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A short read but a difficult one... lots of references to nuances of the Greek language, and ancient Greek works I had not read. Thank goodness for footnotes!
A friend had posted about this work being timeless and important, so I decided to check it out. Parts of it are timeless, though I caveat that with knowledge that an influential work such as this would of course leave a long shadow, and much of what we think of as "how stories work" might in fact have its origin here.
Timeless things:
He urges the writer to imagine themselves in the situation as they write it, similar to todays "Be In Scene".
He complains of the chorus not being integral to the plot or advance character or theme. YES. All parts of a work should do one of those things.
"The ending is the principal thing." So much yes.
Things I liked:
Splitting a story into "Complications" and "Unravelling" feels much cleaner and more natural to me than "Rising action", "Climax" and "Denouement."
"The perfection of style is to be clear without being mean." -- he means "mean" as in "course, common" but I love the translators choice and I say YES, one must avoid being mean-spirited in writing. Also, don't be too fancy or too plain. (Though nowadays I think we are a-okay with too plain, and I am too, really. There can be beauty in sparse prose. I digress.)
"The poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities." -- AKA "Shush I know explosions don't have sound in space but it WORKS in the STORY."
Marveling at his attempts to define and separate out the parts of everything, thinking about how much literary theory today relies on a mountain of groundwork doing just that.
Things I didn't like:
"Even a woman may be good, and also a slave; though the woman may be said to be an inferior being, and the slave quite worthless."
"There is a type of manly valor; but valor in a woman, or unscrupulous cleverness is inappropriate"
Banging on and on about what art is higher than another, the whole hierarchical thinking garbage that places even one word above another because Aristotle likes it more. :P
So yes, I'm glad I read it, but I wouldn't recommend it as a source for insights into how to write today. What insights it has are mostly reproduced elsewhere in a more modern context. So I'm rating it as it met my needs, someone looking for insights into Greek Theatre or the history of criticism may rate it higher.
A friend had posted about this work being timeless and important, so I decided to check it out. Parts of it are timeless, though I caveat that with knowledge that an influential work such as this would of course leave a long shadow, and much of what we think of as "how stories work" might in fact have its origin here.
Timeless things:
He urges the writer to imagine themselves in the situation as they write it, similar to todays "Be In Scene".
He complains of the chorus not being integral to the plot or advance character or theme. YES. All parts of a work should do one of those things.
"The ending is the principal thing." So much yes.
Things I liked:
Splitting a story into "Complications" and "Unravelling" feels much cleaner and more natural to me than "Rising action", "Climax" and "Denouement."
"The perfection of style is to be clear without being mean." -- he means "mean" as in "course, common" but I love the translators choice and I say YES, one must avoid being mean-spirited in writing. Also, don't be too fancy or too plain. (Though nowadays I think we are a-okay with too plain, and I am too, really. There can be beauty in sparse prose. I digress.)
"The poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities." -- AKA "Shush I know explosions don't have sound in space but it WORKS in the STORY."
Marveling at his attempts to define and separate out the parts of everything, thinking about how much literary theory today relies on a mountain of groundwork doing just that.
Things I didn't like:
"Even a woman may be good, and also a slave; though the woman may be said to be an inferior being, and the slave quite worthless."
"There is a type of manly valor; but valor in a woman, or unscrupulous cleverness is inappropriate"
Banging on and on about what art is higher than another, the whole hierarchical thinking garbage that places even one word above another because Aristotle likes it more. :P
So yes, I'm glad I read it, but I wouldn't recommend it as a source for insights into how to write today. What insights it has are mostly reproduced elsewhere in a more modern context. So I'm rating it as it met my needs, someone looking for insights into Greek Theatre or the history of criticism may rate it higher.