Have a flaw or other characteristic that causes him to experience a dramatic change in fortune.Behave appropriately according to his station in life.CharacterĪristotle’s views on good character are probably more at odds with the students’ views than on any other aspect of literature. The questions in the chart linked above help students analyze the plot from such a perspective. The plot itself creates emotions, for Aristotle pity and fear, in the audience. However, such summaries rarely analyze the plot in terms of Aristotelian plot elements such as reversal, recognition, and what he calls the “scene of suffering,” the climatic scene in which the different strands of the plot come together for the greatest emotional effect. Students appear to agree with Aristotle on this in that when they write about a novel or a short story, they tend to summarize the plot. Simply relating the events of a tragic plot should create pity and fear in the hearer.

PlotĪristotle argues that plot is the soul of tragedy and that while there could be a tragedy without character, there could not be without plot. I have created a simplified chart, with questions for students:Ī more detailed version of this chart with more extensive questions is available here. They can have a dialogue with Aristotle.Īristotle argues that tragedy has six components. Disagreeing with Aristotle is fun, and it gets them thinking. Is the work realistic? Is it lifelike? Does that mean it is good? They can also easily disagree with it because they often enjoy fantasy and other things that are abstract or unrealistic. This literary theory is pretty easy for students to apply. The Greek word is “mimesis,” which we find in “mime and” “mimic.” He thinks that humans are natural imitators and that we enjoy representations, even of things we would not like to see in real life, such as dead bodies or fearsome beasts.

Analyzing a movie is probably the best vehicle for introducing students to Aristotle’s ideas.Īristotle, like most ancient Greeks, thinks that art is about imitation of life. Perhaps the genre in our own time that is closest to Greek tragedy is the dramatic movie, perhaps even a horror movie. The principles are simple, easily understood, and useful for students.

Though Aristotle was mainly concerned with the dramatic form of the Greek tragedy, his principles can be usefully applied to other art forms, including novels, short stories, and movies, and perhaps even poetry. The Poetics has had a great deal of influence on literary thought and practice for many centuries, especially on drama. However, I have not written about his literary criticism, which he develops in the work called the Poetics. In this blog, I have written a lot about Aristotle’s Rhetoric.

Poetics by Aristotle