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AristotleAristotle Aristotle was a philosopher and a natural scientist who turned his attention to poetry (which, to the Greeks, included drama) and applied to it the same methodology as he used in his scientific studies. In his Poetics he described, in particular, tragedy, as he saw it. For him, the perfect example of a tragedy was Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus (more commonly known nowadays by its Latin title Oedipus Rex, Oedipus the King). He set out to analyse this piece in order to illustrate what makes great tragedy. There are some problems here. It is not entirely certain that everything we have in the extant version of the Poetics is Aristotle's work: in fact, the description of the structure of tragedy has been cited as one chapter which could be by another hand. In addition, he was not entirely free from bias. He had a view of the world and there is little doubt that it coloured his view of poetry. There is also the suspicion that one of his motives for writing the Poetics was to refute the condemnation of art which Plato expressed in the Republic. Plato saw this world as a shadow or image of the real world, the world of "Ideas". This is a most unfortunate translation, but one which has the sanctification of tradition: what he really meant was that there was such a thing as an absolute - the good which we see is merely an imitation (mimhsis - mimesis) of absolute good (auto to agaqon). So art is an imitation of an imitation and is therefore inferior. Aristotle's work is, to an extent, a reply to Plato's criticisms and is therefore, to a similar extent, polemical, and so we cannot accept it as a purely objective and scientific look at poetry. It is also dangerous to attempt to make a brief summary of any analytical work, but nonetheless I'll try!
You might notice that there is only one Unity, that of Action. What of the other two, of Place and of Time, which were of such maor importance in later centuries? Quite simply, they had nothing to do with Aristotle. He did mention that the tragic poet should, so far as possible, confine the action to a day or a little more, but this was only a passing reference. As for the Unity of Place, there is nothing in the Poetics to support the later contention that this is of great importance. In fact, although the majority of extant Greek tragedies do have their action set in one place, this is not an invariable rule: we see a change in both Aeschylus' Eumenides and Sophocles' Ajax. A change of place is signalled in these plays by the exit and re-entrance of the chorus. Aristotle rules OK! The Renaissance brought the rediscovery of Aristotle - the Poetics was first published in a Latin translation in 1498 - and his "rules" (including some he never mentioned!) became the paradigm for tragedy throughout European literature. Nowhere was Aristotle followed more slavishly than in France, and the tragedies of Corneille and Racine followed these rules far more than those of Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides (particularly Euripides!). There was some deference paid to Aristotle in Britain but his (perceived) ideas never had the strangehold they had in France. In many ways Shakespeare is the antithesis of Aristotle (not a single Unity remains!) and this goes a long way to explaining the early rejection of his work abroad. The clinging to the Aristotelian lasted a long time in France: even in 1830 the first performance, in Paris, of Victor Hugo's Hernani, which was far more Shakespeare than Aristotle, was greeted with riots! In fact, the Greeks (including Aristotle) had remarkably little effect on the development of drama in Britain, except indirectly, for it was the Roman tragedies of Seneca and the comedies of Plautus and Terence (based, as we have seen, on the "New Comedy" of Menander) which most influenced English theatre. Links Greek Tragedy Aeschylus - a good introduction to his work by the About.com Ancient History Guide, N.S. Gill Greek Comedy Old Comedy: An Introduction - another useful introduction from Brooklyn College Greek Theatre in general Ancient Theatre - an excellent introduction from "Didaskalia", based formerly at Warwick University and now at Berkeley Texts The Internet Classics Archive - online translations of classical texts, with discussion areas. The dramatists featured are Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides and Sophocles Aristotle The Poetics - an online text Articles Indices:
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