Overview

Originally, this was going to be on the Poetics itself, but instead this is a text that summarizes and extrapolates on the subject. Cooper expounds on the Poetics a great deal, specifically addressing its context and its reception over time. The poetics themselves outlines a theory of drama, specifically addressing epic poetry and theatrical tragedy. Aristotle breaks things down into categories and establishes the properties of these categories in an extremely methodical format. It is questionable as to how contemporary types of drama or media which cross many boundaries would fit into or adjust his system of classifications. The type of drama that Aristotle espouses though has a very formal structure, but is general enough to explain a great deal of modern instantiations of this format.

Notes

Some context on the Poetics in its contemporary setting: there was a conflict between the Homeric rules of art versus “higher” philosophy as dictated by Plato. “In prose, it has been assumed that the Dialogues of Plato were background and incentive to the treatise of Aristotle; it is often held that the Poetics is a defense of poetry against the attacks of Socrates upon Homer and the dramatists in Books 2, 3, and 10 of the Republic.” (p. 9)

Aristotle’s background and concern was as a biologist. He was primarily concerned with treating things as organisms to uncover their properties. Later on he relates the study of poetic works as bodies with different parts. Aristotle’s concern is looking at the meaning and purpose of a work and understanding it as a whole, rather than analyzing the individual parts independently. Compare this approach with the unit versus element or system. Also, this is interesting in terms of modeling and simulation, to explore things in terms of functional properties. Aristotle ostensibly was constructing a model or grammar of poetics in his work. (p. 11)

Elaboration of the above: “Since he regards a work of art as a living organism, he likens each several kind of poetry, and indeed each individual poem, to an animal, and will consider its ideal form or structure as related to the proper end or function of the art.” There is emphasis on the classification or categorization: Each has its own form and function, and its own ideals. This relates heavily to Sorting Things Out, wherein classification is seen as a highly moral and judgmental process. Aristotle (and his contemporaries and many followers) see moral judgments as being the aim of this classification, rather than precautions to be considered. One of the aims of the Poetics is to defend and justify the epics of Homer in consideration of the “better” dramatic form that is Tragedy. (p. 15)

An interesting trend begins here, which concerns “imitation” or mimesis. The purpose of poetry, to Aristotle is to hold up the mirror to human nature. The value of this is at odds with Plato’s treatment of poetics in the Republic, which claims that there are three types of objects: The ideal, which is “made by God” and discussed by philosophers; the real, which is made by craftsmen; and the representative, made by artists capturing the craftsmen’s work. By being twice removed from the ideal, the poetic representation has less value. A humanist objection occurs from focusing on the world of the living instead of the divine ideals, and that seems to be what Aristotle is trying to do. The layers of abstraction and reference is an interesting apt comparison to modeling and simulation, where the abstraction works in the opposite direction: moving from base hardware (ones and zeroes) to symbolic representations and attempting to work towards artistic and humanistic directions. (p. 19)

Aristotle is good at providing bullet points for summarizing the properties of his classes. In order of importance, the qualities of tragedy are: (1) Plot (or action, the events that take place). (2) Moral bent in the agents. (3) A display of arguing, thinking, inferring, and reasoning. (4) The use of diction as the medium for the representation of the above. (5) A musical element. (6) The element of spectacle. In the next section, Aristotle discusses the principles for constructing tragedy, and the nature of its mimesis. “Tragedy is defined in terms of (1) of the object imitated–men in action; (2) of the medium of imitation–embellished language; (3) of the manner of imitation–direct presentation; and (4) of the function of tragic arg–the arousal and expurgation of pity and fear.” The final point is the definition of tragic catharsis. In drama, an interactive element changes this dynamic significantly (Consider Mateas). The focus on the player and the interaction necessarily pushes the plot down to a subservient priority. (p. 29-30)

Choice (of characters) forms the core essence of character; while the action itself is the essence of the tragedy itself. Characters think, reason, choose, and then act. The choice itself is ultimately less important than the ultimate action, but it is still significant. Compare this treatment with that of AI and choice and planning? (p. 34)

Some elements of plot: Reversal (falls or redemption), Discovery (revelation of knowledge unknown to characters, or possibly audience), Suffering (actual empathetic suffering, or more likely violent physical suffering, agony, or death). These are the building blocks for establishing a tragic plot. These must ultimately be bound to what is realistic for the character, though. A clever character should not fall from being outwitted; after all, he was clever. Rather, this combination of conditions leads to the emergence of the tragic flaw, the tear in an otherwise strong and moral character. (p. 46) Interestingly, this can be seen as an emergent property rather than a definitive one. Were interactivity or other factors introduced, their properties and “ideal” forms could be distilled and it would be possible to identify things that emerge that meet the preconditions.

Cooper touches briefly on comedy: Aristotle neglected comedy in the poetics, and it was perhaps something to be addressed in a work that never survived or was put to writing. Cooper cites a work, the Tractatus Coislinanus, which is a mere fragment, but seems to follow the Poetics, “After noting the place of comedy among the types of poetic art, it begins with a definition echoing that of tragedy in the Poetics: ‘Comedy is an imitation of an action that is ludicrous and defective, of adequate magnitude; [in language variously embellished,] the several kinds of embellishment being severally used in different parts of the play; carried on by agents, not in the form of narrative; through pleasure and laughter effecting a catharsis of comic emotions. Comedy has laughter for its mother.'” The focal point seems to be on the language used, not the actual plot or events thereof. It seems hard to seriously imagine comedy as being merely language driven, since it could operate in much the same fashion as tragedy can, especially given more modern approaches thereof. (p. 69-70)

Aristotle and unity: Each poetic form has an underlying essential characteristic, without which a work does not match the form. “The Poetics contains the beginnings of scientific grammar.” This grammar bears a resemblance much more to Proppian or symbolic grammars rather than actual language. As in these, the emphasis of statements is merely symbolic and referential in nature. With such abstraction, drama ceases to be about the content of its narrative, but rather about the form itself, each member of a category being a reference to the larger mythology of the dramatic category as a whole. (p. 80)