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We saw in the post about Classicism that one of its characteristics is the return to the classics of Greek and Roman cultures. Before moving on to the authors of this period, let us highlight the most important authors of the classical Greco-Roman period, starting with Aristotle.
Philosopher and precursor of modern science, Aristotle was one of the greatest intellectual figures in Western history. He systematized the knowledge of Ancient Philosophy, classifying existing opinions and reflecting on them. Without knowing his work, it is not possible to understand Western philosophy. Even after the intellectual revolutions of the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment, Aristotelian concepts remained incorporated into Western thought. Unfortunately, of the more than two hundred treatises written by him, only thirty-one remain.
Aristotle was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became the structure and vehicle of both Christian scholasticism and medieval Islamic philosophy. A disciple of Plato and teacher of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great, he founded a school of philosophy called the Lyceum. In command of some of the most competent minds in Greece, he would form the first center for applied scientific research in his Lyceum, anticipating the data production apparatus of contemporary academies.
Aristotle's intellectual range is vast and covers most of the sciences and many of the arts, including biology, botany, chemistry, ethics, history, logic, metaphysics, rhetoric, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, physics, poetics, political theory, and zoology. He was the founder of formal logic (the science of the laws of thought and the art of applying them correctly in the search and demonstration of truth), conceiving for it a finished system that for centuries was considered the summation of the discipline. A pioneer in the study of zoology, some of his works remained unsurpassed until the 19th century. His Encyclopedic Corpus defined the epistemology that underlies higher education curricula around the world.
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with scientific knowledge; is the critical study of the principles, hypotheses, and results of the various sciences, with the purpose of determining their logical foundations, their value, and their objective importance.)
The Poetics
In his work Poetics, Aristotle seeks to address the several types of poetry, the structure and division of a poem into its component parts. Poetry is defined by him as a means of imitation (mimesis) that seeks to represent or duplicate life through character, emotion, or action. The work presents a careful analysis not only of the elements that make up poetry, but of the qualities that shine in good poetry.
After a period of millennial hibernation, the work would be reborn incomplete in the eyes of modern humanists. Popularized as a manual for dramatic composition, it proved crucial to the formation of Italian opera and baroque and neoclassical theater, sparking more than one literary controversy. Even today, many Hollywood screenwriters use the lessons of Poetics to improve their art.
Tragedy, epic, comedy, and poetry
Also known as On Poetics, it is one of the most important literary theory books of all time, a reflection on the aesthetics of two of the most popular literary genres at that time: Greek tragedy and epic.
Critics consider that the initial work was divided into two parts. The first about tragedy and epic and the second about comedy and poetry. The second part, however, was lost.
Aristotle created a kind of manual on tragedy, indicating its characteristics and the definition of the genre. In them, we also find a comparison of the genre with other arts and reflections on mimesis in the creation of artistic objects. The author's main objective was to teach and show the guide that must be followed to write a good literary text.
Poetics must be understood as a discussion about the way the poem is composed. The work seeks to address the diverse types of poetry, the structure of a good poem and its division into its component parts.
Mimesis and art
Mimesis is used through language, rhythm, and harmony. In the case of dance, for example, the rhythm used aims to imitate passions, feelings, personalities, etc. For Aristotle, literature is the art that imitates reality through language.
At every stage of its evolution, mimesis has been a more complex variable and a deeper concept than its conventional translation of “imitation” can convey. This concept is by no means a static conception of artistic representation. Mimesis has generated many different models of art, covering a spectrum of positions, from realism to idealism.
Under the influence of Platonic and Aristotelian models, mimesis has been a crucial point of debate among proponents of the theory of representation reflecting and simulating the world in the visual, musical, and poetic arts.
Aristotle never makes an explicit analysis of the term "imitation". Plato created the term because he believed that art was the copy of the copy, twice removed from the truth. Aristotle's conception of imitation is a corrective to Plato. Art imitates the world of man's mind, but it is not mere imitation. It is a recreation. Poetry is something more philosophical and of more relevant importance than history, as its statements are of nature and not universal, while those of history are singular.
Catharsis, one of the fundamental concepts in Poetics
In ancient Greek religion, medicine and philosophy, the word catharsis means liberation, expulsion, or purgation of what is foreign to the essence or nature of a being and which, therefore, corrupts it. In the strict religious sense, catharsis is the state of spiritual purgation that the individual seeks, for example, through confession. The emotions expressed by participants in a religious ritual are also demonstrations of catharsis or purification of the soul.
In aesthetics and theater, catharsis means purification of the spectator's spirit through the remission of their passions, especially the feelings of terror or pity experienced in contemplating the tragic spectacle.
For Aristotle, the concept of catharsis represented the purification of souls. It occurred through a great discharge of feelings and emotions, caused by viewing theatrical works. Although, for example, Oedipus's recognition is tragic, it still redeems him, as the character is no longer living in ignorance of his tragedy because he has accepted his fate.
Redemption is not the only result of catharsis; the audience also passes through it in a good drama. The hero's catharsis induces pity and fear from those in the audience, pity for the hero and fear that the hero's fate may befall the spectators themselves.
The three Aristotelian units
One of the greatest influences on Aristotle's Poetics was the doctrine of the three unities that was promoted by Agnolo Segni and V. Maggi:
Unit of time - all work should take place on the same day, within a maximum of 12 hours.
Unity of action - there could be only one action in the plot or, at most, two, but they were strongly related.
Unit of space - the space in which the work was developed also had to be reduced to one or two.
The rule of three units is still an interpretation of Poetics, but it was especially important for the history of Western theater. In fact, it continued for many years and in Spain it was Lope de Vega with his New Art of comedy that broke with this tradition.
The influence of Poetics lasted until the middle of the 18th century, that is, until the arrival of the romantic movement, as the poets of romanticism argued that the poetic act was not something creative, but rather a subjective and profound act, therefore, they discarded the thesis about the mimesis of art.
Definition of poetry itself
Poetry is an “expression of feelings,” while prose “tells a story.” This response reflects, in a way, the idea that the public has about the purpose of poetry: to express feelings, create images, suggest affections. While novels, short stories and soap operas tell stories with a beginning, middle and end.
Poetry is a medium of imitation that seeks to represent or duplicate life through character, emotion, or action. Aristotle defines poetry very broadly, including epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry, and even some types of songs. Dithyrambic refers to the dithyramb which consisted of an enthusiastic and exuberant ode addressed to the god, danced, and represented by a Choir of fifty men dressed as Satyrs.
In Greek mythology, Satyrs were minor deities of nature with the appearance of wanton and lustful men, with the tail and ears of donkeys or goats, small horns on their foreheads, flat noses, thick lips, and long beards. The Satyrs played drums, lyres and flutes and sang as they danced around a sphinx of Dionysus. Some say they wore false phalluses.
In the literary tradition, the essential distinction between prose and poetry is due not so much to the content as to the form, and to the meter (from the Greek metro, “measure”), a defined rhythmic structure on which the verse is constructed, i.e. , the poetic line.
Meter was the essential criterion in poetic creation until the 19th century, with the emergence of poetic prose and followed by the appearance of free verse, whose rhythm is devoid of any metric coercion.
Poetry, poem, and prose
Aristotle devotes the entire chapter 4 to discovering the origin of poetry and its development. According to him, poetry arises because man tends to imitate reality and because of the existence of rhythm and harmony. These two natural factors are what gives rise to poetry or the art of imitation using language.
In this sense, the author justifies his theory by indicating that noble men (nobility understood as part of a person's character, not their social condition) imitate noble actions. The most vulgar men imitate the actions of the rudest men. This differentiation of types of people also leads to the creation of two literary genres: heroic and tragic verses were cultivated by nobles and comedy, or iambic verses were created by vulgar men.
The nature of poetry
Plato, notorious for his apparent dislike of poets, refers to meter as a garment or armor that covers the “naked words” (logoi psiloi), that is, prose. In his Poetics, Aristotle recognizes meter as the common denominator of the different genres of poetry (Aristotle, Poetics 1447b 14-20).
By attaching the verb poiein to the name of the meter, they call some “elegiac poets,” others “epic poets,” not because of the representation (mimesis), but according to the meter they use. In fact, those who treat, using the meter, medicine or nature are also called this. However, there is nothing in common between Homer and Empedocles other than the meter, so it is fairer to call the latter a nature specialist than a poet.
As this passage illustrates, the use of meter in ancient Greece was much broader than the modern idea of poetry. In its first centuries, all Greek literature was poetic; even scientific and philosophical treatises, such as On Nature, by Empedocles of Acragas, were written in verse.
Aristotle was the first to question the conventional identification of text in meter = poetry, placing at the center of his definition of poetry the notion of mimesis, sometimes translated as “representation” and sometimes as “imitation.” Empedocles writes verses with a scientific (or didactic) purpose, not a mimetic one: nothing in his work imitates or represents human action. He, therefore, should not be considered a poet, but rather a “scientific writer.” The essence of the poetic, according to Aristotle, lies in its mimetic character. The metro alone is not enough for poetry.
Poetry and its rhythmic structure
The essential distinction between prose and poetry is due not so much to the content as to the form, and to the meter: a defined rhythmic structure on which the verse is built, that is, the poetic line.
Representation is natural to us, as are melody and rhythm (the meter is part of the rhythm). From the beginning, those most naturally inclined to such things developed, little by little, poetry out of improvisation.
Here we have a crucial point of Aristotelian aesthetics, which, at no point, claims itself as art for art's sake. Mimesis, inherent to human nature, does not only bring pleasure to man, but it is also a way of learning. Poetry, as a mimetic expression, maintains this function and thus has moral importance.
Currently, Aristotle's definitions may seem outdated when art no longer always has a mimetic duty and is considered, since Nietzsche, independent of morality. But, in a time where history is written in tweets, where journalists have become ideologues and YouTubers, it is comforting to remember the old philosopher and know that, at least in poetry, there are truths that remain unchanged.
The truth of Oedipus Rex is not that of an ancient king of Thebes (who probably never existed) who killed his father and married his mother. What the viewer (or reader) learns when seeing the characters' actions and their consequences represented is the truth about human arrogance, about the dangers of power, about the inexorability of destiny.
Differences between poetry and story
In Aristotle's time, texts were always written in verse. Scientific texts were also constructed through verse. This meant that, initially, anyone who wrote in verse was considered a poet. But Aristotle, in his Poetics, made a distinction between artists who wrote literature in verse and specialists who wrote scientific texts in verse. Writing literature is different from writing science or history and, therefore, Aristotle created the division between the two modalities.
The poet's duty, he said, is not to tell what happened, but what could happen, by necessity or probability. The historian reports facts and events, many of which are the result of chance or cannot be explained. It is up to the poet to express, in his representation of these facts and the men who participate in them, that which, in the circumstances and in the action of a man, is useful to all men (Poetic, 1451a 38 – 1451b 10). This is why poetry is also more philosophical and elevated than history because poetry speaks of the general and history speaks of the particular.
The myth that generated the Greek tragedy
Greek tragedy was born from the cult of Dionysus. There are many legends about the birth of Dionysus. The main one is that he was born in Thebes and was the son of Zeus and a mortal woman called Semele, daughter of Kadmos (king of Thebes). Heras, wife of Zeus, was very jealous because of the affair between her husband and Semele. She convinced Semele to beg Zeus to appear before her with all his power. Zeus, willing to please his lover, appeared in front of her accompanied by thunder and lightning. As a result, he caused a fire in Semele's house and caused the death of his lover. Zeus collected the unfinished fruit of her love from Semele's womb and placed it on her thigh until the gestation was complete.
When the child was born, Zeus entrusted him to the Nymphs and Satyrs of Mount Nisa. And in a cave, surrounded by dense vegetation, the son of Semele and Zeus lived happily. Once, Dionysus collected bunches of grapes, squeezed the fruits into golden cups and drank with the Nymphs and Satyrs, who, drunk together with Dionysus, danced in Bacchic delirium (of the god Bacchus) and fell to the ground in a faint.
The devotees of Dionysus, after the dizzying dance, believed they would come out of themselves through the process of ecstasy. This coming out of oneself, overcoming the human condition, required diving into Dionysus, through the process of enthusiasm.
The simple and mortal man (Anthropos), in ecstasy and enthusiasm, communing with immortality, became a hero, a man who surpassed the meter, that is, crossed the invisible line that separates the human from the divine.
Tragedy, comedy, and epic poetry
The form of poetry to which most attention is devoted in Poetics is tragedy. Tragedy, according to Aristotle, came from the efforts of poets to present men in a “nobler” or “better” light than in real life. Comedy, on the other hand, shows a “lower type” of people and reveals that humans are worse than average. Epic poetry, on the other hand, imitates noble men like tragedy, but it only has one type of mediator – unlike tragedy, which can have several – and that is narrative.
There are some differences between tragedy and epic. An epic poem does not use music or spectacle to achieve its cathartic effect. Epics can usually be presented in one sitting, while tragedies often use other forms of mediators to achieve the speech rhythms of different characters.
Comedy in Poetics
Comedy was the genre extensively treated in the second part of Poetics. However, the text is believed to have been lost during the Middle Ages and, to this day, we are unaware of its existence. The book The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco talks about the loss of this important text. However, although we do not have the text, it is true that during the first part there are some indications of what Aristotle considered about this genre. He defines it as an imitation of the most ridiculous human characters, that is, something like an imitation of the worst that defines our species.
Tragedy, the imitation of painful realities
Tragedy, according to Aristotle, is an imitation of a serious and complete action, endowed with extension, in language seasoned for each of the parties (imitation that is carried out) through actors and that operates, thanks to terror and pity, the purification of such emotions. For the author, tragedy is the imitation of painful realities, and its raw material is myth, in its raw form. It is worth saying that the Western theory of drama still maintains strong ties with its reflections on Poetics and they still remain timely and valid.
The epic and tragedy
At the time of Aristotle, the concept of literature did not yet exist, that is, the art that was created through language was called poetry. According to the author, there were two ways to carry out this mimesis:
Epic poetry - through the narration of facts in the first person (as occurs in Homer's Iliad or Odyssey).
Tragedy - through the exposure of human feelings and emotions.
It is important to highlight what differentiates the two genres. Both its length, the type of metrics used, as well as the narrative character of the work are different regardless of the genre we are in. For the philosopher, tragedy is the elevated imitation, that is, idealized, of an action and has 6 parts that characterize it:
1. The fable
2. The characters
3. The diction
4. The thought
5. The show
6. The melody
A tragic play is not responsible for imitating external reality, but focuses on imitating actions performed by human beings as well as emotions. In the last chapter of Poetics the author launches a debate on whether tragedy is superior to epic or vice versa. He ends up arguing that tragedy is superior because it has all the elements of the epic and, in addition, it has scenic effects and music that reinforce its message.
Six elements of tragedy
Plot - is “the soul” of tragedy because action is fundamental to the meaning of a drama, and all other elements are subsidiary. It is necessary to have a beginning, a middle and an end. It must also be universal in meaning, have a determinate structure, and maintain a unity of theme and purpose.
In other words, to create a good tragedy, the unity of the plot must be maintained. And this means a well-organized sequence of necessary or probable events. The beginning must not follow previous events, and the end must tie up all loose ends and not produce the necessary or consequences.
Thought - means what a character says in each circumstance, followed by musical diction specific to the show.
Plot - is the soul of the tragedy, and the character comes in the background. Plot elements include:
Completeness - refers to the need for a tragedy to have a beginning, middle and end. A beginning is defined as an origin by which something naturally happens.
Magnitude – simply refers to length (duration) – the tragedy must be of a length that can be easily embraced by memory.
Unity - refers to the centralization of all plot action around a common theme or idea.
Determinate structure - refers to the plot and sequence of causal and imitative events.
Universality - refers to the need for a character to act in accordance with the way human beings would act or react in each situation.
The tragic hero is neither an eminently good nor a bad man. He must be a model of virtue who is brought down by adversity, the origin of which lies in his own “fragility” or flaw, which is evident from the beginning of a play, which the audience must be able to identify. Misfortune is caused by an error in judgment. Oedipus is his example of a hero who undergoes this reversal and therefore has a cathartic self-recognition.
Turnaround - it is the modification that determines the inversion of actions, and this must take place, returning to our formula, according to what is credible or necessary, as occurs in Oedipus: the messenger arrives thinking that he will comfort Oedipus and free him from the terror he feels in face of his mother, but as it reveals who Oedipus really was, it produces precisely the opposite....”
Realization of the tragedy
We can say that the tragedy only occurs when the metro is crossed. It is the moment when the actor transforms into another. An example of this were the Maenads, priestesses of the god, the Bacchantes, the Possesses, also called “furious” or “impetuous,” who became delirious when possessed by the god Dionysus.
Characters who suffered from hubris, which is a common theme in mythology and Greek tragedies, suffered the consequences of their transgression and were punished by the gods. Hubris or hybris is a Greek concept that can be translated as "everything that goes beyond measure; excessiveness" and that currently alludes to excessive confidence, exaggerated pride, presumption, arrogance, or insolence (originally against the gods), which often ends up being punished.
The tragedy occurs when man overtakes the meter, and this gives rise to the nemesis, divine jealousy, causing the blindness of the hero's reason. He will be subdued without appeal by moira, that is, by madness.
Two important moments in the tragedy
First, the rising action, which leads to the climax, known as the complication. Secondly, the denouement or development that follows the climax. This double movement follows the theory of poetic unity.
The complication leads to the revelation of the unity at the heart of the work. After this revelation, everything moves towards the denouement, in which the meaning and ramifications of unity are explored and resolved.
Epic - single and complete action with beginning, middle and end
An epic must deal with a single event. The action must be unique, complete, that is, with a beginning, middle and end. Like tragedy, epic can also be divided into two groups: simple and complex. The simple epic focuses on the moral character of the hero, while the complex epic focuses on suffering and passion.
The heroic hexameter (is a form of literary poetic measure consisting of six metric feet per verse, in which the first four feet can be dactyl or spondee; and where the fifth foot will be dactylic, and the sixth, spondee − as in the Iliad) is the right meter for an epic. An epic poet should speak as little as possible in his own person. In an epic the element of the marvelous must be introduced. Probable possibilities should be preferred to unlikely possibilities.
Aristotle discusses the relative merits of Epic and Tragedy. The Epic is free from vulgarity and action; while in tragedy, vulgarity is the fault of the actors. Aristotle insists that tragedy is the best form of art, as it has all the elements of the epic. In addition, it also has music and shows. Its effect is more compact and concentrated, and it also has more unity than the epic poem. Therefore, he concludes that tragedy is the best form of art.
After a digression on the nomenclature of some literary genres, Aristotle concludes:
There are also arts that use all the means mentioned here, rhythm, melody and meter, such as dithyrambic poetry, nomic poetry, tragedy and comedy. (Poetics, 1447b 24-27).
Aristotle, unfortunately, does not deal with all types of literature and their relationship with mimesis (most of the first book of the Poetics is in fact dedicated only to tragedy). Applying Aristotelian reasoning to modern terminology, we would arrive at the following definitions:
Poetry is the art that uses, as a means of performing mimesis, language and rhythm.
Some poetic genres use only language and rhythm (such as epic), others use language, rhythm and melody (such as sung poetry genres).
Literary prose or “fiction”
The art that performs mimesis using pure language, without rhythm, is what today we would call literary prose or fiction and would encompass the novel, the short story, the novel, etc. Non-fiction, that is, scientific, philosophical, essayistic prose, etc., makes use of pure language, but does not perform mimesis. Ancient philosophical treatises in verse, such as that of Empedocles, meet the formal conditions of poetry, as they use language and rhythm, but they are also not mimetic and thus exclude themselves from Aristotle's poetic theory.
How Poetics influenced literature
It must be said that, at the time it was published, the work was not successful, as it coincided with another work by the philosopher: Rhetoric. However, over the years, its influence was indisputable and many of the issues raised in the text were debated: especially the concept of mimesis and the division of the arts proposed by Aristotle.
We see one of the first influences of Poetics in Horace, the poet who, following Aristotle's guidelines, created his own Poetics that also had a normative intention, but, on this occasion, did not focus only on the dramatic, but on the entire narrative sector. Horácio brings up some interesting concepts such as the need for credibility in the characters' actions and argues that divine intervention is not always necessary to resolve the plot.
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