In our week 8 lectorial, a brief mention was made about Aristotle’s “poetics,” recognised as the first recorded attempt at literary criticism. I wanted to find out more about this concept and so I did some research and discovered the following.
Key terms
Aesthetics: a set of principles concerned with taste and the nature and appreciation of beauty
Poetics: earliest recorded dramatic theory, study of linguistic techniques in poetry and literature
Rhetoric: the art of persuasion
Aristotle branched away from Plato’s concept of mimesis and his belief that “art is an imitation of life.” Rather, he considered the purpose of a work in its context, and its social importance.
Among other concepts, Aristotle placed a focus on:
- The purging of emotions while watching a tragedy (known as catharsis)
- The reversal/turning point in a plot (peripeteia)
- The emotional appeal to an audience (pathos)
- Extreme pride or self-confidence (hubris)
Aristotle’s Elements of Tragedy
- Plot
- Character
- Thought
- Diction
- Melody
- Spectacle
Essentially, the content and the form are equally important in conveying meaning and eliciting a response from an audience.