“The Poetics” is chiefly about Tragedy which is regarded as the highest poetic form.

Abercrombie says:
“But the theory of Tragedy is worked out with such insight and comprehensions
and it becomes the type of the theory of literature.”
Aristotle reveals that imitation is the common basis of all the fine arts which differ
from each other in their medium of imitation, objects of imitation and manner of imitation.
Poetry differs from music in its medium of imitation. Epic poetry and dramatic poetry differs
on the basis of manner of imitation. Dramatic poetry itself is divisible in Tragic or Comic on
the basis of objects of imitation. Tragedy imitates men as better and comedy as worse then
they are. Thus, Aristotle establishes the unique nature of Tragedy.
Aristotle traces the origin and development of poetry. Earlier, poetry was of two kinds.
There were ‘Iambs’ or ‘Invectives’, on one hand, which developed into satiric poetry, and
‘hymns’ on the gods or ‘panegyrics’ on the great, on the other, which developed into Epic or
heroic poetry. Out of Heroic poetry developed Tragedy, and out of satiric came the Comedy.
Both Epic and Tragedy imitate serious subjects in a grand kind of verse but they differ as Epic
imitates only in one kind of verse both for Choral odes and dialogue. The Epic is long and
varied but the Tragedy has greater concentration and effectiveness. The Epic lacks music,
spectacle, reality of presentation and unity of action which the Tragedy has.
“All the parts of an epic are included in Tragedy; but those of Tragedy are not all
of them to be found in the Epic.”
Aristotle comes to a consideration of the nature and function of tragedy. He defines tragedy
as:
“the imitation of an action, serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude, in a
language beautified in different parts with different kinds of embellishment,
through actions and not narration, and through scenes of pity and fear bringing
about the ‘Catharsis’ of these emotions.”
The definition separates tragedy from other poetic forms. Firstly, its objects of
imitation are serious actions unlike Comedy which imitates the non-serious. ‘Serious’ means
important, weighty. Secondly, Tragedy on the basis of manner differs from Epic which narrates
and does not represent through action. Thirdly, on the basis of medium it differs from Lyric. It
employs several kinds of embellishments.
Aristotle considers plot as the soul of tragedy. Tragedy imitates ‘actions’ and its plot
consists of a logical and inevitable sequence of events. The action must be a whole. It must
have a beginning, a middle and an end.
The tragic plot must have a certain magnitude or ‘length’. ‘Magnitude’ here means
‘size’. It should be long enough to allow the change from happiness to misery but not too long
to be forgotten before the end. Action, too short, cannot be regarded as proper and beautiful
for its different parts will not be clearly visible. Its different parts must be well-related to each
other and to the whole. It must be an ‘organic’ whole.
Aristotle divides the tragic plot into ‘Simple’ and ‘Complex’. In Simple Plot the change
in the fortunes of hero takes place without Peripety and Discovery; while the Complex Plot
involves one or the other, or both. The Peripety is the change in the fortunes of the hero, and
the Discovery is a change from ignorance to knowledge. Aristotle prefers complex plot for it
startles, captures attention and performs the tragic function more effectively. He regards
episodic plot, lacking probability and necessity, as worst of all.
Aristotle lays great emphasis on the probability and necessity of the action of a
tragedy. It implies that there should be no unrelated events and incidents. They must follow
each other inevitably. No incident or character should be superfluous. The events introduced
must be probable under the circumstances.
By various embellishments in various parts, Aristotle means verse and song. Tragedy
imitates through verse in the dialogue and through song in the Choric parts. Verse and song
beautify and give pleasure. But Aristotle does not regard them as essential for the success of a
tragedy.
Aristotle points out that the function of tragedy is to present scenes of ‘fear and pity’
and to bring about a Catharsis of these emotions. It would be suffice to say that by Catharsis of
pity and fear, he means their restoration to the right proportions, to the desirable ‘golden
means’.
Aristotle lists six formative or constituent parts of Tragedy; Plot, character, diction,
thought, spectacle and song. Two of these parts relate to the medium of imitation, one to the
manner of imitation, and three to the object of imitation. Song is to be found in the Choric
parts of a tragedy. The Spectacle has more to do with stagecraft than with the writing of
poetry.
'Thought' is the power of saying what can be said, or what is suitable to the occasion. It
is the language which gives us the thoughts and feeling of various characters. The language of
Tragedy must be unusually expressive. The Language of Tragedy ‘must be clear, and it must
not be mean’. It must be grand and elevated with familiar and current words. ‘Rare’ and
‘unfamiliar’ words must be set in wisely to impart elevation.
Aristotle stresses four essential qualities for characterization. First, the characters must
be good, but not perfect. Wicked characters may be introduced if required by the plot.
Secondly, they must be appropriate. They must have the traits of the profession or class to
which they belong. Thirdly, they must have likeness. By likeness he means that the characters
must be life-like. Fourthly, they must have consistency in development. There should be no
sudden and strange change in character.
Aristotle lays down that an ideal tragic hero should not be perfectly good or utterly
bad. He is a man of ordinary weakness and virtues, like us, leaning more to the side of good
than of evil, occupying a position of eminence, and falling into ruin from that eminence, not
because of any deliberate sin, but because of some error of judgment of his part, bringing
about a Catharsis of the emotion of pity and fear.
The plot should arouse the emotions of pity and fear which is the function of tragedy.
A tragic plot must avoid showing (a) a perfectly good man passing from happiness to misery
(b) a bad man rising from misery to happiness (c) an extremely bad man falling from
happiness to misery.
While comparing the importance of Plot and Character, Aristotle is quite definite that
Plot is more important than Character. He goes to the extent of saying that there can be a
tragedy without character but none without plot.
Aristotle emphasizes only one of the three unities, the Unity of Action; he is against
plurality of action as it weakens the tragic effect. There might be numerous incidents but they
must be related with each other, and they must all be conducive to one effect. As regards the
Unity of Time, Aristotle only once mentions it in relation to dramatic Action. Comparing the
epic and the Tragedy, he writes:
“Tragedy tries, as far as possible, to live within a single revolution of the sun, or
only slightly to exceed it, whereas the epic observes no limits in its time of
action.”

According to Aristotle, the end of poetry is to give pleasure, and tragedy has its own pleasure
beside. Proper aesthetic pleasure can be possible only when the requirements of morality are
satisfied. Verse and rhyme enhance the pleasure of poetry. Peripeteia and Anagnorisis
heighten the seductive power of the action. Pure pleasure results from the exercise of our
emotions and thoughts on the tragic action.
Such are the main features of Aristotle's theory of Tragedy. Aristotle knew only
Greek Tragedy. His conclusions are based entirely on the drama with which he was familiar
and often his views are not of universal application. His view might have been challenged but
their history is the history of Tragedy.

No passage in “The Poetics” with the exception of the Catharsis phrase has attracted so much
critical attention as his ideal of the tragic hero.

The function of a tragedy is to arouse the emotions of pity and fear and Aristotle deduces the
qualities of his hero from this function. He should be good, but not perfect, for the fall of a
perfect man from happiness into misery, would be unfair and repellent and will not arouse
pity. Similarly, an utterly wicked person passing from happiness to misery may satisfy our
moral sense, but will lack proper tragic qualities. His fall will be well-deserved and according
to ‘justice’. It excites neither pity nor fear. Thus entirely good and utterly wicked persons are
not suitable to be tragic heroes.

Similarly, according to Aristotelian law, a saint would be unsuitable as a tragic hero. He is on

the side of the moral order and hence his fall shocks and repels. Besides, his martyrdom is a
spiritual victory which drowns the feeling of pity. Drama, on the other hand, requires for its
effectiveness a militant and combative hero. It would be important to remember that
Aristotle’s conclusions are based on the Greek drama and he is lying down the qualifications of
an ideal tragic hero. He is here discussing what is the very best and not what is good. Overall,
his views are justified, for it requires the genius of a Shakespeare to arouse sympathy for an
utter villain, and saints as successful tragic heroes have been extremely rare.

Having rejected perfection as well as utter depravity and villainy, Aristotle points out that:
“The ideal tragic hero … must be an intermediate kind of person, a man not pre-
eminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought upon him
not by vice or depravity but by some error of judgment.”

The ideal tragic hero is a man who stands midway between the two extremes. He is not
eminently good or just, though he inclines to the side of goodness. He is like us, but raised
above the ordinary level by a deeper vein of feeling or heightened powers of intellect or will. He
is idealized, but still he has so much of common humanity as to enlist our interest and
sympathy.

The tragic hero is not evil or vicious, but he is also not perfect and his disaster is brought upon
him by his own fault. The Greek word used here is “Hamartia” meaning “missing the mark”.
He falls not because of the act of outside agency or evil but because of Hamartia or
“miscalculation” on his part. Hamartia is not a moral failing and it is unfortunate that it was
translated as “tragic flaw” by Bradley. Aristotle himself distinguishes Hamartia from moral
failing. He means by it some error or judgment. He writes that the cause of the hero’s fall must
lie “not in depravity, but in some error or Hamartia on his part”. He does not assert or deny
anything about the connection of Hamartia with hero’s moral failings.

“It may be accompanied by moral imperfection, but it is not itself a moral

imperfection, and in the purest tragic situation the suffering hero is not morally
to blame.”

Thus Hamartia is an error or miscalculation, but the error may arise from any of the three
ways: It may arise from “ignorance of some fact or circumstance”, or secondly, it may arise
from hasty or careless view of the special case, or thirdly, it may be an error voluntary, but not
deliberate, as acts committed in anger. Else and Martian Ostwald interpret Hamartia and say
that the hero has a tendency to err created by lack of knowledge and he may commit a series of
errors. This tendency to err characterizes the hero from the beginning and at the crisis of the
play it is complemented by the recognition scene, which is a sudden change “from ignorance to
knowledge”.

In fact, Hamartia is a word with various shades of meaning and has been interpreted by
different critics. Still, all serious modern Aristotelian scholarship agreed that Hamartia is not
moral imperfection. It is an error of judgment, whether arising from ignorance of some
material circumstance or from rashness of temper or from some passion. It may even be a
character, for the hero may have a tendency to commit errors of judgment and may commit
series of errors. This last conclusion is borne out by the play Oedipus Tyrannus to which
Aristotle refers time and again and which may be taken to be his ideal. In this play, hero’s life
is a chain or errors, the most fatal of all being his marriage with his mother. If King Oedipus is
Aristotle’s ideal hero, we can say with Butcher that:
“His conception of Hamartia includes all the three meanings mentioned above,
which in English cannot be covered by a single term.”

Hamartia is an error, or a series of errors, “whether morally culpable or not,” committed by an

otherwise noble person, and these errors derive him to his doom. The tragic irony lies in the
fact that hero may err mistakenly without any evil intention, yet he is doomed no less than
immorals who sin consciously. He has Hamartia and as a result his very virtues hurry him to
his ruin. Says Butcher:
“Othello in the modern drama, Oedipus in the ancient, are the two most
conspicuous examples of ruin wrought by character, noble indeed, but not
without defects, acting in the dark and, as it seemed, for the best.”

Aristotle lays down another qualification for the tragic hero. He must be, “of the number of
those in the enjoyment of great reputation and prosperity.” He must be a well-reputed
individual occupying a position of lofty eminence in society. This is so because Greed tragedy,
with which alone Aristotle was familiar, was written about a few distinguished royal families.
Aristotle considers eminence as essential for the tragic hero. But Modern drama demonstrates
that the meanest individual can also serve as a tragic hero, and that tragedies of Sophoclean
grandeur can be enacted even in remote country solitudes.

However, Aristotle’s dictum is quite justified on the principle that, “higher the state, the
greater the fall that follows,” or because heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes,
while the death of a beggar passes unnoticed. But it should be remembered that Aristotle
nowhere says that the hero should be a king or at least royally descended. They were the
Renaissance critics who distorted Aristotle and made the qualification more rigid and narrow.