The Poetics in its Aristotelian Context

Pierre Destrée, Malcolm Heath, Dana L. Munteanu, Pierre Destrée, Malcolm Heath, Dana L. Munteanu

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367366117
• eBook ISBN: 9781000053487
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

This volume integrates aspects of the Poetics into the broader corpus of Aristotelian philosophy. It both deals with some old problems raised by the treatise, suggesting possible solutions through contextualization, and also identifies new ways in which poetic concepts could relate to Aristotelian philosophy.

In the past, contextualization has most commonly been used by scholars in order to try to solve the meaning of difficult concepts in the Poetics (such as catharsis, mimesis, or tragic pleasure). In this volume, rather than looking to explain a specific concept, the contributors observe the concatenation of Aristotelian ideas in various treatises in order to explore some aesthetic, moral and political implications of the philosopher's views of tragedy, comedy and related genres. Questions addressed include: Does Aristotle see his interest in drama as part of his larger research on human natures? What are the implications of tragic plots dealing with close family members for the polis? What should be the role of drama and music in the education of citizens? How does dramatic poetry relate to other arts and what are the ethical ramifications of the connections? How specific are certain emotions to literary genres and how do those connect to Aristotle's extended account of pathe? Finally, how do internal elements of composition and language in poetry relate to other domains of Aristotelian thought?

The Poetics in its Aristotelian Context offers a fascinating new insight to the Poetics, and will be of use to anyone working on the Poetics, or Aristotelian philosophy more broadly.

Part 1
Aristotle’s aesthetics

Poetry and other arts – tradition and innovation

1 Poetry and biology

The anatomy of tragedy

Andrea Capra

The Poetics may look like “un bloc erratique,” as Victor Goldshmidt once called it.¹ In part, this depends on its strange isolation within the corpus, in that the Poetics, as we shall see, is not served by the abundant cross-references that help situate other works. To make things worse, in antiquity the Poetics was never the subject of a commentary, while Aristotle’s other works devoted to poetry were soon lost. By contrast, in modern times the relentless proliferation of non-philosophical readings has famously turned the Poetics into a handbook for playwrights or, more recently, into a historical/critical essay of sorts, thus severing it from Aristotle’s philosophical project. This complicated background has prompted a widespread “humanistic” approach to the Poetics, with a focus on Rhetoric and, more recently, on Politics and on the Ethics.² While emphasizing the relevance of these works to certain aspects of the Poetics, this chapter circumscribes their explanatory power. Unlike tragedy’s lesser constituents discussed in Poetics 6, Aristotle’s innovative notion of muthos, i.e. what is truly specific of poetry, proves to be hardly at home in the more “humanistic” areas of Aristotle’s thought. In search of an alternative path, I unravel the pre-Aristotelian premises that tacitly underlie what Malcolm Heath calls Aristotle’s “natural history of poetry.”³ Moreover, I survey certain templates of reasoning shared by Aristotelian poetics and biology, whose scientific twist, I argue, entails an unnoticed reference to Plato’s notion of poetic muthos, which in the course of Poetics comes to be superseded. In sum, this chapter advances a novel two-level model, whereby the “lower” parts of the poetic art confirm the expected “humanistic” affiliation, whereas its pinnacle, namely the new notion of muthos, turns out to be closely parallel Aristotle’s biological thinking.⁴

1.1 The isolation of the Poetics

Aristotle is usually fond of pointing to other works of his, thus creating a rich network of cross-references that help situate a given work within his “encyclopedia.”⁵ However, this is not the case with the Poetics: surprisingly, no general preface orientates the reader,⁶ and references to Aristotle’s other works are few and frustratingly elusive. Let me briefly review them:⁷

1. I shall discuss epic mimesis and comedy later (hysteron eroumen). But let us deal with tragedy by taking up the definition of its essential nature which arises out of the things that have so far been said (ek tōn eirēmenōn). Tragedy, then, is a representation of an action which is serious and complete, and of a certain magnitude – in language which is garnished in various forms in its different parts – in the mode of dramatic enactment, not narrative – and through the arousal of pity and fear effecting (perainousa) the catharsis of such emotions. (Poet. 6.1449b21–8)
2. In addition to observing these points the poet must guard against contraventions of the perceptions which necessarily attach to poetic art, since there are many ways of making mistakes in relation to these. But I have discussed these matters adequately in my published writings (en tois ekdedomenois logois). (Poet. 15.1454b15–18)
3. Having discussed the other elements, it remains for me to discuss style and thought. The details of thought can be left to my discourses on rhetoric (en tois peri rhētorikēs keisthō), since they belong more integrally to that subject. Thought pertains to all those effects which must be produced by the spoken language; its functions are demonstration; refutation; the arousal of emotions such as pity, fear, anger, and such like; and arguing for the importance or unimportance of things. (Poet. 19.1456a33–b2)
4. These sounds are distinguishable by the shape of the mouth; the points of contact; the presence or absence of the aspirate, length, and shortness; and pitch-accent (acute, grave, or intermediate): detailed consideration of all these points belongs to works on meter (en tois metrikois prosēkei theōrein). (Poet. 20.1456b31–4)

Point 1 is a familiar and notorious riddle: by and large, the controversy about the existence of a second book of the Poetics stems from these words.⁸ Whatever we make of modern attempts at reconstructing it, no extant work of Aristotle corresponds to this reference, which in any case would be an internal one, pointing to another section of the Poetics itself. Point 2 is also tricky, but most scholars construe Aristotle’s words as a reference to his lost dialogue About the Poets. In the entire corpus, this is the only instance of the expression “published works” (ekdedomenoi logoi).⁹ However, the expression is found in a letter that Aristotle allegedly wrote to Alexander, containing the famous reference to his akroamatic writings and the distinction between published and unpublished works (Sixth Epistle). Point 3 is the clearest: this is an unequivocal reference to the Rhetoric, and I shall discuss it later. Point 4, however, is very dubious. Aristotle’s words are vague¹⁰: they may refer to metrical matters or, as Stephen Halliwell translates them, to works on meter.¹¹ But even if that were the case, it would be by no means certain Aristotle’s reference should point to his own works. At any rate, we know nothing about metrical writings by Aristotle.

All in all, we are left with a single reference to another known work, and this is the Rhetoric. Let me note that the preference given to this work is, so to say, reciprocated, in that the Rhetoric features no fewer than five references to the Poetics.¹² First, Aristotle claims he has addressed the issue of laughter in the Poetics (Rhet. 1.11.1372a1–3); second, he has also discussed style (lexis) there, albeit partially (Rhet. 3.1.1404a37–9); third, he refers to nouns as a part of style he has discussed in the Poetics (Rhet. 3.2.1404b5–8); fourth, he mentions metaphors as a subject more pertinent to the Poetics (Rhet. 3.2.1405a3–6); fifth and last, he touches again on laughter and its divisions, which he claims he has discussed in the Poetics. The two references to laughter, of course, throw further fuel on the argument about the second book of the Poetics. The other references tell us that style is something shared by poetry and rhetoric. This may not seem very helpful, but together with Aristotle’s citation of the Rhetoric in the Poetics, they may help pinpoint the specificity of poetry against speech as such: I will return to that later.

Apart from the five references in the Rhetoric, Aristotle cites the Poetics only another time, in an important passage towards the end of the Politics (8.7.1341b32–45). Once again, the reference is baffling. Aristotle promises a clear discussion of catharsis in the Poetics, which is precisely what nobody has ever managed to find there.¹³

1.2 The Politics

Perhaps unsurprisingly, my survey results in a rather poor conclusion. Unless something can be made of Aristotle’s baffling promise in the Politics, all we learn is that thought (dianoia) and style (lexis) are common to poetry and speech: hardly a great achievement. The Poetics is in fact, at least prima facie, an isolated work. At best, the Poetics shares with the Rhetoric a reciprocal, if rather poor, consonance,¹⁴ but today hardly anyone would subscribe to Süß’s idea that Aristotle’s Poetics is “eine Ergänzung der Rhetoric.”¹⁵ What about the Politics, though? Does the Poetics “reciprocate”? The Poetics never mentions the Politics, so the answer should be in the negative. However, one interesting way to tackle the isolation of the Poetics lies precisely in an attempt to show that the Poetics, after all, does refer to the Politics.

Let us get back to the catharsis passage, point 1 above. A few years ago, Pierluigi Donini has argued that this passage refers back to the Politics, which would provide the required “reciprocal” link to that work.¹⁶ In the light of a number of good parallels, Donini interprets the participle perainousa as meaning “to complete” rather than “to effect” and argues that in fact tragedy “completes” the musical catharsis as described in the Politics. Thus, he construes “the things that have been said” as a reference to the discussion of catharsis found in the Politics. Donini argues that this work discusses the educational benefits of catharsis at an early age, so that tragedy can be construed as the crowning touch, the mature counterpart of that educational process. The emphasis is on the intellectual force of tragedy, and on the understanding that it requires from both audiences and readers. All of a sudden, this conclusion would break up the isolation of the Poetics, and poetry would return to be a social and political phenomenon, only at a more advanced and elitist level.

Donini’s solution is very tempting, as it would solve many thorny problems related to catharsis. Nevertheless, I think the temptation should be resisted. I will not get into general problems such as the role of catharsis in the Politics, where the notion is first introduced as a therapy to cure abnormal emotions and is distinguished from mathēsis (8.6.1341a21–4). I will limit myself to a remark about the expression found in the Poetics, namely “the things that have been said” (ek tōn eirēmenōn). At a formal level, a TLG survey of the almost 100 instances of this quasi-formulaic expression in Aristotle’s works would show that it refers to something found in the proximities of the text, within the same work, as is immediately clear in the two other instances found in the Poetics (9.1451a36 and 26.1461b24–5).¹⁷ This seriously undermines Don...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• List of common abbreviations used
• Introduction
• Part 1 Aristotle’s aesthetics: poetry and other arts – tradition and innovation
• Part 2 Poetics, politics, and ethics: links and independence
• Part 3 Language and content: poetic puzzles in philosophical context
• Afterword
• References
• Index locorum
• Index
• Proper names