Poetics

Think about a classic piece of literature with which you are familiar (think: Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, etc.). How does the author respond to—or react against—some of Aristotle’s precepts, such as unity or the believability of tragic characters?

Poetics is a fragmentary text: The whole section on comedy is missing. Imagine that you’re writing an additional section of Poetics to examine the nature of comedy today. Try to follow Aristotle’s logical progression: What are the parts of a comedy? What’s most essential to the form? How do you make a good one? What mistakes do people make in constructing comedies?

For Aristotle, tragedy has characters who are a little bit better than real people. But tragedy should also be about people who are utterly believable. How do believability and exaggeration fit together in characterization? Why might a heightened character still be believable?

Aristotle argues that people like representative art because they like to learn—and that representation is one of the things making people people. How does non-representative art, like abstract painting, fit into Aristotle’s arguments? How might non-representative art still serve some of the purposes that Aristotle suggests—or can it?

Aristotle is deeply concerned with believable representation. Examine a recent movie, book, or television show you found unpersuasive or improbable. What aspects of the story made you doubt it? How might those aspects relate to the common authorial errors Aristotle notes in Poetics?

Aristotle holds that catharsis—the controlled release of pity and fear—is one of the major purposes of tragedy. How does catharsis relate to the other elements of tragedy Aristotle lays out, like plausibility and unity? What elements are necessary to produce catharsis?

How might a modern book or movie fit into Aristotle’s distinction between tragedy and epic? Find examples adhering as closely as possible to Aristotle’s definitions, and consider the different ways these two forms work.

What role does performance play in tragedy? How is it different to read a tragic play versus seeing it acted out? How might that difference fit into Aristotle’s ideas about catharsis and believability?