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The Poetics
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The opening of Section I
I propose to treat of Poetry in itself and of its various kinds, noting the essential quality of each; to inquire into the structure of the plot as requisite to a good poem; into the number and nature of the parts of which a poem is composed; and similarly into whatever else falls within the same inquiry. Following, then, the order of nature, let us begin with the principles which come first.
Epic poetry and Tragedy, Comedy also and Dithyrambic: poetry, and the music of the flute and of the lyre in most of their forms, are all in their general conception modes of imitation. They differ, however, from one: another in three respects,—the medium, the objects, the manner or mode of imitation, being in each case distinct.
The excerpt below is the opening of the treatise, the first two paragraphs of Section I. The first states the inquiry: poetry in itself and its various kinds, the structure of the plot as requisite to a good poem, the number and nature of the parts of which a poem is composed, and whatever else falls within the same inquiry. The second names the kinds it will compare, epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry and the music of the flute and the lyre, and says that all of them are modes of imitation, differing in three respects, the medium, the objects and the manner.
Download Full EPUBc. 335 BC
Treatise
~15,000 words (estimated)
Approx. 50 minutes
Standalone
Athens, c. 335 BC. The argument is conducted in Greek and draws its examples from the Athenian stage, from the painters, and from epic poems every listener knew.
Twenty-six sections in twelve groups
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Project Gutenberg #1974
The Poetics is Aristotle’s inquiry into poetry as an art with kinds, parts and rules. It begins from imitation, which poetry shares with painting and music, and from the three ways the imitative arts differ: in medium, in the objects imitated, and in manner. Most of the book is about tragedy. Tragedy is defined as the imitation of a serious and complete action, worked out in plot, character, thought, diction, song and spectacle, and effecting the purgation of pity and fear. Plot comes first, since it is the arrangement of incidents; character second. The last part turns to epic, to the objections of critics, and to the question which of the two arts is higher.
After the definition the argument follows the parts of the play in order. Plot is a whole with a beginning, a middle and an end, and the unity of a plot is not the unity of a hero. Reversal of the situation and recognition are the two elements that turn on surprise. Character has four requirements, and the kinds of recognition are ranked from the token to the discovery that rises out of the incidents. Diction and thought come next, then epic poetry, then the objections and the answers. The Wikipedia article on Poetics gives the outline. The text is available via Project Gutenberg #1974.
The Poetics by Aristotle: Summary, Ideas & Arguments
This page offers a summary and analysis of The Poetics in Butcher’s translation, with the twenty-six sections set out in reading order, the step each one takes described, and the terms the argument depends on explained as they come up. Aristotle begins with the kinds of poetry and the three differences between them, and gives the greater part of the book to tragedy, its definition, its parts, and the rules of plot and character. The treatise is printed in the translation of S. H. Butcher, whose name stands on the title page, and the text followed here is the one at Project Gutenberg #1974. It keeps the Greek words the translator left in place, spelled out letter by letter. It sits with the rest of the Philosophy Classics on this site.
Poetry is one of the imitative arts, and the first three sections sort the kinds by three questions: what medium each uses, what sort of persons it represents, and whether it narrates or acts the story out. Epic and tragedy, comedy and dithyrambic poetry, the music of the flute and the lyre, all imitate, and they differ in these three respects alone. The fourth section then asks where poetry came from, and answers with two causes in human nature, the instinct of imitation, which is also the source of the pleasure taken in likenesses, and the instinct for harmony and rhythm. The same section traces tragedy from improvisation through Aeschylus, who added a second actor, to Sophocles, who added a third and scene-painting, and it explains why the iambic measure replaced the trochaic tetrameter once dialogue came in.
The definition in the sixth section is the centre of the book. Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude, in language embellished with rhythm, harmony and song, in the form of action and not of narrative, effecting through pity and fear the proper purgation of those emotions. Six parts follow from it: plot, character, thought, diction, song and spectacle. Two of the six, diction and song, are the medium of imitation; one, spectacle, is the manner; and three, plot, character and thought, are the objects. Plot is the arrangement of incidents and is called the first principle and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; character holds the second place; thought third; diction fourth; song is the chief of the embellishments; spectacle is the least artistic of the parts, since the power of tragedy is felt even without actors.
The seventh to the eleventh sections work out the rules of plot. A whole has a beginning, a middle and an end, and beauty depends on magnitude and order, so the plot must be long enough to be taken in at one view and short enough to be remembered. Unity of plot is not unity of the hero: the Odyssey does not include every adventure of Odysseus, only the action that holds together. Poetry is more philosophical than history because it speaks of what may happen, in the order of probability or necessity, while history speaks of what has happened. Plots are simple or complex, and the complex ones turn on reversal of the situation and recognition. An episodic plot, in which the acts follow without probable or necessary sequence, is the worst kind. The eleventh section adds the third part of the plot, the scene of suffering, a destructive or painful action such as death on the stage.
The later sections turn from the plot to the people in it and to the words they speak. The tragic protagonist is a man between the extremes, not eminently good and just, whose misfortune comes from some error or frailty; character must be good, appropriate, true to life and consistent, and the unravelling must come from the plot itself and not from the stage machinery. The sixteenth to the nineteenth sections rank the kinds of recognition and divide a play into complication and unravelling. Then come thought and diction, the parts of language, and the command of metaphor, which is called the mark of genius. The twenty-second section sorts the words themselves, and the twenty-fifth sets out the five sources of objection and the twelve heads of answer. Epic poetry closes the argument. Readers who want Aristotle’s ethics can take the Nicomachean Ethics, and readers who want Plato can take the Republic; both are free on this site.
Historical Context
The treatise is printed in S. H. Butcher’s translation, with his name on the title page, and it begins without preface or introduction: the first sentence states the inquiry, and the argument starts at once. The text is divided into twenty-six sections, numbered I to XXVI in the contents, and it is those numbers that the summaries on this page follow. The transcription carries a note of its own conventions: Greek words that the translator left in place are spelled out letter by letter and enclosed in braces, so that a reader who does not know Greek may pass over them without losing the argument. A few passages are printed inside square brackets, among them the list of the parts of language.
The world the argument moves in is the Athenian theatre of the fourth century. Tragedy and comedy were performed in competition, and the text mentions the Archon who granted a comic chorus to a poet, the water-clock that would have regulated the performance if a hundred tragedies had competed, and the masks and scene-painting of the stage. It names the poets whose work it compares, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes and Agathon, and the painters Polygnotus, Pauson and Zeuxis, and it repeats the Dorian claim to have invented tragedy and comedy, alongside the separate Megarian claim to comedy. The subjects are drawn from the legends of a few houses, the fortunes of Oedipus, Orestes, Alcmaeon, Meleager and Thyestes.
The book argues by naming particular plays and particular lines, and it expects the reader to know them: a recognition scene is settled by one example, a fault of diction by one phrase. Two cross-references show that it belongs to a larger course of lectures, since thought is referred to the Rhetoric and the appeals to the senses to certain published treatises. The sections on language are the most technical, with their letters, syllables, nouns, verbs and inflexions, and the section on criticism sets out five sources of objection and twelve heads of answer. At the end the question is put whether epic or tragedy is the higher art, and tragedy is given the place. The last sentence says that so much may suffice concerning tragic and epic poetry, and the text stops there.
Key Ideas & Arguments
- Imitation: The common ground of the arts. Epic, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry, flute-playing and lyre-playing all imitate, and they differ only in the medium they use, the objects they represent and the manner of the representation. Imitation is natural to man from childhood, and the pleasure taken in a likeness is the pleasure of learning.
- Plot: The arrangement of the incidents, called the first principle and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy. It must be a whole, with a beginning, a middle and an end, and of a magnitude that can be held in one view. Character comes second, since tragedy imitates an action rather than a man, and the incidents, not the portrait, are the end of the art.
- Reversal of the situation: A change by which the action veers round to its opposite, subject always to the rule of probability or necessity; in the Oedipus the messenger comes to free the king from his alarms and instead reveals who he is. With recognition, the change from ignorance to knowledge, it forms the two parts of the plot that turn on surprise; the third is the scene of suffering.
- Character: That in virtue of which certain qualities are ascribed to the agents, and the second of the six parts. Four things are aimed at: it must be good, appropriate, true to life and consistent, and a character who is inconsistent must be consistently inconsistent. Character is shown by the moral purpose a speech or action makes manifest.
- Purgation: The clause in the definition that names the effect of tragedy: through pity and fear it brings about the proper purgation of these emotions. Pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune and fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves, and the effect is produced best by the structure of the incidents, since the power of tragedy is felt even apart from representation and actors.
- Metaphor: The application of an alien name by transference, from genus to species, from species to genus, from species to species, or by analogy. The command of metaphor is called the greatest thing by far and the mark of genius, since to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances, and it cannot be imparted by another.
Core Arguments & Influence
- Poetry speaks of what may happen: The distinction from history is the book’s clearest claim about poetry’s seriousness. The poet does not relate what has happened but what may happen, in the order of probability or necessity, and so poetry tends to express the universal while history expresses the particular. The work of Herodotus put into verse would still be history. The test of a plot is therefore not whether the events occurred but whether they follow from one another, and the poet is a maker of plots rather than of verses, since the names he gives his persons are a further means of aiming at the universal.
- The plot is the soul of the tragedy: Structure is ranked above every other part of the art. Tragedy imitates an action and a life, not a man, and men are happy or unhappy by what they do, so the incidents and the plot are the end of the art. Character is subsidiary; a play may lack it and still be a tragedy, while without action there is none. A plot must be one action, whole, of a magnitude that can be taken in at a view, with no part that could be moved or removed without disturbing the whole, and the episodic plot, whose acts follow without sequence, is the worst kind. Novices, the book observes, reach finish of diction before they can construct a plot.
- The man between the extremes: The protagonist of the best tragedy is neither a saint nor a villain. A good man brought from prosperity to adversity shocks without moving pity or fear, and a villain’s fall satisfies the moral sense but calls forth neither. What remains is a man highly renowned and prosperous whose misfortune comes not from vice but from some error or frailty, like Oedipus or Thyestes. Pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune and fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves, which is why the change is from good fortune to bad, and why the double plot that ends well for the good and ill for the bad is put in the second rank.
- Clear without being mean: Style has its own rules, and they are rules of proportion. A diction of current words alone is clear but mean; a diction of strange words alone is a riddle or a jargon; the good style mixes the two, raising the language above the commonplace without losing perspicuity. The greatest thing by far is the command of metaphor, because a metaphor cannot be borrowed from another and implies an eye for resemblances. The critics who censure the licenses of speech are in error, since a partial conformity with usage gives perspicuity while the deviation gives distinction.
- The answer to the critics: The twenty-fifth section turns the whole method on the objections that can be brought against a poem. They are drawn from five sources, since a thing is censured as impossible, irrational, morally hurtful, contradictory, or contrary to artistic correctness, and the answers are sought under twelve heads, among them the usage of language, metaphor, accent, punctuation and ambiguity. The impossible may be justified by the end of the art, by the higher reality, or by received opinion. A contradiction is answered by asking whether the same thing is meant, in the same relation and in the same sense. The last section then asks which art is higher and answers that tragedy is.
Why Download Our Custom E-Reader Edition of The Poetics?
The download is the whole treatise. All twenty-six sections are here, from the sorts of imitation to the comparison of epic and tragedy, with the definition of tragedy, the rules of plot and character, the analysis of language and the answer to the critics. Nothing is summarised in place of the text and no section is left out, so a passage can be followed from the argument to its example without leaving the book. The translation is Butcher’s, as the title page has it, with the words he left in Greek kept in the text.
The page is arranged to be read beside it. Twelve groups follow the sections in order and stop where each argument stops; six entries explain the ideas the book turns on, from imitation and plot to purgation and metaphor; five themes follow the argument from the kinds of poetry to the higher art. A historical section names the poets, painters and institutions the text appeals to, and the section numbers are given, so that any summary can be found in the text at once.
The files come in three formats with the same text and the same divisions. The EPUB opens in Apple Books, Calibre and most Android readers; the AZW3 is the file for a Kindle; the KEPUB is the one Kobo devices read best. No account is needed for any of them, and nothing in the downloads is locked, watermarked or time limited. A passage found here can be compared with any printing of the same translation.
- Project Gutenberg transcription, via Project Gutenberg #1974 — the complete treatise in Butcher’s translation, with all twenty-six sections, the passages the edition prints in brackets, and the transcriber’s conventions for the Greek words.
- Twenty-six sections in twelve groups Every section from I to XXVI has its place, the groups follow the order of the argument, and each summary stops where the section it covers stops.
- Butcher’s translation as the edition prints it The title page names S. H. Butcher, and the text keeps his English, his bracketed passages and his Greek words spelled out letter by letter, with the transcription’s note explaining the braces.
- EPUB, AZW3 and KEPUB files The same text in three formats, for Apple Books, Kindle and Kobo, with the section divisions intact and nothing to install beyond the reading app you already use.
- Aristotle’s ethics, on happiness, the virtues and the mean between extremes, for readers who want the other half of his philosophy. Where the Poetics asks what makes a poem good, the Ethics asks what makes a life good, and both argue from the way things are ordinarily done. — free EPUB, AZW3 & KEPUB
- Plato’s Republic, where poetry and imitation are put on trial and the poets are asked to give an account of what they do. Read it beside the first sections here, where imitation is treated as natural to man and as the source of the pleasure taken in likenesses. — free EPUB, AZW3 & KEPUB
- The shelf where this edition sits, with the rest of the free philosophy on the site in EPUB, AZW3 and KEPUB, each with the same reading aids and the same three formats. — free EPUB, AZW3 & KEPUB
Chapter summaries
The twelve groups below follow the twenty-six sections in the order the text prints them, from the kinds of imitation to the comparison of epic and tragedy. The section numbers are the edition’s own, and where two or three sections carry a single argument they are taken together rather than split. No group covers matter the text does not contain. Each summary states the step the section takes and stops where it stops.
- Section I-III — Imitation, medium, objects and manner: Poetry is one of the imitative arts, and the kinds are sorted by three differences. The medium may be rhythm, language or harmony, singly or combined. The objects are men in action, shown as better than they are, worse, or as they are, which separates tragedy from comedy. The manner is narration or enactment, and it is this that makes a drama.
- Section IV-V — The origins of poetry and the growth of tragedy: Poetry springs from two causes in human nature, the instinct of imitation, which is also why likenesses give pleasure, and the instinct for harmony and rhythm. Tragedy and comedy began as improvisation, the one from the dithyramb, the other from the phallic songs. Aeschylus added a second actor and Sophocles a third with scene-painting. Comedy imitates a lower type, the ludicrous being a subdivision of the ugly.
- Section VI — The definition of tragedy and its six parts: Tragedy is an imitation of a serious, complete action of a certain magnitude, in embellished language, in the form of action and not of narrative, effecting through pity and fear the purgation of those emotions. Six parts follow: plot, character, thought, diction, song and spectacle. Plot, the arrangement of incidents, is the soul of the tragedy; spectacle is the least artistic of the parts.
- Section VII-VIII — The whole, the magnitude and the unity of plot: A whole has a beginning, a middle and an end, and beauty depends on magnitude and order, so a plot must be large enough to be seen at once and small enough to be held in memory. Unity of plot is not unity of the hero: Homer built the Odyssey round one action, so that no part can be displaced without disturbing the whole.
- Section IX-XI — Simple and complex plots, reversal and recognition: The poet tells not what has happened but what may happen, and so poetry is more philosophical than history. The episodic plot, whose acts follow without sequence, is the worst. Plots are simple or complex; in the complex the change is accompanied by reversal of the situation, as in the Oedipus, or by recognition, and both should rise from the plot itself.
- Section XII-XIII — The parts of a play and the tragic protagonist: The quantitative parts are the prologue, the episode, the exode and the choric song, which divides into parode and stasimon. The change of fortune should be from good to bad, and should come not from vice but from some error or frailty in a man highly renowned and prosperous, like Oedipus or Thyestes. Euripides is called the most tragic of the poets.
- Section XIV-XV — Pity and fear, and the four rules of character: Pity and fear are best produced by the structure of the incidents, not by spectacle. The deed that moves them is done among friends, a brother killing a brother or a son his father. Of the four ways of handling it, the best is to be about to act in ignorance and to discover the truth in time. Character must be good, appropriate, true to life and consistent.
- Section XVI-XVII — Recognition, and placing the scene before the eyes: Recognitions are ranked. The least artistic is by signs, such as the scar of Odysseus; next those invented at will by the poet, then those that depend on memory, then those by reasoning, and best of all the recognition that arises from the incidents themselves. The poet should put the scene before his eyes and fill in the episodes after the outline.
- Section XVIII-XIX — Complication, unravelling, thought and diction: Every tragedy falls into complication and unravelling. The kinds are the complex, the pathetic, the ethical and the simple, and the chorus should be treated as one of the actors, not left to sing interludes. Thought covers proof, refutation and the excitation of feeling, and belongs more strictly to the Rhetoric; the modes of utterance belong to delivery.
- Section XX-XXII — The parts of language and the perfection of style: Language is analysed into letter, syllable, connecting word, noun, verb, inflexion and sentence. Words are current, strange, metaphorical, ornamental, newly coined, lengthened, contracted or altered, and metaphor works from genus to species, from species to species, or by analogy. The perfection of style is to be clear without being mean, and the command of metaphor implies an eye for resemblances.
- Section XXIII-XXIV — Epic poetry, Homer and the wonderful: Epic must be built on dramatic principles, with a single action whole and complete, and Homer is praised for detaching one portion of the war rather than telling all of it. Epic has the same parts as tragedy except song and spectacle, but it can present events happening at the same time. The heroic metre suits it, and probable impossibilities are preferred to improbable possibilities.
- Section XXV-XXVI — Objections, answers and the higher art: Objections to a poem are drawn from five sources: the impossible, the irrational, the morally hurtful, the contradictory, and what is contrary to artistic correctness, and the answers are sought under twelve heads. The impossible may be justified by the end of the art, by the higher reality, or by received opinion. Tragedy is the higher art, since it attains its end within narrower limits.
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