Short SUMMARY of Aristotle's POETRY

One of the literature treatises most important in Western culture is the Poetics of Aristotle. The Greek philosopher wrote an extensive text aimed at the standardization of the arts that emerged in Ancient Greece. In this way, a poetic and literary doctrine was created that was very influential in our culture for many centuries. In this lesson from a TEACHER we are going to offer a summary of Aristotle's Poetics in which we will talk about the main ideas of this text, as well as about the influence on European letters.

Index

1. What is the Poetics of Aristotle
2. Main ideas of Aristotle's Poetics
3. Interesting aspects of Aristotle's Poetics
4. How Aristotle's Poetics influenced literature

Arisotle's Poetics is one of the literature theory books most important of all time. It is also known as "On poetics" and it is a work written by Aristotle in the 4th century BC in which he reflects on aesthetics and two of the most popular literary genres of the moment: the Greek tragedy and the epic.

Critics consider that the initial work was divided into 2 parts: the first part that talked about tragedy and epic and the second part that dealt with comedy and poetry. However, this second part was lost and today we only know the first of them.

In the Poetics, Aristotle carries out a kind of manual about tragedy indicating what its characteristics are and the definition of gender. In the pages we also find the comparison of the genre with other arts and reflections on mimesis when creating artistic objects. Therefore, the main objective pursued by the author with the publication of this text was teach and show guide that should be followed in order to make a good literary text.

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To continue with this summary of the Poetics of Aristotle it is important that we carry out an analysis of the ideas that are exposed throughout this extensive work. To do this, we will differentiate the chapters that make up the text in which specific topics that make up the ideological corpus of the text are discussed. You should know that this work is composed of 26 chapters and they can be grouped as follows:

Mimesis and art

In the first part of the work we attend an exhibition of the arts of the moment and the characteristics of each one of them. At this time, the author places great emphasis on mimesis (imitation) that is in the world of art with respect to reality. In his words:

All (the arts) come together to be imitations. But they differ from each other by three things: by imitating with different means, or by imitating different objects, or by imitating them differently.

The way in which mimesis is used is through the language, rhythm and harmony. That is, in the case of dance, for example, the rhythm used has the objective of imitating passions, feelings, personalities, and so on. Literature is, according to Aristotle, the art that imitates reality through language.

The epic and the tragedy

In Aristotle's time, the concept of "literature" did not yet exist, that is, the art that was created through language was named with the name of "poetry" and, according to the author, there were two ways of carrying out this mimesis: by narrating the events in the first person (as occur in The Iliad wave Odyssey of Homer) or through the exposition of feelings and emotions typical of the human being. The first case, of course, would be epic poetry and the second the tragic one.

Origin of poetry

Within this summary of the Poetics of Aristotle we must also bear in mind that the author dedicates the entire chapter 4 to discovering the origin of poetry and its development. According to Aristotle, poetry arises because man tends to imitate reality and also due to the existence of rhythm and harmony. These two natural factors are what cause poetry or the art of imitation to appear through the use of language.

In this sense, the author justifies his theory by stating that noble men (nobility understood as part of a person's character, not because of their social status) imitate noble actions; Instead, the most vulgar men imitate the actions of the most vulgar men. This differentiation of types of people also gives the creation of two literary genres: verses heroic and tragic were cultivated by the nobles and comedy or iamb verses were created by the vulgar.

Origin of comedy and epic

In chapter 5 we attend the explanation of the origin of the comedy and the epic. At this time, Aristotle also details the characteristics of each of these literary genres. However, as we have already indicated at the beginning of the lesson, the 2nd part of the Poetics, which was the one that It was about comedy, it was never found and therefore we do not have a detailed analysis of said gender.

We continue with this summary of Aristotle's Poetics to speak, now, of some important themes that appear during this treatise. Here we analyze some of the most outstanding:

Differences between poetry and history

In Aristotle's time, the texts were always written in verse. Not only the lyric but also the scientific texts were constructed through verse. This caused that, at first, anyone who wrote in verse was considered a poet. But Arisotle, in his Poetics, made the distinction to differentiate those artists who wrote literature in verse and the specialists who were in charge of writing scientific texts in verse. Is not the same write literature than write science or history and, for this reason, Aristotle created the division between both modalities.

It is not up to the poet to say what has happened, but what could happen, that is, what is possible according to verisimilitude or necessity. Indeed, the historian and the poet do not differ by saying things in verse or prose (...) the difference is that one says what has happened, and the other, what could happen. That is why poetry is also more philosophical and elevated than history, since poetry says rather the general and history, the particular.

Comedy within Aristotle's Poetics

Comedy was the genre that was extensively discussed in the second part of this treatise on literary theory. However, it is believed that the text was lost during the Middle Ages and, to this day, we do not know of its existence. About the loss of this important text, the book "The name of the rose" by Umberto Eco speaks. However, although we do not have this text, it is true that during the first part there are some indications of what Aristotle considered about this genre. The author defines it as an imitation of the most ridiculous characters of the human being, that is, something like an imitation of the worst that defines our species.

The tragedy and the epic

It is important to note what Aristotle determines that differentiates both genders. Both its length and the type of metric used as well as the narrative nature of the work are different regardless of the genre we are in. For the philosopher, tragedy is the elevated, that is, idealized, imitation of an action and has 6 parts that characterize it:

1. The fable
2. Characters
3. Diction
4. The thought
5. The show
6. The melody

A tragic work is not responsible for imitating external reality but rather focuses on imitating actions performed by the human being, as well as emotions. In the last chapter of the Poetics we find that Aristotle launches a debate on whether the tragedy is superior to the epic or vice versa. He ends up defending that the tragedy is superior to the epic because it has all the elements of the epic and, in addition, it has scenic effects and music that reinforces its message.

To finish this summary of Aristotle's Poetics, it is important to talk about the influence of this text on the history of literature. It should be said that, at the time it was published, the work was not very successful since it coincided with another work by the philosopher: the Rhetoric. However, over the years, his influence was indisputable and many of the issues raised in the text were discussed: especially the concept of mimesis and the division that Aristotle proposed of the arts.

One of the first influences of Aristotle's Poetics is seen in Horatio, the poet who, following Aristotle's guidelines, created his own Poetics that it also had a normative intention but that, on this occasion, it did not focus only on the dramatic field but on the entire narrative sector. Horacio contributes some interesting concepts such as the need for there to be verisimilitude in the action of the characters and he argues that divine intervention is not always necessary to resolve the plot.

However, we have to wait until the Middle Ages to find ourselves with the first text that comments in depth on this work: we talk about In Librum Aristotelis de Arte Poetica Explanations by Francesco Robortello. From then on, many authors began to create treatises that spoke about poetics, especially within Italy.

The 3 Aristotelian units

One of the greatest influences on Aristotle's Poetics was the doctrine of the 3 units which was promoted by Agnolo Segni and V. Maggi. These doctrines were as follows:

• Time unit: all the work had to take place on the same day, in a maximum of 12 hours
• Unity of action: there could only be one action in the plot or, at most, 2 actions but they were strongly related
• Space unit: the space in which the work was developed also had to be reduced to 1 or 2

However, this rule of the 3 units is still an interpretation of Aristotle's Poetics, but it was very important for the history of Western theater. In fact, it remained for many years and in Spain it was Lope de Vega with his New Art of Making Comedies who broke with this tradition.

The influence of Aristotle's Poetics continued until the middle of the 18th century, that is, until the arrival of romantic movesince the poets of romanticism defended that the poetic act was not something creative but that it was a subjective and profound act, therefore, they discarded the thesis on the mimesis of art.

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If you want to read more articles similar to Poetics of Aristotle: summary, we recommend that you enter our category of Reading.

• Aristoteles, González, A., & González, A. (1987). Poetic arts. Taurus.
• Trueba, C. (2004). Ethics and Tragedy in Aristotle (Vol. 54). Anthropos Editorial.
• del Carmen Cabrero, M. (2006). The notion of mimesis in Aristotle. Circe of classics and modern, (10), 285-288.