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Plato was not a fan of art that wasn't strictly utilitarian in nature. He criticized Homer’s plays about the gods being capricious and vengeful, because stories full of such passion and drama are intended not “to please or to affect the rational principal of the soul”, but rather the irrational, appetitive part. Because art has the power to stir intense emotions and corrupt the mind, he believed that art needs a moral component. Aristotle also believed that all art, including theatre and poetry, are imitations (forms of mimesis) of that which already exists. Unlike Plato, though, he saw value in art's imitative capacity because “imitations come naturally to human beings from childhood […] having a strong propensity for imitation and learning their earliest lessons through imitation”. It's how we learn to experience and respond to the world.
Plato thought that only art that teaches positive values like virtue and courage is useful, while Aristotle believed that dramatic poetry such as Sophocles’ plays were useful in a separate way. He disagreed with Plato’s opinion that narrative is better than poetry, stating instead that “poetry tends to express universals” – by which he means “the kind of speech or action that is consonant with a person of a given kind in accordance with probability or necessity”. It has the ability to discard the mundane and irrelevant aspects of real life to more easily represent the essential. While he agreed that tragedies and dramatic poetry appealed to the appetitive soul, he viewed this as advantageous, because it means that art can serve as a medium to get rid of negative emotions in a controlled, healthy way: effecting through pity and fear the purification of such emotions. This is known as catharsis, the arousal of powerful and irrational emotions in order to purge them. It's why we love horror movies, or are unable to staring looking at car crashes on the highway as we drive. There is a powerful voyeuristic fascination that accompanies the experience of watching terrible events unfold on others. Aristotle understood this; many years later these ideas about catharsis were also adopted and modernized by Freud.
The great thing about this work is how universal and timeless its principles are. It establishes specific guidelines that should be followed to create art that most effectively fulfills its purpose. For example, a tragedy should not be overly vulgar, invoking fear and pity for the sake of sensation or spectacle (such as with unnecessary violence). Rather, the plot should trigger a deeper emotion in the audience, filling them with horror and pity because of their understanding of the events in the story, instead of simply through shock value. Plays where terrible things happen to a hero held in good esteem, who has simply made an error out of ignorance, is more tragic and creates more fear and pity in the audience, than the character whose error is made willfully. When bad things happen to a character who is decidedly evil (like Medea), the audience feels more disgust than pity for them. But “if the action is performed in ignorance […] there is nothing disgusting in this, and the recognition has great emotional impact”. He talks about the three unities of action, setting, and time and how a necessary cohesion between the three is critical to a unified story.
This was my first Aristotle book and I thought it was a very interesting introduction to critical literary theory! Took me a while to get through because it was pretty dry, but was worth the time.
Plato thought that only art that teaches positive values like virtue and courage is useful, while Aristotle believed that dramatic poetry such as Sophocles’ plays were useful in a separate way. He disagreed with Plato’s opinion that narrative is better than poetry, stating instead that “poetry tends to express universals” – by which he means “the kind of speech or action that is consonant with a person of a given kind in accordance with probability or necessity”. It has the ability to discard the mundane and irrelevant aspects of real life to more easily represent the essential. While he agreed that tragedies and dramatic poetry appealed to the appetitive soul, he viewed this as advantageous, because it means that art can serve as a medium to get rid of negative emotions in a controlled, healthy way: effecting through pity and fear the purification of such emotions. This is known as catharsis, the arousal of powerful and irrational emotions in order to purge them. It's why we love horror movies, or are unable to staring looking at car crashes on the highway as we drive. There is a powerful voyeuristic fascination that accompanies the experience of watching terrible events unfold on others. Aristotle understood this; many years later these ideas about catharsis were also adopted and modernized by Freud.
The great thing about this work is how universal and timeless its principles are. It establishes specific guidelines that should be followed to create art that most effectively fulfills its purpose. For example, a tragedy should not be overly vulgar, invoking fear and pity for the sake of sensation or spectacle (such as with unnecessary violence). Rather, the plot should trigger a deeper emotion in the audience, filling them with horror and pity because of their understanding of the events in the story, instead of simply through shock value. Plays where terrible things happen to a hero held in good esteem, who has simply made an error out of ignorance, is more tragic and creates more fear and pity in the audience, than the character whose error is made willfully. When bad things happen to a character who is decidedly evil (like Medea), the audience feels more disgust than pity for them. But “if the action is performed in ignorance […] there is nothing disgusting in this, and the recognition has great emotional impact”. He talks about the three unities of action, setting, and time and how a necessary cohesion between the three is critical to a unified story.
This was my first Aristotle book and I thought it was a very interesting introduction to critical literary theory! Took me a while to get through because it was pretty dry, but was worth the time.
informative
medium-paced
informative
slow-paced
Boring but there was useful theory.
challenging
informative
fast-paced
informative
fast-paced
I was a creative writing major in college, but I was never assigned this book to read--unforgivable. It contains much useful theory, and has had a great impact since its resurfacing in the Middle Ages.
This just makes me think about how much of literature was lost to history. If these were just his notes, what were his actual, polished works like 0-0
This just makes me think about how much of literature was lost to history. If these were just his notes, what were his actual, polished works like 0-0