Aristotle’s theory of the Tragic Hero Essay

A man doesnt become a maven until he weed see the resolve of his own downfall sad torpedos who fit under Aristotles d epicaltion be copen as peripatetic Tragic wedge heel sandwichs and receive five specific characteristics 1) A flaw or misconduct of thought (to a fault known as ham craftia which is a fatal flaw pencil lead to the downfall of a tragic hero or heroine) 2) A contrary of fortune due to the error of judgment (also known as peripetia, which is a sudden reversal of fortune or change in circumstances) 3) The discovery or recognition that the reversal was brought about by the heros own actions (Referred to as anagnorisis, which is a moment in a play when a character makes a critical discovery) 4) Excessive feel (hubris)5) The characters bunch must(prenominal) be immenseer than merited. In the beginning, the character must be seen as equal morally to normal people in order for the earshot to identify with him/her. This acknowledgement allows the sentime nt of pity which is crucial in a tragic play. The Aristotelian tragic hero inevitably suffers a tragic death, having fallen from great heights and made an irreversible mistake. The hero must courageously simulate their death with honour.Other common traits of the Aristotelian tragic heroa) scrapper must suffer more than he deservesb) Hero must be doomed from the st device, scarcely bears no responsibility for possessing his flaw.c) Hero must be appalling in nature, plainly be imperfect so that the audience basin see themselves in him.d) Hero must begin ascertained his fate by his own actions, not by things happening to him.e) Hero must understand his doom, as well as the fact that his fate was discovered by his own actions.f) Heros report card should sack fear and empathy.g) Hero must be physically or spiritually wounded by his experiences, usually resulting in his death.h) The hero must be intelligent so that he may learn from his mistakes. i) The hero must begin a weakne ss, usually, it is pride.j) He must be faced with a very serious decision that he must face.Aristotle identifies disaster as the most refined version of poetry dealing with lofty matters and frivolity as the most refined version of poetry dealing with tooshie matters. He traces a brief and speculative history of tragedy as it evolved from dithyrambic hymns in praise of the god Dionysus. Dithyrambs were sung by a large choir, abouttimes featuring a narrator. Aeschylus invented tragedy by bringing a second actor into dialogue with the narrator. Sophocles innovated further by introducing a tercet actor, and gradually tragedy shifted to its contemporary dramatic form. Aristotle posits tragedy according to 7 characteristics (1) it is mimetic, (2) it is serious, (3) it tells a full story of an appropriate length, (4) it contains rhythm and capital of New Hampshire, (5) rhythm and termsony occur in different combinations in different parts of the tragedy, (6) it is performed sooner than narrated, and (7) it erects feelings of pity and fear and indeed purges these feelings through purgation. A tragedy consists of sixsome component parts, which be listed here in order from most principal(prenominal) to least important plot, character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle.A well-formed plot must have a beginning, which is not a necessary consequence of whatever antecedent action a middle, which follows logically from the beginning and an end, which follows logically from the middle and from which no further action necessarily follows. The plot should be unified, consequence that all element of the plot should tie in to the rest of the plot, leaving no loose ends. This winning of unity allows tragedy to express universal themes powerfully, which makes it spiffing to history, which can only talk about particular events. Episodic plots ar bad because there is no necessity to the sequence of events. The beat out frame of plot contains surprises, bu t surprises that, in retrospect, fit logically into the sequence of events. The best kinds of surprises are brought about by peripeteia, or reversal of fortune, and anagnorisis, or discovery. A good plot progresses like a myocardial infarction that is tied up with increasingly greater complexity until the moment of peripeteia, at which full point the knot is gradually untied until it reaches a comp allowely unknotted conclusion.For a tragedy to arouse pity and fear, we must observe a hero who is relatively noble going from happiness to misery as a result of error on the part of the hero. Our pity and fear is aroused most when it is family members who harm one another rather than enemies orstrangers. In the best kind of plot, one character narrowly avoids killing a family member unknowingly thanks to an anagnorisis that reveals the family connection. The hero must have good qualities appropriate to his or her station and should be portrayed realistically and consistently. Since bot h the character of the hero and the plot must have logical consistency, Aristotle concludes that the untying of the plot must follow as a necessary consequence of the plot and not from gunpoint artifice, like a deus ex machina (a machine used in some plays, in which an actor playing one of the gods was lowered onto the stage at the end). Aristotle discusses thought and diction and then moves on to address epic poetry.Whereas tragedy consists of actions presented in a dramatic form, epic poetry consists of verse line presented in a narrative form. Tragedy and epic poetry have many common qualities, most notably the unity of plot and equal subject matter. However, epic poetry can be longer than tragedy, and because it is not performed, it can deal with more fantastic action with a a great deal wider scope. By contrast, tragedy can be more focused and takes usefulness of the devices of music and spectacle. Epic poetry and tragedy are also compose in different meters. After defend ing poetry against charges that it deals with improbable or impossible events, Aristotle concludes by weighing tragedy against epic poetry and determine that tragedy is on the whole superior. Aristotle takes a scientific approach to poetry, which bears as many disadvantages as advantages. He studies poetry as he would a natural phenomenon, observing and analyzing first, and only afterward making tentative hypotheses and recommendations.The scientific approach works best at identifying the objective, lawlike behavior that underlies the phenomena being observed. To this end, Aristotle draws some important gen datel conclusions about the nature of poetry and how it achieves its effects. However, in anticipate that there are objective laws underlying poetry, Aristotle fails to appreciate the ways in which art often progresses precisely by overturning the assumed laws of a previous generation. If every play were written in strict accordance with a given set of laws for a long enough tim e, a radical playwright would be able to achieve powerful effects by consciously violating these laws. In point of fact, Euripides, the last of the three great tragic poets of Ancient Greece, wrote many plays that violated the logical and structured principles ofAristotles Poetics in a conscious effort to depict a world that he saw as neither logical nor structured. Aristotle himself gives mixed reviews to Euripides troubling plays, but they are still performed two and a half millennia after they were written. Aristotles concept of mimesis champions him to explain what is distinctive about our experience of art. Poetry is mimetic, meaning that it invites us to imagine its subject matter as real era acknowledging that it is in fact fictional.When Aristotle contrasts poetry with philosophy, his point is not so lots that poetry is mimetic because it portrays what is real while philosophy is nonmimetic because it portrays only ideas. Rather, the point is that the ideas discussed in p hilosophical texts are as real as any ideas ever are. When we see an actor playing Oedipus, this actor is clearly a substitute through which we can imagine what a real Oedipus king be like. When we read Aristotles ideas on art, we are in consume contact with the ideas, and there is nothing more real to imagine. Art presents naturalism at one level of remove, allowing us a certain detachment. We do not call the police when we see Hamlet kill Polonius because we know that we are not seeing a real event but only two actors imitating real-world possibilities.Because we are conscious of the mimesis involved in art, we are detached enough that we can reflect on what we are experiencing and so learn from it. Witnessing a murder in real life is emotionally scarring. Witnessing a murder on stage gives us a luck to reflect on the nature and causes of human violence so that we can lead a more reflective and sensitive life. Aristotle identifies catharsis as the distinctive experience of art, though it is not clear whether he core that catharsis is the purpose of art or simply an effect. The Greek news katharsis originally means purging or purification and refers also to the induction of vomiting by a doctor to rid the system of impurities. Aristotle uses the term metaphorically to refer to the release of the emotions of pity and fear build up in a dramatic performance.Because dramatic performances end, whereas life goes on, we can let go of the tension that builds during a dramatic performance in a way that we often cannot let go of the tension that builds up over the course of our lives. Because we can let go of it, the emotional vehemence of art deepens us, whereas emotional intensity in life often comely hardens us. However, if this process of catharsis that allows us to experience powerful emotions and thenlet them go is the ultimate purpose of art, then art becomes the equivalent of therapy. If we define catharsis as the purpose of art, we have failed to defi ne art in a way that explains why it is still necessary in an era of psychiatry. A more generous reading of Aristotle might interpret catharsis as a means to a less easily specify end, which involves a deeper capacity for feeling and compassion, a deeper awareness of what our humanity consists in. Aristotle insists on the primacy of plot because the plot is ultimately what we can learn from in a piece of art.The word we translate as plot is the Greek wordmuthos, which is the root for myth. Muthos is a more general term than plot, as it can put through to any art form, including music or sculpture. The muthos of a piece of art is its general structure and organization, the form according to which the themes and ideas in the piece of art make themselves apparent. The plot of a story, as the term is used in the Poetics, is not the sequence of events so much as the logical relationships that cost between events. For Aristotle, the tighter the logical relationships between events, the better the plot. Oedipus Rex is a powerful tragedy precisely because we can see the logical inevitability with which the events in the story fall together. The logical relationships between events in a story help us to perceive logical relationships between the events in our own lives. In essence, tragedy shows us patterns in human experience that we can then use to make sense of our own experience.