Unit –VIII : Literary Criticism

Aristotle
Aristotle was born in 384 BC and died in 322 B.C. He came to Athens at the age
of seventeen. He was the disciple of Plato and he stayed with him till his death in 347
B.C. Plato was the student of Socrates. Republic was written by Plato. Socrates was the
big-city philosopher in ancient Athens. Aristotle was the tutor to the Prince Alexander
Macedon, the great.
Works
1. On the Soul
2. On Sense and Sensibles, On Sense and Sensibilia
3. On Memory and Recollection
4. On Sleep and Waking
5. On Dreams
6. On Divination by Dreams
7. On Longness and Shortness of Life
8. On Youth and Old Age [On Life and Death]
9. Metaphysics
10. Magna Moral
11. Politics
12. Rhetoric; Art of Rhetoric
13. Poetics
Aristotle was called a peripatetic philosopher because he liked to lecture to his
students while taking a walk. (peripateo means "to walk around"). The theme in
Aristotle's thought is that ‘happiness is the goal of life’. He said, "Lest Athens sin twice
against philosophy" and left voluntarily Athens when conditions became a bit politically
dangerous for him.
He was the founder of logical theory believed that the greatest human endeavor
is the use of reason in theoretical activity. One of his best known ideas was his
conception of "The Golden Mean" — "avoid extremes," the counsel of moderation in all
things.
Poetics
His Poetics was written about the year 330 B.C. It is in the nature of class notes
on an intelligent teacher. He discards the oracular method and Plato’s dialectic method.
It was the first Psychological study of poetics process.
In his Poetics, Aristotle uses 'mode' in a more specific sense. Kinds of 'poetry'
may be differentiated in three ways: according to their medium of imitation, according to
their objects of imitation, and according to their mode or 'manner' of imitation.  The
poetics is the most famous treatise on poetry and drama. It defines poetry and drama as
modes of imitation.
It has twenty six chapters and forty five pages. It is divided in six parts.
5 chapters I to V contain introductory remark on poetry.
14 chapters VI to XIX deal with tragedy.
3 chapters XX, XI and XXII deal with the discussion of poetic diction, style and
vocabulary
chapter XXIII deals with narrative poetry and tragedy.
chapters XXIV, and XXVI compare tragedy with epic.
 chapter XXV examines the objections of critics against the poetry.
In chapter four Aristotle expressed the pleasure of imitative art. He distinguishes
between the genres of poetry in three ways:
Matter, Subjects and Manner.
His conception of poetry is essentially ideal. He says that the characters in
poetry should be general and representative of the whole class to which they belong,
irrespective of their occupations or status in life.
In chapter thirteen he talks about tragic hero. In his ‘book he gave his famous
definition of tragedy, “A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as
having magnitude, complete in itself; in appropriate and pleasurable language; in a
dramatic rather than narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to
accomplish a catharsis of these emotions.”
He specifies six parts of tragedy plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle and
song. He emphasizes that most important part of tragedy is Plot. He considers plot as
the soul of the tragedy. According to him tragedy must have its beginning middle and an
end. He discards the theory of imitation of plot. According to Aristotle, the tragic error
means Hamartia and incidents arousing pity and fear means catharsis. Tragic hero
should be “a man not pre-eminently virtuous whose misfortune brought upon him not by
vice and depravity by some error of judgment“. Aristotle named the error hero as
Hamartia.
According to Aristotle Imitation is the basis of all arts and Imitation means not just
copying the externals or superficies of nature but reflecting the emotions, passions and
inner truths of the human soul. Arts differ from one another in the medium that they
employ.
We delight in arts because they present an imitation of life. Even imitation of
painful happenings gives pleasure when the imitation is accurate. Some poets imitating
the noble actions of noble personages, wrote panegyrics about great men and human
about gods. Homer’s lliad and Odyssey belong to panegyrics.
Some poets imitated the trivial actions of trivial people, writing invectives or
personal satires otherwise called iambic verses. The light comedy born from this genre.
Homer wrote the serious epics the lliad and Odyssey as well as the comic epic
Margites. Unfortunately, the Margites is lost and has not come down.
The epic and the tragedy deal with grave and noble actions, the comedy deals
with the ridiculous and the ugly which excite laughter.
Tragedies are concerned with great people. Comedies portray the average,
ordinary folks who are as we are.
There was no name or literature in Aristotle’s time, so he calls it an ‘art without a
name’.
The writer imitates or describes three kinds of men
i) a saint or a great hero
ii) the beastly kind of man, the villain and the pervert.
iii) the ordinary man with all our faults.
German painters
Polygnotus paints great heroes who are ‘better than we are’.
Pauson’s pains people who are far worse than us.
Dionysius paints men and women who are just like ourselves.
 Aristotle describes three modes of writings. They are the narrative mode, the
dramatic mode, and a combination of these two modes. Homer used the narrative
mode. Sophocles the Great and Aristophanes used the dramatic mode.
Aristotle says that the epic is not constrained by limits of time and place. The
time of action of a tragedy should not exceed. It should be like ‘A single circuit of the
sun’s or a single day.
A good tragedy effects catharsis purging the excess of pity and fear in the
spectator’s mind and bringing about mental poise or balance. Catharsis means
"purification" or "cleansing" is the purification and purgation of emotions especially pity
and fear through art or any extreme change in emotion that results in renewal and
restoration. It is a metaphor comparing the effects of tragedy on the mind of spectator to
the effect of a cathartic on the body.
The constituent parts of a tragedy are
i) plot or action
ii) characters
iii) the thoughts expressed in the play
iv) diction
v) melody or song and
vi) spectacle or the mode of imitation (whether narrative or dramatic).
Plot construction
It should have a beginning, a middle and an end. The length of a plot must not
be too small or too vast.
Unity of the plot
The plot must deal with the actions befalling the hero or done by the hero.
The historian relates what has actually happened, what certain personages
actually did. The tragedian shows what a person with a certain character is bound to do
and suffer.
Aristotle talks of two kinds of plot, the simple plot and the complex plot. The
simple plot registers an even flow of action from beginning to end. Aristotle introduces
the concepts of peripeteia,-reversal of fortune and anagnorisis, -discovery or recognition
in his discussion of simple and complex plots. In a complex plot, there are reversals
peripeteia in the hero’s fortune or shocking discoveries, anagnorisis. These two
developments cause immense suffering to the hero of the tragedy. Oedipus’s discovery
of his parentage in Sophocles’s play Oedipus Tyrannus is an instance of anagnorisis.
Macbeth’s murder of King Duncan causing his ultimate destruction is an instance of
peripeteia.
A modern drama is divided into Acts and each Act is divided into scenes.
Aristotle divides a Greek drama into the six sections.
1. The Prologue - This part precedes the entrance of the Chorus.
2. The Parode -. This is the entrance song of the Chorus.
3. The Episode - This is the part between two Choric songs.
4. The Stasimon - This is a Choric ode.
5. The Commos - This is the joint lamentation of the Chorus and
the actors.
6. The Exode - This part follows the last choric song.
The Perfect Tragedy:
 The suffering of an unimpeachable man is undeserved. The prospering of a
wicked man is also undeserved. Hence such men are unfit to be the heroes of a
tragedy. The man fit in a tragedy is one who, along with his noble character has also a
serious flaw. It is this flaw which brings about his fall. Aristotle does not approve of the
tragic-comedy which has a tragic or somber main plot and a comic sub-plot.
Aristotle advances the concept of hamartia or miscalculation as a possible cause
of tragedy. Lear’s miscalculation or misjudging, viewing Goneril and Regan as good
and Cordelia as bad, is an instance of hamartia causing tragedy.
Character
A character must be appropriate or true to life. A character must reflect the
station to which he belongs. A king must behave like a king, and a woman like a
woman.
Recognition must be natural and credible and not be suddenly introduced by the
writer to bring about a happy ending.
Thought expresses itself in the arguments and counter-arguments of the different
characters.
Diction
Diction is the choice of arrangement of words and images. The words that a poet
uses may be
i) those current in ordinary speech
ii) foreign terms imported from other languages
iii) metaphorical terms
iv) ornamental expressions and
v) new coinages.
Above all, the poet’s style must be clear but not mean.
Qualifications of a good dramatist
Drama is superior to epic.
The dramatist should be imaginative.
Aristotle lists four kinds of tragedies, namely
i) the complex tragedy revolving on peripeteia and anagnorisis
ii) the tragedy of suffering
iii) the tragedy of character and
iv) the tragedy of spectacle depending on sensational effects.