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ristotle’s Poetics clearly marks out the beginnings of literary theory and criticism.
In this age-old treatise, Aristotle provides both a history of the development of poetry and drama, and a critical framework for evaluating tragic drama. It is considered the first systematic essay in literary theory because it is full of insight and shows a high degree of flexibility in the application of its general rules.
More inclined to forming categories and organizing them into coherent systems than his teacher Plato (who highly esteemed a cerebral Theory of Forms), Aristotle conversely treated the discussion of poetry as a natural scientist, carefully accounting for the features of each “species” of text.
In the twenty six books perhaps gathered as notes by his pupils, three points stand out as probably the most important. First is the interpretation of poetry as mimesis. In Chapters 1–3, all poetry, Aristotle argues, is imitation or mimesis. Poetry springs from a basic human delight in mimicry. Humans learn through imitating and take pleasure in looking at imitations of the perceived world. The mimetic dimension of the poetic arts is always representational. As artistic representation, mimesis in poetry is the act of telling stories that are set in the real world. The events in the story need not have taken place, but the telling of the story will help the listener or viewer to imagine the events taking place in the real world.
Furthermore, representations of human beings in poetry can be sorted into three categories—depictions of humans as better than they really are, depictions of humans as they are in reality, and depictions of humans as worse than they really are. It then distinguishes three types of poetry—tragedy, comedy and epic poetry, perhaps just like an anatomist labels parts of the human body.
In particular, Aristotle focuses his discussion on tragedy, which uses dramatic, rather than narrative, form, and deals with agents who are better than us, ourselves. Aristotle writes the famous opening line in Book 6, which sums up the centerpiece of his work—
Tragedy, then, 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 lists six components of tragedy—plot or mythos, character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle. While diction and melody are the style of the text or lyrics, and the music to which some of them are set; spectacle refers to staging, lighting, sets, costumes, etc. Thought refers to the indications, given primarily through words but also through other means, of what the characters are thinking.
Of the six parts, Aristotle insisted on the primacy and unity of plot. While plot as representation of human action can either be simple or complex, Aristotle stresses that complex plots are required for successful tragedies. Here, the plot must be unified, clearly displaying a beginning, a middle, and an end, and must be of sufficient length to fully represent the course of actions but not very long that the audience loses attention and interest.
Unfolding through an internal logic and causality, a complex plot should consist of a hero going from happiness to misery. The hero should be portrayed consistently and in a good light (and the poet should also remain true to what we know of the character). For Aristotle, then, action—represented as the plot—must be consistent with character—and more importantly reveal character.
Furthermore, a number of terms can illuminate how complex plot works successfully for tragedy. Hamartia, translated directly as “error,” is often a “tragic flaw” on the part of the hero that causes his very downfall—this error need not be an overarching moral failing, rather only a matter of not knowing something or forgetting something. Employed along with it is anagnorisis or “recognition,” a part in tragedy—often at the climax—where the hero, or some other character, passes from ignorance to knowledge. This could be a recognition of a long lost friend or family member or a sudden recognition of some fact about oneself, as the case of Oedipus in Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex. Therefore, the concept of mythos is about how the elements of a tragedy come together to form a coherent and unified whole—in such a way that the overall message or impression that we come away with is what is conveyed to us by the mythos of a piece.
Equally prominent in the Aristotelian treatise is the notion of catharsis. For him, such tragic plot must serve to arouse the emotions of pity and fear and effect a catharsis of these emotions. While some critics forever debate the meaning of the term, Aristotle’s reference to the purging of the emotions of pity and fear aroused in the viewer always links it to the positive social function of tragedy—in general, the ethical utility of art.
Thus, it is a truth universally acknowledged that Aristotle’s Poetics established the beginning of literary theory and criticism, in that it started the discussion of poetic art as representation of reality, a contention held true even today.
Its “species-concerned” treatment of the components of poetic art also initiated the recent and ongoing discourses on the classification of literary forms and types or genres, or genre theory, a structuralist approach to literary, film and cultural theories.
Its concept of the three unities—those of action, place and time—was even taken to its most austere limits during the Renaissance and the succeeding European periods.
Above all, it ushered in for the succeeding eras the importance of the value of art itself, which is one of moral instruction, a concept taken always seriously in the discussion of literature.