much carry
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currency in the present day. If we look
at the narrative structures offered up
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by contemporary screenwriting tutors
such as Robert McKee or, slightly less
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subtly, Blake Snyder for example, we'll
see moments such as a "midpoint" which
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very much has reflections of the moment
of reversal or, in Blake Snyder, the "Dark
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Night of the Soul" which very much seems
to echo that notion of pathos or
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suffering. Aristotle's thoughts within
this very earliest work of cultural
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criticism, then, very much underline how
we talk about and analise narrative
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structure in the present-day.
So, to conclude. In The
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Poetics, Aristotle sets out to argue that
storytelling has a vital social role to
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play in allowing us to purge ourselves
of the extreme emotions that we might
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otherwise feel in real life. And, further
to this, he seeks to analyse exactly how
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Greek Tragedy is able to perform this
function. And, while The Poetics itself
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very much confines itself to Greek
Tragedy, the terms which are discussed
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within it have very much become
applicable in the present day to all
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kinds of narrative storytelling whether
that be theatre or film or television or
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novels. The Poetics, in its present-day
form then, may be a short and somewhat
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understated book. However the ideas which Aristotle offers us within it have
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certainly stood the test of time. Thank
you very much for watching this video, I
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hope you've found it useful and of some
insight. If that is the case then I'd
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really appreciate a thumbs up down below
and, again, if you'd like to see more like
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this then please do consider subscribing.
Thank you very much for watching once
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again and have a great week!
