Six part of Tragedy

Aristotle’s Poetics: Six Parts of Tragedy

Aristotle provides a definition of tragedy that we can break up into seven parts: (1) it involves mimesis; (2) it is serious; (3) the action is complete and with magnitude; (4) it is made up of language with the "aesthetic ornaments" of rhythm and harmony; (5) these "aesthetic ornaments" are not used uniformly throughout, but are introduced in separate parts of the work, so that, for instance, some bits are spoken in verse and other bits are sung; (6) it is performed rather than narrated; and (7) it arouses the emotions of pity and fear and accomplishes a catharsis (purification or purgation or tempering/moderation or satisfaction) of these emotions.

Next, Aristotle asserts that any tragedy can be divided into six component parts, and that every tragedy is made up of these six parts with nothing else besides. There is (a) the spectacle (opsis), which is the overall visual appearance of the stage and the actors. The means of imitation (language, rhythm, and harmony) can be divided into (b) melody/songs (melos), and (c) diction, (lexis) which has to do with the composition of the verses/versification of dialogues. The agents (medium) of the action can be understood in terms of (d) character(ethos) and (e) thought. Thought (dianoia) seems to denote the intellectual qualities of an agent while character seems to denote the moral qualities (ethics) of an agent. Finally, there is (f) the plot(Fable), or mythos, which is the harmonious combination/arrangements of incidents and actions in the story.

Aristotle argues that, among these six, the plot is the most important. To the question whether plot makes a tragedy or character, Aristotle argues that without action there cannot be tragedy at the same time character/s are required to do action. The characters serve to advance the action of the story, not vice versa. The ends we pursue in life, our happiness and our misery, all take the form of action. Tragedy is written not eerily to imitate man but to imitate man in action. That is, according to Aristotle, happiness consists in a certain kind of activity rather than in a certain quality of character. 

* It (Plot) is in the words of David Daiches: ‘the way in which the action works itself out, the whole casual chain which leads to the final outcome.’

Diction and thought are also less significant than plot: a series of well-written speeches have nothing like the force of a well-structured tragedy. Aristotle notes that forming a solid plot is far more difficult than creating good characters or diction.

Having asserted that the plot is the most important of the six parts of tragedy, he ranks the remainder as follows, from most important to least: character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle. Character reveals the individual motivations of the characters in the play, what they want or don't want, and how they react to certain situations, and this is more important to Aristotle than thought, which deals on a more universal level with reasoning and general truths. Melody/songs and spectacle are simply pleasurable accessories, but melody is more important to the tragedy than spectacle: a pretty spectacle can be arranged without a play, and usually matters of set and costume aren't the occupation of the poet anyway.

Plot is the “first principle,” the most important feature of tragedy – the soul of tragedy: 

Aristotle defines plot as “the harmonious arrangement of the incidents”: i.e., not the story itself but the way the incidents are presented to the audience, the structure of the play. According to Aristotle, tragedies where the outcome depends on a tightly constructed cause-and-effect chain of actions are superior to those that depend primarily on the character and personality of the protagonist.

* Thus, Prof. Else* rightly observes “For plot is the structure of the play, and around which the material parts are laid, just as the soul is the structure of a man.”(*A.G. George: Critics and Criticism)

* David Daiches: “Tragedy is an imitation not of human beings but of action and life, of happiness and misery. Happiness and misery are realized in action; the goal of life is an action, not a quality. Men owe their qualities to their characters; but it is in their action that they are happy or the reverse. And so the stage figures do not act in order to represent their character; they include their character for the sake of their action.”

Plots that meet this criterion will have the following qualities:

1. The plot must be “a whole,” with a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning, called by modern critics the incentive moment, must start the cause-and-effect chain but not be dependent on anything outside the compass of the play (i.e., its causes are downplayed but its effects are stressed). The middle, or climax, must be caused by earlier incidents and itself cause the incidents that follow it (i.e., its causes and effects are stressed). The end, or resolution, must be caused by the preceding events but not lead to other incidents outside the compass of the play (i.e., its causes are stressed but its effects downplayed); the end should therefore solve or resolve the problem created during the incentive moment (context). Aristotle calls the cause-and-effect chain leading from the incentive moment to the climax the “tying up” (desis), in modern terminology the complication. He therefore terms the more rapid cause-and-effect chain from the climax to the resolution the “unraveling” (lusis), in modern terminology the dénouement (context).

2. The plot must be “complete,” having “unity of action.” By this Aristotle means that the plot must be structurally self-contained, with the incidents bound together by internal necessity, each action leading inevitably to the next with no outside intervention, no deus ex machina (context). According to Aristotle, the worst kinds of plots are “‘episodic,’ in which the episodes or acts succeed one another without probable or necessary sequence”; the only thing that ties together the events in such a plot is the fact that they happen to the same person. Playwrights should exclude coincidences from their plots; if some coincidence is required, it should “have an air of design,” i.e., seems to have a fated connection to the events of the play (context). Similarly, the poet should exclude the irrational or at least keep it “outside the scope of the tragedy,” i.e., reported rather than dramatized (context). While the poet cannot change the myths that are the basis of his plots, he “ought to show invention of his own and skillfully handle the traditional materials” to create unity of action in his plot (context). Application to Oedipus the King. 
3. The plot must be “of a certain magnitude,” both quantitatively (length, complexity) and qualitatively (“seriousness” and universal significance). Aristotle argues that plots should not be too brief; the more incidents and themes that the playwright can bring together in an organic unity, the greater the artistic value and richness of the play. Also, the more universal and significant the meaning of the play, the more the playwright can catch and hold the emotions of the audience, the better the play will be (context).
4. The plot may be either simple or complex (pg. 19, Butcher), although complex is better. Simple plots have only a “change of fortune” (catastrophe). Complex plots have both “reversal of intention (situation)” (peripeteia) and “recognition” (anagnorisis) connected with the catastrophe. (pg. 20 Aristotle’s Poetics by S.H. Butcher) Both peripeteia and anagnorisis turn upon surprise. Aristotle explains that a peripeteia occurs when a character produces an effect opposite to that which he intended to produce or reversal of fortune, while an anagnorisis “is a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined for good or bad fortune.” He argues that the best plots combine these two as part of their cause-and-effect chain (i.e., the peripeteia leads directly to the anagnorisis); this in turns creates the catastrophe, leading to the final “scene of suffering” (context). 
5. Aristotle goes to the extent of saying that ‘without action there cannot be a tragedy; there may be without character’. (Tragedy is possible without a character but not without action). He explains it by saying that there can be tragedies which ‘fail in the rendering of character’. Furthermore, ‘if you string together a set speeches expressive of character and well finished in point of diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however, deficient in these respect yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents.’ (examples sited by Aristotle of modern poets(?) and from paintings of Polygnotus, who includes character and action and Zeuxis, who omits character.
6. Aristotle argues that if you put together group of speeches (soliloquies form Shakespeare) will not make a tragedy though the reading and performing may be entertaining.

• He further argues that Peripety (Reversal) and anognorisis (Discovery) – most powerful means for tragic effect is part of plot, not of character. Sophocles’s Oedipus the King is regarded by Aristotle as an instance of ideal plot for it involves both Peripety and Discovery.

7. Greek plays – man doomed before his birth – character is not destiny.
8. Play without good plot is a play without action – nothing happens – there would be no drama at all.

Modern critics do not agree with Aristotle – logically speaking, character is prior to action and there can be no action without character. The events have no meaning if they do not arise from a human will. However, one should not forget that Aristotle has written it in accordance with the ancient Greek plays. In these plays, characters were figures known to the audience and the outline of these personalities were fixed, so that the dramatist was not at liberty to modify or elaborate their conventional configurations. Under such circumstance, the whole interest lay in the arrangement of incidents.

Principle of probability and necessity:

Explain with illustrations Aristotle’s principles of Probability and Necessity, which should govern a good plot.

• The Plot must deal with an action – incidents and situations – that is possible according to the laws of probability and necessity.
• The poet is not supposed to say what has actually happened, but he deals with what may probably or necessarily happen under the given circumstances.
• T.R. Henn: “The episodic plot is one composed of fortuitous incidents which do not conform, as a composite whole, to any coherent pattern. In order to achieve this coherence, the sequence must be necessary or probable.
• Henn: “Now the necessary can always be accounted for, either in terms of the fulfillment of prophesies, or in a tragedy which adheres strictly either to past history, or fable accepted by the audience as historical, for what has happened is creditable, otherwise it would not have happened. Both Oedipus and Julius Caesar have their firm roots in history.” “The probable can be surmised, given the initial factors and some information as to the past-present relationship at the outset of the play.”
• Atkins: “…and moreover, what is thus depicted is not what actually happened (i.e. history), but what would logically and inevitably happen, in other words, things which are permanently and universally true (i.e. poetry). This, then, is what is known as Aristotle’s law of probability.
• So there are following possibilities: Probable and possible, Probable but impossible, improbable and possible, improbable and impossible
• Probability and necessity imply that there should be no unrelated events and incidents i.e. the various events must be inter-related with a sort of artistic logic. Incidents must follow each other inevitably and nothing should be left to chance. Even if the poet introduced chance and co-incidence, it should emerge from plot and character and law of cause and effect should be followed.
• Eg. The statue of Mitys at Argos kills the man who had caused Mitys's death by falling on him at a festival.
• The well-knit plot does not have episodic plots ‘in which the acts succeed one another without probable or necessary sequence’. (Dr. Faustus). If the plot deals with something improbable, he must have skill to make it convincing and credible. The dramatist must procure ‘willing suspension of disbelief’.
• S.H.Butcher: ‘The best tragic effect depends on the combination of the inevitable and the unexpected.’
• There are some seeming contradictions in Aristotle's view regarding impossible or improbable events. On the one hand, he claims that they can enhance a story by making it more astonishing. He warns that they can strain a story's credibility if overdone, but he does seem to applaud their prudent application. On the other hand, Aristotle is firmly insistent on the unity of plot, which demands that events be connected by a probable or necessary causal sequence. How, then, can improbable, or even impossible, events be an acceptable part of this sequence? In Chapter 24, Aristotle asserts that a story should never contain improbable events. If a plot would be ruined by removing these improbable events, then that just reflects poorly on the plot. If the improbable events can be removed, then it is absurd to include them in the first place.
• A clue to solving this problem lies in a claim Aristotle makes just before the passage alluded to in Chapter 24, and again near the end of Chapter 25: a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility. The key, it seems, is not so much that the sequence of the plot be true to life but that it be plausible. When Aristotle condemns improbable events, he is primarily concerned with events in the plot that seem out of place. Provided the plot maintains its own internal logic, it can get away with depicting the improbable.
• We might link this discussion of plot to what Aristotle says about inconsistency in character: a character may behave inconsistently provided he is consistent in his inconsistency. That is, we should be able to perceive an internal logic that drives the character to irrational behavior. 
• Similarly, a plot may be improbable provided it is convincing in its improbabilities. All good science fiction writers know that they can depict the improbable provided they do so in a consistent and convincing manner.

What is the difference in story and plot of Oedipus?

• See Freytag's Triangle for a diagram that illustrates Aristotle's ideal plot structure and Plot of Oedipus the King for an application of this diagram to Sophocles’ play. 

Character has the second place in importance. In a perfect tragedy, character will support plot, i.e., personal motivations will be intricately connected parts of the cause-and-effect chain of actions producing pity and fear in the audience. Characters in tragedy should have the following qualities:

1. “good or fine.” Aristotle relates this quality to moral purpose and says it is relative to class: “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.”
2. “fitness of character” – appropriate -(true to type); e.g. valor is appropriate for a warrior but not for a woman. 
3. “true to life” – true to human nature - (realistic) 
4. “Consistency” (true to themselves). Once a character's personality and motivations are established, these should continue throughout the play. 
5. “necessary or probable.” Characters must be logically constructed according to “the law of probability or necessity” that governs the actions of the play. 
6. “true to life and yet more beautiful” (idealized, ennobled). 

Tragic Hero: (Chapter XIII)

What kind of character is tragic hero?

He is one who has all the above given attributes. Apart from that Aristotle’s observes:

1. A good man – coming to bad end. (Its shocking and disturbs faith)
2. A bad man – coming to good end. (neither moving, nor moral)
3. A bad man – coming to bad end. (moral, but not moving)
4. A rather good man – coming to bad end. (an ideal situation)

• Aristotle disqualifies two types of characters – purely virtuous (Job in Bible) and thoroughly bad(Bosola in ‘Duchess of Malfi’). There remains but one kind of character, who can best satisfy this requirement – ‘A man who is not eminently good and just yet whose misfortune is not brought by vice or depravity but by some error of frailty’.  His misfortune excites pity b’coz it is out of all proportion to his error of judgement, and his over all goodness excites fear for his doom. 
• Thus, he is a man with following attributes:
• He should be a man of mixed character, neither blameless nor absolutely depraved.
• His misfortune should follow from some error or flaw of character, short of moral taint.
• He must fall from height of prosperity and glory.
• The protagonist should be renowned and prosperous, so his change of fortune can be from good to bad. The fall of such a man of eminence affects entire state/nation – ‘heaven themselves blazon forth the death of a king’.
• This change “should come about as the result, not of vice, but of some great error or frailty in a character.” Such a plot is most likely to generate pity and fear in the audience, for “pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves.” 
• Aristotle says that the ideal tragic hero must be an intermediate kind of person, a man not preeminently virtuous and just yet whose misfortune is brought upon him not by vice or depravity but by some error of judgement. What is this error of judgment?
• The term Aristotle uses here, hamartia, often translated “tragic flaw,”(A.C.Bradely) has been the subject of much debate. 
• Aristotle, as writer of the Poetics, has had many a lusty infant, begot by some other critic, left howling upon his doorstep; and of all these (which include the bastards Unity-of-Time ad Unity-of-Place) not one is more trouble to those who got to take it up than the foundling ‘Tragic Flaw’. Humphrey House, in his lectures (Aristotle’s Poetics, ed. Colin Hardie (London, 1956), p.94) delivered in 1952-3, commented upon this tiresome phrase: “The phrase ‘tragic flaw’ should be treated with suspicion. I do not know when it was first used, or by whom. It is not an Aristotelian metaphor at all, and though it might be adopted as an accepted technical translation of ‘hamartia’ in the strict and properly limited sense, the fact is that it has not been adopted, and it is far more commonly used for a characteristic moral failing in an otherwise predominantly good man. 
• Thus, it may be said by some writers to be the ‘tragic flaw’ of Oedipus that he was hasty in temper; of Samson that he was sensually uxorious; of Macbeth that he was ambitious; of Othello that he was proud and jealous; of Hamlet that he was man of inaction – and so on … but these things do not constitute the ‘hamartia’ of those characters in Aristotle’s sense.”
• House goes on to urge that ‘all serious modern Aristotelian scholarship agrees … that ‘hamartia’ means an error which is derived from ignorance of some material fact or circumstance, and he refers to Bywater and Rostangni in support of his view. But although ‘all serious modern scholarship’ may have agreed to this point in 1952-3, in 1960 the good news has not yet reached the recesses of the land and many young students of literature are still apparently instructed in the theory of the ‘tragic flaw; a theory which appears at first sight to be a most convenient device for analyzing tragedy but which leads the unfortunate user of it into a quicksand of absurdities in which he rapidly sinks, dragging the tragedies down with him.
• In his edition of Aristotle on the Art of Poetry(Oxford, 1909), Ingram Bywater refers to such a misreading, though without using the term ‘tragic flaw’: “ἁμαρτία in the Aristotelian sense of the term is a mistake or error of judgement (error in Lat.), and the deed done in consequence of it is an erratum. In the Ethics, an errtum is said to originate not in vice or depravity but in ignorance of some material fact or circumstance … this ignorance, we are told in another passage, takes the deed out of the class of voluntary acts, and enables one to forgive or even pity the doer.”
• The meaning of the Greek word is closer to “mistake” than to “flaw,” “a wrong step blindly taken”, “the missing of mark”, and it is best interpreted in the context of what Aristotle has to say about plot and “the law or probability or necessity.” 
• In the ideal tragedy, claims Aristotle, the protagonist will mistakenly bring about his own downfall—not because he is sinful or morally weak, but because he does not know enough. The role of the hamartia in tragedy comes not from its moral status but from the inevitability of its consequences. Both Butcher and Bywater agree that hamartia is not a moral failing.
• This error of judgment may arise form: (i) ignorance (Oedipus), (ii) hasty – careless view(Othello) (iii) decision taken voluntarily but not deliberately(Lear, Hamlet)
• The error of judgement is derived from ignorance of some material fact or circumstance. Hamartia is accompanied by moral imperfections (Oedipus, Macbeth). Hence the peripeteia is really one or more self-destructive actions taken in blindness, leading to results diametrically opposed to those that were intended (often termed tragic irony), and the anagnorisis is the gaining of the essential knowledge that was previously lacking.
• Butcher: “Oedipus the king – includes all three meanings (moral frailty, ignorance, error of judgment) of hamartia, which in English cannot be termed by a single term…. Othello is the modern example, Oedipus in the ancient, are the two most conspicuous examples of ruin wrought by characters, noble, indeed, but not without defects, acting in the dark and, as it seemed, for the best.”
• Modern plays: Hamartia is practically removed from the hero and he becomes a victim of circumstance – a mere puppet. The villain in Greek plays was destiny, now its circumstances. The hero was powerful, he struggled but at the end of the day, death is inevitable. Modern heroes, dies several deaths – passive – not the doer of the action but receiver. The concept of heroic figures in tragedy has now become practically out of date. It was appropriate to the ages when men of noble birth and eminent positions were viewed as the representative figures of society.Today, common men is representative of society and life.

Thought is third in importance, and is found “where something is proved to be or not to be, or a general maxim is enunciated. ”Aristotle says little about thought and most of what he has to say is associated with how speeches should reveal character (context 1; context 2). However, we may assume that this category would also include what we call the themes of a play. 

• The plot and characters are not important on their own account. There is the central thought in the play towards which they point. Says Aristotle: ‘Thought, on the other hand, is shown in all they say when proving or disproving some particular point or enunciating some universal position.’
• A play embodies the vision or the ideas of the playwright. They are expressed through the characters and their speeches. It must be noted that to ancient Greeks, literature was good only if it taught some moral truth. There were differences among them as to what was truth. But there was unanimity in that the function of literature was to teach along with pleasing.

Diction is fourth, and is “the expression of the meaning in words” which are proper and appropriate to the plot, characters, and end of the tragedy. It is also the choice of words to embellish language with beautiful ornaments.

In this category, Aristotle discusses the stylistic elements of tragedy; he is particularly interested in metaphors: “But the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor; . . . it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances” (context). (Life is … walking shadow…. Tale…… told by idiot…… signifying nothing….. stage….Time?)

• In the modern sense it means ‘choice of words’. He meant by it use of various kinds of verses fit for evoking emotions which the poet wanted to evoke.

Song, or melody, is fifth, and is the musical element of the chorus. 

• Aristotle argues that the Chorus should be fully integrated into the play like an actor; choral odes/songs/melodious lyrical dialogues should not be “mere interludes,” but should contribute to the unity of the plot (context).
• It is, in a sense, a part of diction itself because its purpose is also that of evoking and sometimes intensifying the emotional pitch of the spectators. 
• choral odes/songs/melodious lyrical dialogues were singular feature of the Greek tragedy. In fact, they were a necessity too in the Greek technique of presentation and in the Greek open air theatre. The Greeks did not have painted scenery, nor any other means of developing and maintaining the grip of interest over the spectators.
• Poetry, profoundly moving lyrical poetry was all they have to arrest the attention of the audience. The songs and dialogues sung out loud would pin the attention of the spectators in the vast Greek theatre on the spectacle, spur their imagination, sustain the illusion of reality and move them to tears and transport.

Spectacle is last, for it is least connected with literature; “the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet.”

• It is the technique of presentation in drama. It means that the medium of tragedy is dramatic action; it is not narration. Tragedy is a matter of stage-performance not of mere closet-reading. 
• Although Aristotle recognizes the emotional attraction of spectacle, he argues that superior poets rely on the inner structure of the play rather than spectacle to arouse pity and fear; those who rely heavily on spectacle “create a sense, not of the terrible, but only of the monstrous.

• All this has been the discussion of Aristotle’s concept of tragedy. But the points discussed here apply to the representational literature in general. In every kind of representational literature plot has its own important place, characters are bound to be there though they may be of different types; it will have a definite central thought expressed in appropriate diction and technique; finally, it will have its own end or purpose in place of catharsis. Similarly, they have their own thought, way of presentation (diction) and spectacle.