Saturday, March 17, 2012

Aristotle's Poetics

"Conspectus" of the Poetics by Stephen Halliwell (Aristotle's Poetics, 1986):
Chs. 1-3 MIMESIS
Ch. 1
The media of poetic mimesis: language, rhythm and music
Ch. 2
The object of poetic mimesis: men in action, ethically differentiated according to genre
Ch. 3
The modes of poetic mimesis: narrative, dramatic enactment, or an alternation of the two
Chs. 4-5 ORIGINS & HISTORY OF POETRY

Ch. 4
Natural causes of poetry: mimetic instinct, and the pleasure of  learning from mimetic objects
Chs. 4-5
Literary history and teleology: Homer the pioneer of tragedy and comedy
Chs. 6-22 TRAGEDY
Ch. 6
Definition; the six parts of tragedy, and their relative importance
Chs. 7-14
Plot-structure (muthos)
7-8
Coherence and unity
9
Poetic universality (the distinction between poetry and history)
9-10
Simple and complex plots
11
Elements of the complex plot: reversal (peripeteia) and recognition (anagnorisis)
12
The quantitative units of tragedy
13-14
The finest tragedy: hamartia and two approaches to the ideal
Ch. 15
Characterization (ethos)
Ch. 16
Recognition: a typology
Chs. 17-18
Miscellaneous precepts and observations
Chs. 19-22
Lexis: the fundamentals of language and style
Chs. 23-6 EPIC
Ch. 23
Unity of epic plot-structure: tragic principles applied to epic
Ch. 24
Differences between epic and tragedy
Ch. 25
Poetic ‘problems’ and their solutions: moral and fictional licence allowed to the poet
Ch. 26
Comparison of epic and tragedy: the latter’s superiority

...Aristotle is either unwilling or unable to offer an analysis of the element of most importance after plot, namely character, to match his study in plot-structure in scale or clarity...
--Stephen Halliwell

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