The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64:2 Spring 2006

ROGER SEAMON
The Price of the Plot in Aristotles Poetics
In drama, people presented themselves primarily in
speech, as they do in life.
Joyce Carol Oates, Where Ive Been, and
Where Im Going
Platos critique of the imitative tribe in Book
X of Republic calls for a defense of poetry, and
Aristotle initiates that effort in Poetics. Taking
his cue from Plato, he makes imitation the key
concept and thus associates poetry with other
kinds of representation, perhaps the single
most influential move in the history of Western
aesthetic theory, for this set of practices corre-
sponds, roughly speaking, to our fine arts.
1
The
second step in this defense is the identification
of the art of poetry in a heterogeneous group of
imitative discourses that includes dramas, the
mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the
Socratic dialogues, as well as elegiac and epic
poets (47b10). What poets do, Aristotle claims,
is imitate action rather than assert propositions,
which means that neither scientific treatises in
verse nor imitations of men talking philosophy,
but also in fact doing it, are poems. This
brusquely rejects the received idea that verse
makes the poet: if someone brings out a work
of medicine or natural science in verse, they
normally call him a poet; but there is nothing in
common between Homer and Empedocles
except the verse-form (47b1618). Poetry had
been, as it still often is in common speech,
identified with verse, but in a few sentences
Aristotle set the course for Western poetic
theory by making fictional representation the
defining characteristic of poetry.
The process of definition did not stop here,
however, and that is where problems arise.
Having identified the art of poetry, Aristotle
then focused on what was highest in it and thus
claimed to reveal its essence, that is, its purpose:
drama was superior to narrative, tragedy to
comedy, and the incidents, i.e. the plot, are the
end of tragedy, and the end is most important of
all (50a23). Aristotle demotes narrative and
lyric poetry and makes the other five elements
of drama that he had picked outcharacters,
diction, reasoning, spectacle and song
(50a9)mere means. Although this may be jus-
tified in the case of the last two, to make charac-
ter in principle unnecessary and reasoning and
style (the term I shall substitute for Richard
Jankos diction) the province of other arts,
and thus not grounds for assessing poets, seems
odd indeed. The main bad consequence of
Aristotles view is to minimize what one might
call the expressive aspect of poetry (what we
infer about a speakers state of mind from his or
her words). Ironically, he had silently rejected
the germ of just such a theory early in Poetics.
In this article I want to: (1) explain why Aristo-
tle gave such primacy to the plot, the bare story,
(2) elaborate on the bad consequences of that
effort, and (3) suggest how one might improve
the resulting theory on the basis of his own first
proposal about the nature of poetry.
There is considerable agreement, even among
modern Aristotelians, that there is something
amiss with Aristotles theory of poetry. Gerald
Else, the author of the most distinguished
modern English commentary on Poetics, says
that [w]hen all is said and done, Aristotles
real conviction about words and word-magic
was that they were a necessary evil, all imagin-
ation and there for the sake of the listener, i.e.,
not for the general truths that imitations of
action could provide.
2
In a similar vein, Wayne
Booth, speaking as Aristotle redivivus, says that
in our energetic pursuit of how to discern (or
252 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
create) excellence in tragic drama, we seriously
overlooked many revealing subtleties of man-
ner even in our own epics. What is a worse
oversight is that we allowed our emphasis on
the action imitatedto lead us to underplay the
whole role of the chorus and the power they
exercised in our tragediesin determining the
audiences view of the object.
3
Booth believes that Aristotles bias is largely
the result of his place in literary history, and so
he has Aristotle say that in writing the Poetics
we were seriously handicapped by not having at
hand the immensely diverse instances of mani-
pulations of manner of the kind that your history
offers you.
4
Aristotle clearly has reservations
about the focus on language in poetic theory,
but something much more substantial than
insensitivity to verbal music is at issue, and it
is also, I shall argue, not an historical accident
that he diminishes the chorus. I agree with
Stephen Halliwell that the fundamental
premises of Aristotles theory of poetry and
tragedy virtually dictate the devaluation and
neglect of choral lyric, but I disagree with both
Halliwell and Booth that it is primarily Aristo-
tles view of the chorus that is affected by the
basic theory.
5
His elevation of drama over nar-
rative and lyric and of plot over character,
thought, and style also flows from the same
cause.
As I am criticizing Aristotles emphasis on
the plot, I should say at the outset that the
modern disdain for mere stories, most famously
expressed by E. M. Forsters Yesoh dear
yesthe novel tells a story, is equally mis-
guided.
6
Here is how John Stuart Mill puts this
Romantic prejudice.
There is a radical distinction between the interest felt
in a novel as such, and the interest excited by poetry;
for the one is derived from incident, the other from
the representation of feeling. In one the source of the
emotion excited is the exhibition of a state or states of
human sensibility; in the other, of a series of states of
mere outward circumstance. The two sources of
interest correspond to two distinct and (as respects
their greatest development) mutually exclusive char-
acters of mind. So much is the nature of poetry dis-
similar to the nature of fictitious narrative, that to
have a really strong passion for either of the two,
seems to presuppose or to superinduce a comparative
indifference to the other.
7
One cannot, however, separate circumstance
and sensibility. Aristotle is right: the plot, like a
skeleton, is necessary or the poem falls down.
Even a lyric poem has, to pursue the metaphor
and despite the Aristotelian prejudice against
lyric, an exoskeleton. The poem, Wallace
Stevens says, is the cry of its occasion. No
plot, no drama; no occasion, no poem. The
Romantic preference for expression over story
is as unbalanced as the Aristotelian account.
The unsatisfactory theoretical consequences
of the primacy of plot are, to repeat, making
character (ethos), reasoning (dianoia), and style
(lexis) mere means to an end and the prejudice
against narrative and lyric. I shall discuss each
of the elements Aristotle slights before arguing
for the importance of the theory of poetry
Aristotle first advances in Poetics.
Character is defined as that which reveals
decision, of whatever sort; this is why those
speeches in which the speaker decides or avoids
nothing at all do not have character (50b7),
and thus people are necessarily of a certain sort
according to their character and their reasoning
and it is because of these that we say that
actions are of a certain sort (50a1). But, one
might object, what usually follows a speech in
drama is another speech, and our interest in the
speeches goes beyond their function as initia-
tors of action. Take, for example, a single line
from Oedipuss confrontation with Tiresias
after Oedipus has been told that he is the pol-
luter of Thebes: Say it again. I want to make
sure that I understand you.
8
That line can be
said in very different ways. It might express
some real doubt or disbelief, it might be provoc-
ative (Tiresiass own view) yet said quietly,
even ironically, or it might be spoken loudly
and angrily, as if to intimidate Tiresias into
taking it back. These different expressions will
contribute to the character of Oedipus, and that
in turn will affect how we see the play.
Speeches are more than causally efficacious.
Indeed, the entire exchange between Oedipus
and Tiresias from which I have lifted one line
it is about two pages in the translation I am
usingcould be dropped from the play and the
causal sequence would remain intact; indeed it
would be tightened. Thus Aristotle says that if
[a poet] puts in sequence speeches full of char-
acter, well-composed in diction and reasoning,
he will not achieve what was [agreed to be] the
Seamon The Price of the Plot in Aristotles Poetics 253
function of tragedy (50a29). Of course, Aristo-
tle is imagining an extreme case, that is, a mere
series of disconnected speeches, but the force of
what he says makes clear his prejudice, as does
the analogy with painting he uses to illustrate
the point: The most beautiful colors, laid on
without order, will not give one the same pleas-
ure as a simple black-and-white sketch of a por-
trait (50b1). What matters in a portrait is that
we recognize the image (whether this be of an
individual or a type), and this yields the pleas-
ure. Presumably, color can be used unobtru-
sively so that the recognition of the person
portrayed can take place, but to the extent that it
draws attention to itself the picture suffers. All
we need to get from action to action is a motive:
thus, we might say that he stole the money in
order to pay for the operation. Here we have
action and motive (which is not necessarily or
even usually stated in drama, but implied) and
then just enough character to get the deed
donebut no more. Thus Aristotle can make
the otherwise puzzling claim that without
action a tragedy cannot exist, but without char-
acters it may(50a24). What cannot be altered
in the case of Oedipus is his ferocious insistence
on getting at the truth, but his character cannot,
pace Aristotle, be confined to that, even if it
does not approach Hamletic nuances and com-
plexities.
Thought, in turn, should serve character, as
character serves the plot: the old [poets] made
people speak like citizens, but the recent ones
make them speak like rhetoricians (50b9), and,
Aristotle seems to say, since these are speeches
in which the speaker decides or avoids nothing
at all [they] do not have character (50b12), that
is, that which is revealed in choosing and act-
ing. Thus it comes as no surprise when later in
the Poetics Aristotle says of reasoning: what
was said about it in my Rhetoric should be
assumed; for this is proper rather to that
enquiry. All [the effects] that have to be pro-
duced by speech fall under reasoning; he then
says that the speeches in drama are composed of
three things, arguments, attempts to arouse
emotion, and judgments, all of which aim at or
are likely to elicit a response in other characters
(56a35). Thus, the making of speeches is not the
poets art but the rhetoricians. The poet must,
obviously, have some command of rhetoric, but
that is not what makes him or her a poet and
presumably the poet cannot compete with actual
rhetoricians. (Is there an echo here of Platos
scorn for all the things that Homer was alleged
to know?) Making plots is the poets art, and the
other elements of tragedy, while necessary, are
possible sources of confusion. Thus thought
ought to play its role unobtrusively, and move
us from one act to another without fuss.
Style also gets the brush off.
Knowledge of this belongs to the art of delivery and
to the person with mastery in it. [I mean] e.g., what is
a command, what is a wish, a statement, a threat, a
question, an answer, etc. No criticism at all made
against the art of poetry that is based on knowledge
or ignorance of these [forms], actually deserves to be
taken seriously. For this reason let us leave this
investigation aside, as it belongs to another art and
not to that of poetry. (56b10, 18)
As bad as the idea iswe dont judge poets by
their use of language?this passage touches on
a crucial point. Poets do not imitate assertions
that matter as such, as do writers of philosophi-
cal dialogues where the imitative manner has
little import and we pluck out the arguments.
9
Commanding, praying, and threatening are
especially expressive speech acts, but assertions
and questions can be as well. In speaking, we
cannot avoid tone of voice, and this is crucial to
the sort of meaning we expect in poetry, the
revelation of attitudes as well as beliefs. This is
too rich a brew for Aristotles purpose, and he
dismisses it as mere delivery, which seems to
mean the expressive force conveyed by actors
when they speak. That is, I believe, why he
claims that it is obvious from reading it what
[sort of] tragedy it is (62a12). Style, like
thought, is not part of the art of poetry, and all
Aristotle wants is for it to be clear and not
commonplace (58a18). Character, thought, and
style are necessary evils, and we can now see
why lyric poetry ranks low: it consists only of
these elements.
Why does Aristotles conception of the plot
lead to these conclusions?
10
The answer to that
question will also explain the demotion of nar-
rative.
The reason that Aristotle makes the tragic
plot the raison dtre of the poets art is that he
is making a case, contra Plato, for the cognitive
value of poetry, and he finds it in the causal
254 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
logic that makes poetry a more philosophical
and more serious thing than history; poetry
tends to speak of universals, history of particu-
lars (51b6). The universal that the poet knows
is the sort of thing that a certain kind of person
may well say or do in accordance with probabil-
ity or necessity (51b10). The point here is that
the sequence of events, while fictive (and thus
mimetic in the broad sense), is not mimetic in
the narrow, or trivial, sense, that is, the mimicry
of voices or isolated actions in the manner of
mimes. To imitate an action is not to mime
character types or bits of behavior without pur-
pose, but to represent human purpose striving
for realization, Halliwells phrase, which
nicely captures Aristotles de-emphasis of char-
acter.
11
Both tragedy and comedy had an
improvisatory beginning (49a10), that is, they
did not have plots but were mere mimicry, but
this (narrowly) mimetic beginning was super-
seded by the development of stories: As for the
composing of plots, Epicharmus and Phormis
[introduced it]. In the beginning it came from
Sicily, and, of the poets at Athens, Crates was
the first to relinquish the form of the lampoon
and compose generalized stories, i.e. plots
(49b5).
Because it follows a logical, if only probable,
order, the imitation of an action is more like the
arguments that support a thesis than it is to mere
miming.
12
To imitate an action is to get at some-
thing more general than the particulars of his-
tory and/or character, but not as general as what
philosophy provides. How, then, does the good
tragic plot manage to attain the generality that
raises it above history, the mimesis of voice,
and the art of mime?
Action is Aristotles term of art for the
basic unit for understanding human behavior.
As Rdiger Bittner puts it, one action is what
you get if you cut a persons doings into the
smallest still meaningful parts. One action is the
unit of meaningful activity.
13
An action is
defined by a purpose (getting back to Ithaca,
punishing the murderer of Laius) and there is no
overriding purpose to a single life: An indefi-
nitely large number of things happens to one
person, in some of which there is no unity. So
too the actions of one person are many, but do
not turn into a single action (51a19). The unity
is the logic of the events that follow from a sin-
gle purpose undiverted by mere accidents such
as a brick falling on a runners head. This view
of what Aristotle values in poetry is common in
the literature on Poetics: Like all representa-
tion, drama selectively condenses and structures
what it presents. It reveals the inner logic and
causal organization of an apparently discon-
nected series of events.
14
If this view of what
makes the plot central is correct, then what
Aristotle says is close to Emile Zolas theory of
fiction in The Experimental Method: The
problem is to know what such a passion, acting
in such a surrounding and under such circum-
stances, would produce.
15
Zola and Aristotle
both see literature, at its most intellectually ser-
ious, as a major source of knowledge about
human behavior. The crucial point is that while
the incidents are invented, the probabilities that
govern the relationship between the incidents
are not. Therefore, poetry is valuable for Aristo-
tle because it is, to use our phrase, a thought
experiment in which significant actions can
unfold freely in a vacuum that is created by
removing the contingencies of history (truth to
actual particulars), authorial intrusion (narra-
tion), and audience demands for melodrama or
poetic justice. How does this work in each case?
On the face of it we should learn from history,
and there are commonplaces to that effect, as
well as George Santayanas dictum that those who
cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat
it. Aristotle, however, sees historic events as con-
tingent, and so there is nothing to be learned from
them about the logic that is revealed only in fic-
tive plots: the constructions [of the incidents]
should not be like histories; in these it is neces-
sary to produce a description not of a single
action, but of a single time, with all that hap-
pened during it to one or more people; each
(event) elates to the others at random (59a22).
History consists of contingencies, not a probable
sequence, so historians, unlike good poets,
include many things that have no place in a
purely fictional work. In episodic plots, which
are like history, there is neither probability nor
necessity in the sequence of its episodes
(51b35), and thus there is nothing to be learned.
Aristotle explains that the tragedians keep to the
actual names because what is possible is
believable (51b15), but they make the plots. The
tragedians show us the unfolding of a single pur-
pose, and thus let us see the logic of what might
happen rather than the confusion of what does.
Seamon The Price of the Plot in Aristotles Poetics 255
Why then does Aristotle prefer drama to
narrative when, as we have seen, he finds that
dramatic speeches can undermine our grasp of
the plot and believes that a plot summary alone
can convey the essential effect? That which is
terrifying and pitiable can arise from spectacle,
but it can also arise from the structure of the
incidents itself; this is superior and belongs to a
better poet. For the plot should be constructed
in such a way that, even without seeing it,
someone who hears about the incidents will
shudder and feel pity at the outcome, as some-
one may feel upon hearing the plot of the
Oedipus (53b1).
16
I accept Elses view that this
refers not to a reading of the whole play but to
the plot of the Oedipus, its outline or bare
structure, before the play is written out.
17
Halliwell calls this the plot structure, and Booth
refers to it as the little story, that which has
implicit in it the tragic quality that must be
heightened by whatever is added, and from
which nothing can be deleted without altering
the object decisively.
18
It is this little story
that is the essence of tragedy, and Booths
heightening suggests that what is added is
emotional force, rhetoric one might say, and not
logic: the full drama simply drives home what
the little story itself already contains.
The reason Aristotle prefers drama to narra-
tive, despite its drawbacks, is that it protects the
plot from authorial intrusion. Because there is a
narrator, it is possible to put in many parts
which are accomplished at the same time, and
this gives splendor and diverts the listener
(59b23). This is, I think, quietly ironical
because the advantages of epic in terms of its
appeal to audiences (splendor and diversion) are
in fact drawbacks from a cognitive perspective.
Else glosses the passage thus: Narrative is a
magic carpet which can transport us anywhere
in the twinkling of an eye and then take up its
course. The dramatist, because his method is
dramatic, cannot do this.
19
Drama is thus more
rational than narrative, for the audience is an
eyewitness to the events: in watching a drama
unfold we do not have to trust a narrator who
tells us what motivates characters, moves events
around, and introduces elements that distract
and entertain. In drama we attend to the logic of
the sequence, judge it based on our intuitions
about action, and, if it is compelling, we can
make appropriate inferences about how people
behave. But, unhappily for Aristotle, character
and thought play a larger role than they do in
narrative.
Aristotles problem here can be illuminated
by E. H. Gombrichs brilliant chapter in Art and
Illusion on what he calls the Greek revolu-
tion. The gist of this is that the arts are trans-
formed when the artist ceases to be a reporter
(like the epic poet in the narrative portions) and
becomes an eyewitness: when classical sculp-
tors and painters discovered the character of
Greek narrative, they set up a chain reaction
which transformed the methods of representing
the human bodyand indeed more than that.
Thus, the painting of the creation will not tell
you, like the Holy Writ, only that in the begin-
ning God created the heaven and the earth.
Whether he wants to or not, the pictorial artist
has to include unintended information about
the way God proceeded, and indeed, what God
and the world looked like on the day of crea-
tion.
20
This nicely captures the difference
between the plot and the full play. The plot need
not specify much at all, for we respond to the
story as we might find it in newspapers, which
thrive on such tales. But when the story unfolds
by means of speech and action, some of our
attention shifts from the plot to details that are
not part of the causal sequence. So our interest
in following drama is not only in following a
sequence of incidents, but in following each
speech and grasping the state of mind of the
characters, and that has an intrinsic interest.
The last variable that has the potential to
distort or distract us from the logic of the plot is
the audience. Tragedy should, therefore, avoid
both offending and catering to the moral feel-
ings of the audience. It is not, and here I make
explicit what I think is implicit, that a dramatist
could not write a plausible story in which a
good man becomes miserable but that such a
story is shocking (52b35), and therefore the
audience will be concerned with its moral revul-
sion and not the logic of the plot. Similarly, if a
bad man comes to grief, we are morally satis-
fied, but that moral satisfaction diverts us from
the logic of what we have witnessed. Thus, it is
not praise and blame that should be elicited, but
pity and fear, which are the appropriate
responses to attending to the logic of a tragic
story. If we are morally judging we are not
going to be cognitively alert. Thus the hero
256 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
should be a person intermediate between these.
Such a person is one who neither is superior [to
us] in virtue and justice, nor undergoes a change
to misfortune because of vice and wickedness,
but because of some error (53a7).
21
Freed from history, the authors manipula-
tions, and the audiences desire for entertain-
ment and poetic justice, the logic of action
emerges. Tragedy, and tragedy only, reveals the
laws of action. That is what makes it a source of
knowledge and that is why it is the highest form
of poetry. (We need not worry about comedy
since it clearly appeals to our wishes rather than
to the actual logic of life.) But, as we have seen,
the price of this view is high when it comes to a
theory of poetry, even if we accept the dubious
claim that the tragic plot gives us knowledge
about human psychology. However, Aristotle
himself hints at a better view.
Aristotle first proposed what we might call a
seeing as theory of poetry.
22
Early in Poetics
he claims that poetry originates in the innate
desire to imitate, a desire that takes two forms.
Manlearns his first lessons by representa-
tion (48b8), as when children learn by imitat-
ing what adults do; Halliwell calls this
behavioral imitation.
23
The second form of
imitation is often called representation. Aristo-
tles explanation of why it gives pleasure is that
people learn as they observe (48b13), and, an
important point, this kind of learning is not
restricted to philosophers. But what are we
learning by looking at pictures? The answer is
that we infer what each thing is, e.g., that this
person [represents] that one (48b17).
24
Else
explains why this constitutes learning: the trick
of recognizing and identifying images or repro-
ductions is a part of the general process of
acquiring experience, and is pleasurable
because we are learning a part of the grand
structure of genera and species which consti-
tutes reality. He then observes that this brief
account of what we learn should be, but is not,
part of an argument about poetry and universals,
and the famous passage where poetry is said to
be more philosophical than history contains no
discernible allusion to ours.
25
Thus, what is
first presented as the kind of knowledge that
defines poetry is dropped, knowledge about
action replaces it, and something is lost in the
process. What is usually taken from this pas-
sage is the idea that we learn from poetry, but I
think Elses idea of what we learn provides the
basis for a theory of poetry that finds a central
place for all those elements are slighted by
Aristotles emphasis on plot.
Aristotles example of learning from imita-
tions is taken from the visual arts, and it makes
sense to say that we see a person in a portrait as
belonging to various categories (such as male,
old, sad, poor, defiant), and to understand the
portrait is to see it in terms of the relevant cate-
gories. What role, then, might such seeing as
play in poetry? The obvious way to move from
picture to drama is to say that we see speakers
as sad, angry, and so forth. I want to alter that
just a bit and make the object of imitation not
character, but each speech and its expressive
implications, from which our sense of character
flows. Dramatic speeches, like lyrics, are made
up of speech acts, and while that notion might
please Aristotle for the obvious reasons, poets
and their audiences focus on the expressive
dimension of those acts, which are designed to
engage our capacity to infer complex states of
mind, just as plots engage our capacity to
understand motives and thus the logic of
action.
26
What the characters mostly do in
drama is speakthus my epigraphand what
we must understand is what the characters
express when they speak. To follow a play
means not only grasping how one speech leads
to another or to an actionthough this is obvi-
ously crucialbut also recognizing the expres-
sive implications of the speeches themselves.
The speeches are imitations of people doing
something rife with meaning that is not causal,
and this is too rich for Aristotles pared-down
notions of character, thought, and style. Con-
sider, for example, Poloniuss well-known
lines: To thine own self be true, / And it must
follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not
then be false to any man. Ones first impulse is
to take these lines straight, but some teacher
will sooner or later suggest that one should see
them as hypocritical and perhaps even inher-
ently pompous. Whatever the truth of the mat-
ter, we must take them in one way or another,
see them as this or that.
This is all merely distracting for Aristotle and
he makes that especially clear in his attitude to
the chorus, which is why Booth and Halliwell
focus on this judgment: the sung [parts] belong
to the plot no more than they belong to another
Seamon The Price of the Plot in Aristotles Poetics 257
tragedy. What difference is there between
singing interludes and trying to adapt a speech,
or a whole episode, from one [drama] to
another? (56a26). Aristotles attitude to the
chorus is illuminated by Francis Sparshotts
analysis of singing: What singing is, is a very
special way of saying, a special use of the voice
in delivering a verbal message. It conveys
what you feel or what you want others to feel
about what you are saying, your attitude to it (or
the attitude you wish to evoke to it), or how you
want it to be taken (ironically, quizzically, seri-
ously); it is an elaborate form of using a special
tone of voice.
27
Tone of voice, diction,
imagery, and even syntax have expressive force
in conveying what a speaker feels about his or
her subject, himself or herself, and the singers
interlocutor; in other words, it is rich in
information about his or her state of mind. Iden-
tifying what is expressed in speecheswhich is
often a focus of interpretationis necessary to
following plots, but involves much more than
that, which is why Aristotle wanted to minimize
its importance in his theory.
The idea that poets imitate speech has been
most fully developed by Barbara Herrnstein
Smith in her essay Poetry as Fiction, where
she argues that the imitation of natural dis-
course is precisely what poetry is: a poem is
characteristically taken to be not a natural utter-
ance, but the representation of one. The poet,
like other imitative artists, has constructed a
fictive member of an identifiable class of
natural (real) objects or events.
28
This restores
the balance that Aristotle had upset when he
wrote: So it is clear from these arguments that
a poet must be a composer of plots rather than
of verses, insofar as he is a poet according to
representation, and represents actions (51b28).
Glancing at Aristotle, Smith says: A poem rep-
resents discourse in the same sense that a play,
in its totality, represents human actions and
events.
29
She is speaking primarily about lyric
poetry, but it is obvious that a dramatist is
equally a maker of both plot and of speech.
Attending to speeches in drama, we follow the
movements of minds, which cannot, of course,
be understood outside the context of actions,
but that are not merely subservient to them.
Aristotle will, in principle, have little or none of
this, and that impoverishes his account of the
art. He wants to make the plot the poetic equi-
valent of the argument in a Platonic dialogue,
and he thus scants expression. But the theory of
imitation can and should accommodate the
expressive dimension of language.
It is astonishing that Aristotle got so much
right. Verbal imitation of speech and action,
that is, the concept of fiction, still identifies the
subject matter of literary theory. Plot, character,
and style remain fundamental concepts for criti-
cism. Although the analysis of plot is out of
favor, Aristotle is, apparently, still useful for
aspiring screen writers.
30
Brief statements
poetry is more philosophical than history, trag-
edy purges pity and fearhave spawned small
libraries of commentary. The Poetics is strewn
with insights that remain germane to our con-
cerns, such as Aristotles noting that the trage-
dians use historical names (51b15). So it is in
our docudramas, where fictions masquerade as
fact and so convince. Although I have argued
that Aristotle went seriously wrong in giving
such primacy to the plot, he also, perhaps unsur-
prisingly given the richness of the Poetics,
pointed the way to a better theory of poetic
imitation.
ROGER SEAMON
5211355 Harwood St.
Vancouver, British Columbia V6E 3W3
Canada
INTERNET: rgseamon@shaw.ca
1. Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Richard Janko (Indianapolis/
Cambridge: Hackett, 1987), 47a17. Subsequent references
will give the approximate Bekker number in the text. Janko
translates mimesis as representation, but I will use the
more familiar imitation in my text.
2. Gerald Else, Aristotles Poetics: The Argument
(Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 52.
3. Wayne Booth, The Poetics for a Practical Critic,
Essays on Aristotles Poetics, ed. Amlie Oksenberg Rorty
(Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 392.
4. Booth, The Poetics for a Practical Critic, pp. 391392.
5. Stephen Halliwell, Aristotles Poetics (London: Duck-
worth, 1986), p. 250.
6. E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel, ed. Oliver Stalley-
brass (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), p. 40.
7. John Stuart Mill, Literary Essays, ed. Edward Alexan-
der (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), pp. 5152.
8. Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, trans. and eds. Luci
Berkowitz and Theodore F. Brunner (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1970), p. 10.
9. There are, of course, dialogues where this is not true,
most notably Platos Symposium, and Allan Bloom
shows how the opening scene of The Republic is a dramatic
258 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
enactment of major themes. (See the introduction to his
translation of The Republic of Plato [New York: Basic
Books, 1968]). But by and large, even in the case of Plato, it
is the problems raised and the arguments made that make
him part of the philosophical and not the literary canon,
despite the fact that he is, technically, imitating and is also,
it is said, a fine writer.
10. Aristotles motive for making the plot the essence of
the poets art may be because he wants to defend poetry
against Platos criticisms, which assume the primacy of
character: If it is plot rather than ethos that is essential,
tragedy can be shown to be the product of a craft, and not,
as Plato insists in book 10 of the Republic, the creation of
ignorant imitators of images. Plot, unlike ethos, has a nat-
ural orderbeginning, middle, and endthat gives tragedy
a definite structure of its own, with well-defined laws that
can be studied and taught. Elizabeth Belfiore, Tragic
Pleasures: Aristotle on Plot and Emotion (Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1992), p. 85. The motive, of course, does not
dictate the result and, in fact, Aristotles initial theory about
the cognitive value of poetry did not involve the plot, as I
argue below (pp. 67).
11. Halliwell, Aristotles Poetics, p. 140.
12. The plot outline was once called the argument, and
is most familiar to us from the Arguments with which
Milton prefaces each book of Paradise Lost.
13. Rdiger Bittner, One Action, in Rorty, Essays on
Aristotles Poetics, p. 99.
14. Amlie Oksenberg Rorty, The Psychology of Aris-
totelian Tragedy, in Rorty, Essays on Aristotles Poetics,
p. 2. See also Halliwell, Aristotles Poetics, p. 135, and
G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, Aristotle on History and Poetry, in
Rorty, p. 24, for the same idea.
15. In Critical Theory Since Plato, ed. Hazard Adams
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1971), p. 649. The differences
are worth mentioning. Aristotle portrays people as agents
whose actions can have unintended and undeserved bad
consequences: this elicits pity and fear. Zola portrays people
as victims we can save through sociology and social action:
the novelist will show the logic of social evils and social
action will provide a cure. But note that both Aristotle and
Zola downplay what we think of as character (something
individual) in favor of purpose and passion, respectively,
both of which we have in common with others, which is
why the poet knows something universal.
16. I have nothing to say about the role of the emotions in
the Poetics, as I agree with Belfiore: The Poetics makes a
great deal of sense read as a treatise concerned primarily with
the organization of the plot and only incidentally and indi-
rectly with emotion (Belfiore, Tragic Pleasures, p. 338).
17. Else, Aristotles Poetics, p. 409.
18. Booth, The Poetics for a Practical Critic, p. 397.
19. Else, Aristotles Poetics, p. 609.
20. E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the
Psychology of Pictorial Representation (London: Phaidon
Press, 1959), p. 110.
21. For an excellent account of this point, see Belfiore,
Tragic Pleasures, pp. 8588.
22. This has nothing to do with what Aristotle calls
recognition. For him, that is the moment when it all adds
up, whereas the recognition I shall be discussing refers to
something that happens as we read lines of poetry.
23. Halliwell, Aristotles Poetics, p. 113. First may
mean that in the early stages of learning how to do some-
thing one imitates, after which one learns by explicit
instruction. Jankos use of representation for the Greek
mimesis does not work well here: the usual imitation
would be better.
24. Else, Aristotles Poetics, p. 125. Else explains what
he does thus: For what Aristotle means by learning and
inferring is not the recognition that this person is that
person, but that he is that kind of creature. The meaning
of the usual translation is at odds with the rest of the Poet-
ics, as it implies a copy theory of imitation. For an extended
discussion of the issue, see Halliwell, Aristotles Poetics,
pp. 77, 7879, 80, 133. Jonathan Barnes adopts Elses read-
ing in The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (Cambridge
University Press, 1995).
25. Else, Aristotles Poetics, p. 132.
26. Like Mill (see above), I think that these are very dif-
ferent abilities; a good story is a very different sort of thing
from a good lyric poem, although both are fictions and thus
belong in the theory of poetry.
27. Francis Sparshott, The Theory of The Arts (Princeton
University Press, 1983), p. 85.
28. On the Margins of Discourse: The Relation of Litera-
ture to Language (University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 25.
29. Ibid.
30. Ari Hiltinen, Aristotle in Hollywood: The Anatomy of
Successful Storytelling (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2002).