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The “six parts of tragedy” in Aristotle's poetics: Compositional Process and Processive Chronology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

M.S. Silk
M.S. Silk
Affiliation:
King's CollegeLondon
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Extract

All students of the Poetics can see that Aristotle's theory of tragedy sometimes resembles a handbook on dramatic composition. The scope of this ‘resemblance’, however, is rarely acknowledged in modern times. ‘Aristotle's approach to tragedy’, writes Stephen Halliwell, is ‘au fond, a system of theoretical premises and reasoning.’ This, from the author of the most comprehensive, and most significant, discussion of the Poetics in recent years, sounds authoritative. It is none the less misleading.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 40 , 1994 , pp. 108 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

Notes

1. Halliwell, , The Poetics of Aristotle: translation and commentary (London 1987) 10Google Scholar. The supposition informs his magnum opus (Aristotle's Poetics (London 1986))Google Scholar. Our classicizing predecessors, in contrast, tended to assume that the Poetics was largely rules: see e.g. Rapin, René's Reflections on Aristotle's Treatise of Poesy (tr. Rymer, , 1674)Google Scholar, passim.

2. See e.g. VII 1450b21–2; XIII 1452b28–30; XIV 1453b22–3; XV 1454al6–17 and 1454b15–17; XVIII 1456a9–13 and 25–7; XXII 1458a31; XXIV 1460b2–4.

3. Else, , Aristotle's Poetics: the argument (Cambridge, Mass. 1957)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Only ‘helped’ to show (though Else insisted on the processive aspect of Aristotle's categories), because Else (who also insisted that the Poetics is a ‘coherent piece of argument’, p. vii) never speaks about ambivalence between process and product, but takes process to be the point throughout.

4. Else (n. 3) 279 and xi.

5. Halliwell, , The Poetics of Aristotle (n. 1) 37Google Scholar; Janko, R., Aristotle, Poetics (Indianapolis 1987) 8Google Scholar.

6. See Poetics VI 1450b4 and 12.

7. The word must mean the whole design in the first instance, since the plausibility of its being the ὡς of the depends on its subsuming ‘the entire visual aspect of the play in performance’ (Taplin, O. P., The stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford 1977) 478)Google Scholar. As the treatise proceeds, however, the impression is certainly that Aristotle ‘is thinking principally of the various visual aspects of the actors, rather than the stage setting as a whole’ (Halliwell (n. 1) 338–9). His eventual usage is not wholly in line with his initial formulations (cf. Taplin, ibid.) – as is also the case with his usage of (see above, p. 110).

8. Else (n. 3) vii, 8–9, 12–13.

9. Else (n. 3) 237 (and, further, 276–7).

10. See Vahlen, J., ‘Aristoteles' Lehre von der Rangfolge der Teile der Tragoedie’ (orig. in Symbola Philologorum Bonnensium in Honorem Friderici Ritschelii Collecta (Leipzig 1864))Google Scholar, in Gesammelte Philologische Schriften (Leipzig 1911) I 235–74Google Scholar; Else (n. 3) 236–7; Halliwell (n. I) 239–40, 345. It may seem a curiosity that Aristotle should choose such an open-ended word as and then restrict it to dialogue (i.e. should use of the music and words of the lyrics, of the music-less words of the dialogue), but presumably the λεγ- of is operative here (cf. Else (n. 3) 237).

11. Long, A. A., Language and thought in Sophocles: a study of abstract nouns and poetic technique (London 1968) 15Google Scholar.

12. Smp. 187d: ‘musical composition, as opposed to its practice’ (LSJ s.v.).

13. As Metaph. 993b15 (),cf. Pol. 1341b24.

14. 1449b33–5; 1450a10; 1450b17; 1459b10.

15. At 1450a13–14, after the list of six at 1450a9–10, we find: . Kassel (OCT) obelizes ; others accept the facile emendation ; Halliwell (n. 1) 66 suggests that the whole sentence is ‘probably spurious’. If the sentence is not spurious, and if (suitably doctored) it means, inter alia, that tragedy always includes , the question arises: why , not ? Because (prospectively) ‘song’ in such a proposition is a straightforward product. Why then ? Because (prospectively) , unlike , is equivocal enough to count as product (cf. above, p. 110). Regarding , it may be noted that is used of the actual ‘language’ of tragedy in the definition in VI (1449b25,28).

16. Vahlen (n. 10) 271 (but without pursuing the point).

17. Aristotle's use of (process/product) is broadly parallel to his use of . The latter refers to specifiable epic poetry (usually the poetry of Homer), the former to ‘epic’ as overall compositional possibility. Hence e.g. the sequence (V 1449b13–16): [overall] [specifiably]. Similarly XXIV 1460all–17 and XXVI 1462al4–b3 (but at VI 1449bl7–20 the difference is notional). In earlier Greek, as one would expect, the distinction is easy to see: contrast e.g. Herodotus' at 2.116.1 (‘composing in epic’) with at 4.13.3 ().

18. Long (n. 11) 12–13.

19. The parallelism is picked up at IX 1451b27–8 (). Else (n. 3) 243 notes the processive implication of the 1450a4 , but without full discussion.

20. Despite his talk of ‘moments of the poetic art’ (above, p. 109), there is no sign that Else thinks of the hierarchy as implying a compositional order of events. On the contrary: from his discussion of 1455a22–3 on p. 487 and 1455a34–b2 on pp. 504–5, it appears that he associates the ‘adding of episodes’ and the ‘assigning of names’ with ‘the stage where the structure is embodied in words’ (p. 487), i.e. the stage of verbalizing a text. He evidently does see a compositional sequence here, then, but not one that runs parallel with the ranking order of the .

21. The opening words of XVII (1455a22–6) are not relevant here: they involve the playwright's ‘visualization’, not as a .

22. Quoted by Plut. Moral. 347e. Good discussion by Handley, E. W., The Dyskolos of Menander (London 1965) 10Google Scholar, who makes the connection with ‘Aristotle's treatment of ' and remarks that ‘is apparently intended to refer to the plot qua plan of composition, not qua story or subject’. This (on my argument) makes (another -σϛɩ noun …) a close equivalent to Aristotle's μῦθος. The (perhaps contemporary) source of the anecdote is discussed by Handley, ibid.