Studying Aristotle’s “Poetics” — Part 1: Structure and Imitation

As I’ve been interviewing screenwriters, I typically ask what some of their influences are. One book title comes up over and over again: Aristotle’s “Poetics.” I confess I’ve never read the entire thing, only bits and pieces. So I thought, why not do a daily series to provide a structure to compel me to go through it. That way we’d all benefit from the process.

For background on Aristotle, you can go here to see an article on him in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

To download “Poetics,” you can go here.

Part 1: Structure and Imitation

I propose to treat of Poetry in itself and of its various kinds,
noting the essential quality of each, to inquire into the structure
of the plot as requisite to a good poem; into the number and nature
of the parts of which a poem is composed; and similarly into whatever
else falls within the same inquiry. Following, then, the order of
nature, let us begin with the principles which come first.

Epic poetry and Tragedy, Comedy also and Dithyrambic poetry, and the
music of the flute and of the lyre in most of their forms, are all
in their general conception modes of imitation. They differ, however,
from one another in three respects: the medium, the objects, the manner
or mode of imitation, being in each case distinct.

For as there are persons who, by conscious art or mere habit, imitate
and represent various objects through the medium of color and form,
or again by the voice; so in the arts above mentioned, taken as a
whole, the imitation is produced by rhythm, language, or ‘harmony,’
either singly or combined.

Thus in the music of the flute and of the lyre, ‘harmony’ and rhythm
alone are employed; also in other arts, such as that of the shepherd’s
pipe, which are essentially similar to these. In dancing, rhythm alone
is used without ‘harmony’; for even dancing imitates character, emotion,
and action, by rhythmical movement.

There is another art which imitates by means of language alone, and
that either in prose or verse- which verse, again, may either combine
different meters or consist of but one kind- but this has hitherto
been without a name. For there is no common term we could apply to
the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogues on the
one hand; and, on the other, to poetic imitations in iambic, elegiac,
or any similar meter. People do, indeed, add the word ‘maker’ or ‘poet’
to the name of the meter, and speak of elegiac poets, or epic (that
is, hexameter) poets, as if it were not the imitation that makes the
poet, but the verse that entitles them all to the name. Even when
a treatise on medicine or natural science is brought out in verse,
the name of poet is by custom given to the author; and yet Homer and
Empedocles have nothing in common but the meter, so that it would
be right to call the one poet, the other physicist rather than poet.
On the same principle, even if a writer in his poetic imitation were
to combine all meters, as Chaeremon did in his Centaur, which is a
medley composed of meters of all kinds, we should bring him too under
the general term poet.

So much then for these distinctions.

There are, again, some arts which employ all the means above mentioned-
namely, rhythm, tune, and meter. Such are Dithyrambic and Nomic poetry,
and also Tragedy and Comedy; but between them originally the difference
is, that in the first two cases these means are all employed in combination,
in the latter, now one means is employed, now another.

Such, then, are the differences of the arts with respect to the medium
of imitation.

Two big takeaways:

— Aristotle asserted that poems, and by extension stories in general, have structures: “to inquire into the structure of the plot as requisite to a good poem.” No matter the type of poem — epic, tragedy, comedy — or even song, there is a universality at work in terms of narrative structure.

So right here, we can see the foundation of structural analysis. Indeed were it not for Aristotle, Joseph Campbell may never have wound his way toward the Hero’s Journey, a sense that all stories tell one story.

We see echoes of this in relation to screenwriting. William Goldman famously said: “Screenplays are structure,” fitting in that a script is a blueprint to make a movie.

As we go through “Poetics,” it will be interesting to see how much flexibility Aristotle allows in terms of the variability of narrative structure. A basic question to consider: Does structure dictate the story or does story dictate its structure?

— The concept of imitation. At first, the instinct of screenwriters might be to interpret this in light of how Hollywood thrives on imitative products, movies that are similar enough to predecessors to benefit from that audience pre-awareness, but different enough to stand on their own.

But I believe what Aristotle describes here is about the writer or artist capturing something of real life in the stories we create. Stories imitate aspects of human existence.

In this section of “Poetics,” Aristotle doesn’t delve into the value of imitation, rather he identifies some of the ways in which stories can imitate real life: rhythm, language, ‘harmony,’ character, emotion, action.

The ramifications of this basic concept are huge. The very fact stories are imitations links them to reality. In other words, they are not born out of nothing, but from something.

Moreover, we have from the very beginning of this thought process the idea of a relationship. Story. Reality. A connection between the two. And since we, as humans, interface with reality every day, we can draw upon that relationship of story to our experience to enable us to enter into the story universe, not just an exercise in concept, but one of emotional and psychological meaning.

What do you see in this part of Aristotle’s “Poetics”?

See you here next time for another installment of this series.

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For the entire series, go here.