Literary Criticism

Essentials
By Shabnam Kaur
Classical Criticism
Classical Greek Criticism
(Plato and Aristotle)
Plato (428-347 BC)
● “Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato” - A. N. Whitehead
(Process and Reality, 1929)
● Born into an aristocratic family in Athens in 428 BC
● Student of Socrates; mesmerised by his teachings
● Profound effect of Socrates: he gave up political ambition and pursued
philosophy
● Socrates was critical of democracy. Athens was a democracy at this time.
● Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta (431-404 BC). Sparta
defeated Athens in 404 BC.
● Spartans had a very distinct political philosophy and practice from Athens.
They were more militaristic, whereas Athens was more idealistic. Sparta was
an oligarchy, whereas Athens was a democracy.
Plato (428-347 BC)
● It was during the oligarchical rule imposed by Sparta (Rule of the 30), that
Socrates was tried and executed in 399 BC.
● Socrates was charged with impiety (against the city’s gods) and with
corrupting the youth.
● Plato details the final days of Socrates in Apology, Crito, Euthyphro and
Phaedo. In Phaedo, he tells the story of Socrates’ execution. He’s sentenced
to die by drinking the poison, hemlock.
● The death of his beloved master had a great impact on a young (27-year old)
Plato. It also shaped his philosophy. (His condemnation of democracy, and his
utilitarian attitude towards the functioning of the ideal state.)
● After Socrates’ death, he traveled to Sicily, Italy and Egypt.
● He was back in Athens by 385 BC, and founded his Academy in 387 BC.
Named the Academy after the name of the supposed former owner of that
estate: the Attic hero, Akademos.
Plato (428-347 BC)
● Socratic method - Socrates taught entirely by word of mouth; he left no
writings of his own. Most of the information about him depends on the
historian Xenophon and the philosopher Plato. He used the dialectic method
of counter-questioning in order to challenge the preconceived notions of his
opponent and to extract new knowledge.
● Socratic irony - Socrates, who in fact is quite wise, pretends to be ignorant so
as to appear non-threatening and encourage his opponents to express their
opinions, which he then challenges and debunks with his counter-questions
● Socrates’ and Plato’s theory of education - children are born with knowledge
already in their souls, but they cannot recall this knowledge (Greek
‘anamnesis’ for ‘recollection’/’reminiscence’), without some help. The
teacher’s role is similar to that of a mid-wife in that he assists in the birth of
ideas. (Greek ‘maieutic’ for ‘of midwivery’)
Plato (428-347 BC)
● Plato’s Dialogues: (Plato is believed to have written 35 dialogues and 13
letters)

Early - Apology, Charmides, Crito, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Lesser Hippias (minor),

Greater Hippias (major), Ion, Laches, Lysis, Protagoras

Middle: Cratylus, Euthydemus, Meno, Parmenides, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Republic,

Symposium, Theaetetus

Late: Critias, Sophist, Politicus (The Statesman), Timaeus, Philebus, Laws

Plato (428-347 BC)
● Conversation or dialogue was at the heart of the Socratic method, through which
Socrates would ask probing questions which cumulatively revealed his students’
unsupported assumptions and misconceptions.
● From the Greek roots dia- (“through” or “across”) and -logue (“discourse” or “talk”).
Dialectic comes from dialecktos (“conversation”) and ultimately back to the Greek
word dialegesthai, meaning “to converse”
● Plato’s philosophy was a reaction against the sophists (main exponents of
sophistic philosophy - Protagoras and Gorgias). Sophists taught rhetoric, morality,
politics, metaphysics, music, gymnastics, etc. to young men of noble families, for a
fee.
● Plato was opposed to the secular, humanistic and relativistic accounts of the
sophists, who rejected the authority of religion and believed truth to be dependant
on human perception. He was also opposed to rhetoric which seeks to convince
by preying on the ignorance of the audience and pandering to their prejudices,
rather than having any moral or objective function.
Plato (428-347 BC)
● Plato’s Theory of Ideal Forms - the sensory world around us that we
perceive with our senses is not real; it is dependant on the realm of pure
Forms /Ideas; physical world is characterised by perpetual change, decay,
multiplicity and particularity; but the world of forms is changeless and eternal
and is the world of essences, unity and universality
● Inspired by the pre-Socratic thinkers Heraclitus and Parmenides, who rejected
the physical world known through our senses and ‘appearance’
● Every thing in this world is what it is only through the presence of the Form in
it or through its participation in the Form
● For example, a beautiful bed in this world is only an imitation or a an inferior
copy of the ideal bed in the world of Forms, and it partakes of the essence of
Beauty. There can be many beautiful beds, but Beauty is only one.
● He believed the highest Goodness to be the highest of the ideal Forms
Plato (428-347 BC)
● Plato makes comments on poetry in these Dialogues:

Apology - poetry derives from inspiration rather than wisdom; poets pretend to possess knowledge
which they do not have

Protagoras - role of poetry in education and inculcation of virtue

Symposium - motives behind poetic composition (desire to embody and preserve certain concepts
of wisdom and virtue)

Phaedrus - distinguishes between productive and unproductive inspiration

Cratylus - various aspects of the nature of language, such as the connection between words and
things

Ion - Socrates cross examines a rhapsode (poetry performer - singer and interpreter of poetry)
named Ion on the nature of his art

Republic and Laws

Plato (428-347 BC)
The Republic: (c. 411 BC)

● An outline of the ideal/perfect society (well-functioning State) - ‘Republic’

● The chief speaker is Socrates who repeats a conversation (dialogue) for an
unnamed group the day after it occurs.
● Those who took part in the discussion were: his friend Cephalus, Cephalus’
son Polemarches, Plato’s brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus, and a Sophist
named Thrasymachus.
● Begins with a discussion of Justice - according to Plato (speaking through
Socrates) a city is just when all its sections perform their own proper
functions, and similarly a man is just when all the parts of his souls are in
harmony and perform their respective functions
● Plato draws a parallel between the State and the individual man (or soul)
Plato (428-347 BC)
The Republic: (c. 411 BC)

● Hierarchy of the State - the guardians (philosopher-rulers), the auxiliaries

(military) and the producers (farmers, craftsman, etc. i.e. common people)
● Whatever is good or evil in the external order of society depends upon the
inner nature of the soul
● Plato’s concept of imitation (mimesis) - e.g. a carpenter makes a bed, which
is an inferior imitation of the ideal bed in the world of Forms (the
artisan/craftsman is at a second remove from reality); if a painter paints an
image of a carpenter, he makes a copy of a copy (so an artist is at a third
remove from reality)
● He says that the poet is similar to the painter in that he makes an imitation of
an imitation
Plato (428-347 BC)
The Republic: (c. 411 BC)

● Plato’s Allegory of the Cave - told by Socrates to Glaucon in Book 7 to

explain the role of education in enlightening people
Plato (428-347 BC)
Plato (428-347 BC)
The Republic: (c. 411 BC)

● Plato also discusses the kind of stories that should be told to the guardians in their
early childhood and finds many tales about gods that would be undesirable for the
purpose.
● In Book 3, he pleads for censorship of art and cites passages from Homer and
Sophocles that are inappropriate
● In Book 10, this attack on art leads to the conclusion that art has no social or
educative value
● Poets for the Greeks, were infallible guides. But Plato says that they do not
possess (true) knowledge, which alone is infallible.The claim of the poets and
tragedians, especially Homer, that they are masters of all skills and know all about
human excellence and religion are baseless. Neither Homer nor the other poets
had a real knowledge of the subjects they wrote about – war, statesmanship,
administration, human conduct etc.
Plato (428-347 BC)
The Republic: (c. 411 BC)

“we are ready to acknowledge that Homer is the greatest of poets and first of
tragedy writers; but we must remain firm in our conviction that hymns to the gods
and praises of famous men are the only poetry which ought to be admitted
into our State. For if you go beyond this and allow the honeyed Muse to
enter, either in epic or lyric verse, not law and the reason of mankind, which
by common consent have ever been deemed best, but pleasure and pain will
be the rulers in our State.”
Plato (428-347 BC)
The Republic: (c. 411 BC)

“And therefore when any one of these pantomimic gentlemen (poet or rhapsode),
who are so clever that they can imitate anything, comes to us, and makes a
proposal to exhibit himself and his poetry, we will fall down and worship him as
a sweet and holy and wonderful being; but we must also inform him that in
our State such as he are not permitted to exist; the law will not allow them.
And so when we have anointed him with myrrh, and set a garland of wool
upon his head, we shall send him away to another city.”

BOOK 3
Plato (428-347 BC)
The Republic: (c. 411 BC)

“ . . .his (the poet’s) creations have an inferior degree of truth—in this, I say, he is
like him (like the painter); and he is also like him in being concerned with an
inferior part of the soul; and therefore we shall be right in refusing to admit him into
a well-ordered State, because he awakens and nourishes and strengthens the
feelings and impairs the reason. As in a city when the evil are permitted to have
authority and the good are put out of the way, so in the soul of man, as we
maintain, the imitative poet implants an evil constitution, for he indulges the
irrational nature which has no discernment of greater and less, but thinks
the same thing at one time great and at another small—he is a manufacturer
of images and is very far removed from the truth.

BOOK 10
Plato (428-347 BC)
Legacy of Plato:

● Neo-Platonism - founded by Plotinus and popularised by his disciple Porphyry (AD 3rd
and 4th centuries); predominant philosophy in Europe for a thousand years
● Influence of Platonism on St Augustine, Macrobius, Boethius, Dionysus
● Renaissance: Platonic Academy in Florence - Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola
(15th century); influence on John Colet, Erasmus, Thomas More
● Philip Sidney’s Defence of Poetry with reference to Plato’s arguments concerning
poetry
● Cambridge Platonists - Ralph Cudworth, Benjamin Whichcote, Henry More
● Influence on the philosopher Leibniz and on the astronomers Kepler and Galileo
● Philosophies of Hegel and Kant
● English Romantic poets - Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley
● Emerson (transcendentalism), Poe, Baudelaire, French Symbolists
● 20th Century - Yeats, Rilke, Wallace Stevens, etc.
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
● Born in Stageira, Macedonia. His father, Nicomachus, was the court physician
of King Amyntas II of Macedon. Philip II, son of Amyntas invited Aristotle in
343 BC to serve as tutor to his son Alexander (Alexander the Great)
● Aristotle studied at Plato's Academy from 367-347 BC.
● He founded his own school, The Lyceum (dedicated to Apollo Lyceus, ‘Apollo
the wolf-god’, best known for the Peripatetic school of philosophy, in 335 BC.
● Aristotle metaphysics is in opposition to Plato’ Theory of Forms. In his
Categories, he proposes the concept of substance (the substratum which has
various qualities that can be predicated about it) and categories (such as
quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, affection)
● He expresses impatience with Plato’s Forms and refers to them as ‘empty
phrases and metaphors’
● Aristotle’s major works: Metaphysics, Physics, Logic, De Anima (On the Soul)
Politics, Nicomachean Ethics, Poetics
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Poetics (c. 330)

● 26 chapters
● His lecture notes compiled by his students; no original text
● His theory of poetry (poiesis) and imitation (mimesis) are in opposition to the views of
Plato
● Basis of imitation:
1. Instinct; humans are more imitative than animals
2. Not just philosophers; all men find learning pleasurable (to various degrees)
3. Humans learn through imitation
4. Pleasure lies not in the object of imitation but in the process of imitation which yields
learning through inference
● Art (techne) imitates human action; human action must have as its ultimate purpose the
Supreme Good
● Aristotle’s principle of the mean/ principle of the middle way - virtue is a mean between
excess and defect
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Poetics (c. 330)

● Nature of imitation: medium/means of imitations; object of imitation; manner/mode

of imitation
● Medium of imitation - colour, shape, sound, rhythm, speech, harmony

In poetry, media of imitation are rhythm, language and harmony

● Object of imitation - men in action

Noble men/actions - Epic and Tragedy

Baser men/actions - Comedy and Satire

● Mode of Imitation - narration (in Epic); direct representation (in Tragedy)

Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Poetics (c. 330)

“A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having
magnitude, complete in itself; in language with pleasurable accessories, each kind
brought in separately in the parts of the work; in a dramatic, not in a narrative form; with
incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such
emotions.”

● 7 features of Tragedy:
1. It is an imitation (mimesis) of action (praxis); 2. It is serious (spoudaios); 3. It is
complete (telaios); 4. It has an appropriate length or magnitude (megethos); 5. It is
decorated by language and uses rhythm and harmony (occuring in different
combinations in different parts); 6. it is performed rather than narrated; 7. It
arouses feeling of fear and pity, which are purged through catharsis (katharsis).
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Poetics (c. 330)

● The text of Poetics became available through a Latin Translation (by Georgio Valla
in 1498) of an Arabic version (by Ibn Rushd/Averroes)

Legacy of Aristotle

● Middle Ages
● Neoclassical writers
● Concepts of katharsis and hamartia
● Russian Formalists (such as Boris Eichenbaum), Formalists, New Critics, Chicago
School, Archetypal Criticism (such Northrop Frye), genre theory, narrative theories,
reader-response theory, etc.
Aristotle’s Poetics
Chapters 1-3
● First, Aristotle lists the different kinds of poetry: epic poetry, tragedy, comedy,
dithyrambic poetry, and most flute-playing and lyre-playing.
● All of these kinds of poetry are mimetic, or imitative
● Medium/Means of imitation - Just as a painter employs paint and a sculptor
employs stone, the poet employs language, rhythm, and harmony, either
singly or in combinations For instance, flute-playing and lyre-playing employ
rhythm and harmony, while dance employs only rhythm.
● He also addresses the question of non-poetic language, arguing that poetry is
essentially mimetic, whether it is in verse or in prose. Thus, Homer is a poet,
while Empedocles, a philosopher who wrote in verse, is not. In tragedy,
comedy, and other kinds of poetry, rhythm, language, and harmony are all
used. In lyric poetry, all three are used together.
Chapters 1-3
● Object of imitation - All poetry represents actions with agents who are either
better than us, worse than us, or like us. Tragedy and epic poetry deal with
characters who are better than us, while comedy and parody deal with
characters who are worse than us.
● Mode/Manner of imitation - the poet either speaks directly in narrative or
assumes the characters of people in the narrative and speaks through them.
For instance, Homer alternates between narrative and accounts of speeches
given by characters. In tragedy and comedy, the poet speaks exclusively
through assumed characters (dramatic, not narrative).
Chapters 4-5
● We are by nature imitative creatures that learn by imitating; we naturally
take delight in imitation; learning is one of the greatest pleasures there is.
● As evidence of the claim that we delight in imitation, he points out that we are
fascinated by representations of dead bodies or disgusting animals even
though the things themselves would repel us.
● Rhythm and harmony also come naturally to us, so that poetry gradually
evolved out of our improvisations with these media.

Evolution of poetry:

● As poetry evolved, a division developed between serious writers who would

write about noble characters in lofty hymns and panegyrics, and meaner
writers who would write about ignoble (base/low) characters in demeaning
invectives.
Chapters 4-5
● Tragedy and comedy are later developments from these: tragedy of the lofty
tradition and comedy of the mean tradition.
● Dithyrambs were sung in honor of Dionysus, god of wine, by a chorus of
around fifty men and boys, often accompanied by a narrator.
● Aeschylus is responsible for the first innovation, reducing the number of the
chorus and introducing a second actor on stage, which made dialogue the
central focus of the poem. Sophocles added a third actor and also introduced
background scenery.
● Tragedy developed an air of seriousness, and the meter changed from a
trochaic rhythm, which is more suitable for dancing, to an iambic rhythm,
which is closer to the natural rhythms of conversational speech. Tragedy
further developed a plurality of episodes, or acts.
Chapters 4-5
● Comedy deals with the ridiculous. He defines the ridiculous as a kind of
ugliness that does no harm to anybody else.
● While both tragedy and epic poetry deal with lofty subjects in a grand style of
verse, Aristotle notes three significant differences between the two genres:
1. tragedy is told in a dramatic rather than narrative form, and employs several
different kinds of verse while epic poetry employs only one
2. the action of a tragedy is usually confined to a single day, and so the
tragedy is much shorter than an epic poem.
3. while tragedy has all the elements that are characteristic of epic poetry, it
also has some additional elements that are unique to it.
Chapters 6
● Definition of tragedy that we can break up into seven parts:
1. it involves imitation (mimesis) of the actions (praxis) of men/agents
2. it is serious (spoudaios)
3. the action is complete (telaios) and with magnitude (megethos)
4. it is made up of language with the "pleasurable accessories" of rhythm and
harmony
5. these "pleasurable accessories" are not used uniformly throughout, but are
introduced in separate parts of the work, so that, for instance, some bits are
spoken in verse and other bits are sung
6. it is performed rather than narrated
7. it arouses the emotions of pity and fear and accomplishes a purification or
purgation (katharsis) of these emotions.
Chapters 6
● Tragedy can be divided into six component parts
1. spectacle, or opsis (the overall visual appearance of the stage and the
actors)
2. melody, or melos
3. diction, or lexis (which has to do with the composition of the verses)

(Melody and diction are means or media of imitation)

4. character, or ethos (denotes the moral qualities of an agent; character is

made by moral choice ‘prohairesis’)
5. thought, or dianoia (denotes the intellectual qualities of an agent)
6. plot, or mythos (the combination of incidents and actions in the story)
Chapters 6
● Plot is the most important
● Characters serve to advance the action of the story, not vice versa.
● The ends we pursue in life, our happiness and our misery, all take the form of
action. According to Aristotle, happiness consists in a certain kind of activity
rather than in a certain quality of character.
● Diction and thought are also less significant than plot: a series of
well-written speeches have nothing like the force of a well-structured
tragedy.
● The most powerful elements in a tragedy, the peripeteia and the
anagnorisis, are elements of the plot.
● Aristotle notes that forming a solid plot is far more difficult than creating good
characters or diction.
Chapters 7-9
● For a plot to be a complete whole it must have a beginning, middle and end.
● The beginning is a point that does not follow from anything else, but has
consequences following it. The end is a point that follows from preceding
events but does not have any consequences following it. The middle is a
point that follows from events before and also has events following it.
● A tragedy must be of a moderate length/magnitude so as to be taken in by the
memory. The action should be long enough to allow the main character to
pass through a number of necessary or probable steps that take him from
fortune to misfortune or vice versa.
Chapters 7-9
● Unity of plot - Our lives consist of all sorts of disconnected episodes, and the
story of a man's life would rarely have the completeness necessary for a
unified plot. The poet must select some series of events from a character's life
and craft them into a coherent whole (as Homer does in the Odyssey). Any
part of a story that could be added or removed without any great effect on the
rest of the story is superfluous and takes away from the unity of the piece.
● Aristotle distinguishes between poetry and history, saying that while history
deals with what has been, poetry deals with what might be. Poetry is
superior to history because history always deals with particular cases
while poetry can express universal and general truths. Tragedy gives a
feeling of necessity, or at least probability, to the way certain characters
behave in certain situations and thus gives us insight into general principles
regarding fate, choice, and so on.
Chapters 7-9
● The worst kind of plot is the episodic plot, where there is no seeming causal
connection of necessity or probability between the events.
● As a medium that arouses pity and fear, tragedy is most effective when
events occur unexpectedly and yet in a logical order. The audience should be
able to see the final outcome of a tragedy as the necessary consequence of
all the action that preceded it, and yet have that outcome be totally
unexpected.
Chapters 10-12
● All plots lead from beginning to end in a probable or necessary sequence of
events, but a simple plot does so without peripeteia (reversal of fortune)
or anagnorisis (discovery/recognition) while a complex plot may have
one or both of these elements. The peripeteia or anagnorisis of a complex
plot should be necessary or probable consequences of what came before so
that they are a part of the plot and not unnecessary add-ons.
● Peripeteia is the reversal from one state of affairs to its opposite (fortune to
misfortune in tragedy)
● Anagnorisis is a change from ignorance to knowledge. This discovery will
bring love and happiness to characters who learn of good fortune, and hatred
and misery to those who discover unhappy truths.
Chapters 10-12
● The best kind of anagnorisis accompanies peripeteia. That is, a discovery
causes a reversal of fortune or vice versa. For instance, Oedipus' discovery of
who his mother is causes a reversal of fortune from a proud king to a horrible
disgrace. Aristotle suggests that anagnorisis is possible by a number of other
means as well, but it is most intimately connected to the plot when it
accompanies peripeteia. The two together will help to arouse pity and fear
and will also help to draw the play to its conclusion.
● In addition to peripeteia and anagnorisis, Aristotle defines a third part of the
plot, suffering, as actions of destructive or painful nature, such as
murders, torture, and woundings.
Chapters 10-12
● Quantitative elements of tragedy (the different parts of the performance): 1.
Prologue, 2. Episode, a choral portion consisting of 3. Parode and 4.
Stasimon, and 5. Exode
● In addition, some tragedies have songs from the stage and a Commos, a
lamentation sung by both actor and chorus.
● Parode is the first full statement of the chorus; stasimon is a choral song in a
certain meter; action that takes place between choral songs is episode.
Everything that follows the last choral song is exode.
Chapters 13-14
● Best kinds of plot are complex plots that arouse fear and pity
● Three kinds of plot should be avoided:
1. plots that show a good man going from happiness to misery, since such
events seem more shocking and repulsive than fearful or pitiable
2. plots that show a bad man going from misery to happiness, since this arouses
neither pity nor fear and appeals to none of our emotions
3. plots that show a bad man going from happiness to misery, since it will also
not arouse the feelings of pity or fear
● We feel pity for undeserved misfortune (a bad man deserves his
misfortune), and we feel fear if the person we pity is like ourselves.
Chapters 13-14
● The best kind of plot involves the misfortune of someone who is neither
particularly good nor particularly bad and whose downfall does not result from
some unpleasantness or vice, but rather from hamartia (tragic flaw)- an
error in judgment.
● A good plot consists of the following four elements:
1. It must focus around one single issue
2. the hero must go from fortune to misfortune, rather than vice versa
3. the misfortune must result from hamartia
4. the hero should be at least of intermediate worth, and if not, he must be
better, never worse, than the average person.
● This explains why tragedies tend to focus around a few families (there are
many tragedies about the families of Oedipus and Orestes among others):
they must be upstanding families that suffer great misfortune from an
error in judgment rather than a vice
Chapters 13-14
● Pity and fear, which Aristotle calls the "pleasures" of tragedy, are better if they
result from the plot itself rather than the spectacle. A story like that of Oedipus
should be able to arouse pity and fear even if it is told without any acting at
all.
● We feel pity most when friends or family harm one another, rather than when
unpleasantness takes place between enemies or those who are indifferent to
one another. The deed may be done knowingly (as when Medea kills her
children) or unknowingly (as when Oedipus kills his father). A third alternative
is that one character plans to kill another, but then discovers the family
connection between them just in time before the killing.
● Thus, the deed can either be done or not done, and it can take place in either
ignorance or knowledge.
Chapters 13-14
● The best kind of plot is of the third alternative, where anagnorisis allows a
harmful deed to be avoided. The second best case is where the deed is done
in ignorance. And the third best is the case where the deed is done with full
knowledge. Worst is the case where there is full knowledge throughout, and
the premeditated deed is only refrained from at the moment of action. This
scenario is not tragic because of the absence of suffering. Still, Aristotle
acknowledges that it has been used to good effect, as with the case of
Haemon and Creon in Antigone.
Chapters 15
● Four requirements of Tragic Hero:
1. The hero must be good. The character of the hero denotes the hero's moral
purpose in the play, and a good character will have a good moral purpose.
2. The good qualities of the hero must be appropriate to the character. For
instance, warlike qualities can be good, but they would be inappropriate in a
woman.
3. The hero must be realistic. If he is drawn from myth, he should be a
reasonable semblance of the character portrayed in myths.
4. The hero must be consistent (by which Aristotle means the hero must be
written consistently, not that the hero must behave consistently). He accepts
that some characters are inconsistent but that they should be written so as to
be consistent in their inconsistency. Like the plot itself, the behavior of the
characters should be seen as necessary or probable, in accordance with the
internal logic of their personality.
Chapters 15
● The lusis, or denouement (unraveling or resolution of the plot), should arise
out of the plot and not depend on stage artifice. Improbable events, or the
intervention of the gods, should be reserved for events outside the action of
the play or events beyond human knowledge. The actual incidents
themselves should not rely on miracles but on probability and
necessity.
● In order to reconcile the first requirement that the hero be good, with the third
requirement that the hero be realistic, Aristotle recommends that the poet
should keep all the distinctive characteristics of the person being portrayed
but touch them up a little to make the hero appear better than he is. For
instance, in the Iliad, Homer repeatedly describes Achilles' hot temper and yet
makes him seem exceedingly good and heroic nonetheless.
Chapters 16-18
● Six different kinds of anagnorisis:
1. recognition by means of signs or marks (such as when Odysseus's nurse
recognizes him by virtue of a characteristic scar) - Aristotle considers this the
least artistic kind of anagnorisis, usually reflecting a lack of imagination on the
part of the poet
2. a recognition contrived by the author (the poet is unable to fit the
anagnorisis into the logical sequence of the plot, and so it seems forced -
Aristotle finds this also to be distasteful
3. recognition prompted by memory (a disguised character may be prompted to
weep or otherwise betray himself when presented with some memory from
the past)
4. recognition through deductive reasoning (where the anagnorisis is the only
reasonable conclusion of an agent's thought) - second best kind
Chapters 16-18
6. recognition through faulty reasoning on the part of a disguised character (the
disguised character might unmask himself by exhibiting knowledge that only he
could know)

7. recognition that is naturally a part of the logical sequence of events in the

play (such as we find in Oedipus Rex) - best kind
Chapters 16-18
● How a poet should construct a plot:
1. The poet should be sure to visualize the action of his drama as vividly as
possible. This will help him spot and avoid inconsistencies.
2. The poet should even try acting out the events as he writes them. If he can
himself experience the emotions he is writing about, he will be able to express
them more vividly.
3. The poet should first outline the overall plot of the play and only afterward
flesh it out with episodes. As an example, Aristotle reduces the entire plot of
the Odyssey to three sentences, suggesting that everything else in the poem
is episode
4. Every play consists of desis (complication of the plot), and lusis (unraveling
or resolution of plot), or denouement. Desis is everything leading up to the
moment of peripeteia, and lusis is everything from the peripeteia onward.
Chapters 16-18
5. There are four distinct kinds of tragedy: first, there is the complex tragedy,
made up of peripeteia and anagnorisis; second, the tragedy of suffering; third,
the tragedy of character; and fourth, the tragedy of spectacle.

6. The poet should write about focused incidents, and not about a whole epic
story. For instance, a tragedy could not possibly tell the entire story of the Iliad in
any kind of satisfying detail, but it can pick out and elaborate upon individual
episodes within the Iliad.

7. The chorus should be treated like an actor, and the choral songs should be an
integral part of the story. Aristotle laments that often the choral songs have little to
do with the action at all.
Chapters 19-26
● In chapters 19-22 Aristotle discusses diction
● In chapter 20 he defines and discusses: phoneme, syllable, conjunction,
noun, verb, inflection and utterance; in chapter 21 he gives a classification of
nouns; and in chapter 22 he discusses the qualities of poetic style (“the most
important thing is to be good at using metaphor. This is the one thing
that cannot be learnt from someone else, and is a sign of natural talent;
for the successful use of metaphor is a matter of perceiving
similarities”)
● In chapters 23 and 24 he discusses epic, and in the final chapter he defends
tragedy
Origin of Rhetoric;
Classical Roman Criticism
Rhetoric
● From Greek ‘rhetor’ - ‘speaker’
● Originally, the art of public speaking
● Art of rhetoric founded by Corax of Syracuse in 476 BC; spread to mainland
Greece by his student Tisias
● Early development - Sophists, Aristotle, Roman orators - Cato, Cicero,
Quintilian
● 5 parts/offices of classical rhetoric (last 2 added by Aristotle):
1. Invention (heuresis/inventio)
2. Arrangement (taxis/dispositio)
3. Style (lexis/elocutio) - diction (word choice); composition (structure,
rhythm, use of figures)
4. Memory
5. Delivery
Rhetoric
● Most influential Sophists - Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon, Lysias, Isocrates
● Ability to argue both sides of the case; accused of training people in “making
the worse cause appear the better” by a clever use of language and
sacrificing truth, morality and justice
● Satirised by Aristophanes in his comedy The Clouds
● Plato (through Socrates) presented these issues against the Sophists in his
dialogues, mainly in Gorgias and Phaedrus
● In Gorgias, Socrates repeatedly asks Gorgias “What is rhetoric?”

Gorgias defines it as “the ability to use the spoken word to persuade - to persuade
the jurors in the courts, the members of the Council, the citizens attending the
Assembly - in short, to win over any and every form of public meeting of the citizen
body”
Rhetoric
● Socrates (and hence Plato) insists that rhetoric leads to convictions without
educating people as to right and wrong; the rhetorician is a non-expert persuading
other non-experts; he needs no expertise, merely a persuasive technique
● Socrates accuses rhetoricians of changing what they say to suit the whims of their
audiences, whereas the views of philosophy never change
● Aristotle’s Rhetoric - he says that rhetoric is a counterpart of dialectic or logical
argument
● According to Aristotle, the proof in rhetoric rests on the ‘enthymeme’; logic uses
‘syllogisms’ (where the premises are certain and the conclusion is arrived at with
certainty/necessity), whereas rhetoric uses ‘enthymeme’ (where the premises are
not certain but probable)
● Aristotle talks of 3 types of proof in rhetoric - (1) the character of the speaker; (2)
the disposition of the audience; and (3) the demonstrative nature of the speech
itself
Rhetoric
● Aristotle gives the 3 genres of rhetoric - (1) deliberative; (2) forensic; (3)
display rhetoric
● He also gave the 4 parts of a speech - (1) introduction; (2) main
narrative/presentation; (3) proof of the speaker’s claims, and refutation of the
opponent’s arguments; and (4) a concluding/summarising epilogue
● Greek rhetoric influence entered Rome in the 2nd century BC
● 2 major early Roman rhetoric texts - Rhetorica ad Herennium (Rhetoric for
Herennius) c. 90 BC; and Cicero’s De Inventione c. 87 BC
● Rhetorica ad Herennium (called Pseudo-Cicero because it was wrongly
credited to Cicero for 1500 years) - first work to give a detailed discussion of
the 5-part system (invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery)
Rhetoric
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) - most renowned of the classical rhetoricians;
practiced public speaking in roman senate and lawcourts

● Drew upon Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Isocrates, Theophrastus

● Rhetorical works:

De Inventione, De Oratore, Brutus, Orator, De Optimo Genere Oratorun (On the Ideal
Classification of Orators), Partitione Oratoria (On the Divisions of Rhetoric), Topica

● Got caught up in the conflict between Caesar and Pompey, and then between
Antony and Octavian
● Fearing Antony’s rise to power he wrote a series of speeches against Antony,
Philippics
● With Octavian’s support, Antony sent his soldiers to behead Cicero. Cicero’s hand
and head were cut off and publicly displayed
Rhetoric
● He elaborated the 6 parts of a speech: (1) exordium (introduction and
insinuation); (2) narrative; (3) partition (areas of agreement/disagreement with
the opponent and preview of the remainder of one’s argument); (4) confirmation
(enlisting arguments to support one’s case); (5) refutation (of the opponent’s
confirmation); and (6) peroration (summary of the speech’s substantial points,
arousal of animosity against the opponent, and arousal of sympathy for one’s own
case)
● Last words “with me dies the Republic”

Marcus Fabius Quintilian (AD 35 - c. 96) - Institutio Oratoria

Horace (65 BC - 8 BC)
Quintus Horatius Flaccus

● Composed odes, satires, epistles

● Epistle to the Pisones (title of Ars Poetica given by Quintilian)
● Literary criticism in verse ( a method later adopted by medieval writer Geoffrey de
Vinsauf, Renaissance writer Pierre de Ronsard, neoclassical poets Nicolas
Boileau-Despreaux and Alexander Pope, Romantic poet Lord Byron and 20th
century poet Wallace Stevens)
● Fought with Brutus and Cassius against Caesar’s nephew Octavian and Mark
Antony at the battle of Philippi in 42 BC; later pardoned by Octavian (Emperor
Augustus) and given patronage
● Influenced by the popular philosophies of his time - Stoicism, Skepticism and
Epicureanism
Horace (65 BC - 8 BC)
● Contemporaries - Virgil/Vergil (70-19 BC) who wrote the epic Aeneid, and Ovid (c.
43 BC - AD 17) who wrote Metamorphoses (banished by Augustus for writing the
provocative and impious Ars Amoris)
● Augustan Age
● Debate of the time between genius (ingenium) and technique (ars) as the proper
basis of poetry
● Themes dealt with in Ars Poetica: (1) relation of writer to his work,
knowledge of his place in tradition; (2) verbal structure - unity, propriety and
arrangement; (3) moral and social function of poetry; (4) contribution of
audience to composition of poem (viewed as art and commodity); (5)
awareness of literary history and historical change in language and genre
● Closing of the letter compares untutored inspiration to madness - image of the
mad poet as a leech: “if he once catches you, he holds tight and kills you with his
recitation, a leech that will not release the skin till gorged with blood”
Horace (65 BC - 8 BC)
● He supports the rendering of known words in a novel way and the minting of new
words: “when words advance in age, they pass away, and others born but lately,
like the young, flourish and thrive”
● Decorum - proper relationship between form and content, expression and
thought, style and subject matter, diction and character
● Disagreeing with Plato who regarded the poet as distorting reality, he says the
“principal fountainhead of writing is wisdom”; in depiction of character the poet
must be aware of the various characteristics of men; Horace demands a high
degree of realism from the poet
● He was ambivalent towards religion and the emperor; his religion is poetry

“I am the Muses’ priest”

Longinus (probably 1st or 2nd Century AD)
● Peri Hupsous/On the Sublime - written in Greek
● Attributed to Longinus; but author and time of composition not certain
● First published during the Renaissance by Robortelli in 1554; translated into Latin
in 1572; then translated into English by John Hall in 1652
● Resurgence in modern times due to Nicolas Boileau’s translation in 1674 (French
Neoclassicist)
● Concept of sublime became an important element in the Romantic reaction in
Europe against Neoclassicism
● Only 1 manuscript has survived; 1/3rd of the text is missing (many pages missing
in between)
● Manuscript bears the name “Dionysius Longinus”
● Addressed to Postumius Terentianus, his friend and one of his Roman students
Longinus (probably 1st or 2nd Century AD)
● Sublime consists “in a consummate excellence and distinction of language,
and . . . this alone gave to the greatest poets and historians their pre-eminence . . .
for the effect of genius is not to persuade the audience but rather to
transport them out of themselves”
● “What inspires wonder casts a spell upon us and is always superior to what is
merely convincing and pleasing”
● It can overpower lack of inventive skills: the sublime appears like a bolt of
lightning and, scattering everything before it and revealing the power of the
speaker “at a single stroke”
● He adds that Nature is the prime cause of all production but the operation of
genius cannot be wholly random and needs the “good judgement” supplied by the
rules of art
Longinus (probably 1st or 2nd Century AD)
● Faults of an artist:

1. Tumidity (affectation) - poet aims too high but lapses into folly resulting in
bombastic/overblown effects; tumidity comes from trying to outdo the sublime
2. Puerility (frigidity/cold pedantry) - most ignoble (shameful) fault; “the
academic attitude, where over-elaboration end in frigid failure”; writer trying
too hard to please or to be exquisite falls into affectation
3. ‘Parenthyrson’ (term by 1st century rhetorician Theodorus)/ sentimentality -
“emotion misplaced and pointless where none is needed or unrestrained
where restrain is required” (emotion is subjective to the poet/writer/speaker
and is not shared by the audience/reader)
Longinus (probably 1st or 2nd Century AD)
● 5 sources of sublime:

1. Grandeur of thought (command of “full-blooded” or robust ideas)

2. Inspiration of vehement emotions
3. Proper construction of figures - figures of thought and figures of speech
4. Nobility of phrase - diction and use of metaphor
5. General effect of dignity and elevation (resulting from the above 4)
Longinus (probably 1st or 2nd Century AD)
Other elements of sublime:

● Associated with dramatic action more than narrative

● Rooted in reality as opposed to romance

(Compares Homer’s early work Iliad and late work Odyssey)

● Elements must be combined into an organic whole: “none of the members has
any value by itself apart from the others, yet one with another they all constitute a
perfect organism)
● Imitation of great historians and poets of the past (anticipates Arnold’s
“touchstone” theory)
● Imagination - “passages where, inspired by strong emotion, you seem to see
what you describe and bring it vividly before the eyes of your audience”

(He greatly appreciates Demosthenes)

Longinus (probably 1st or 2nd Century AD)
● Figures recommended by Longinus:
1. Rhetorical question and answer, which involves the audience emotionally
2. Inversion of the order of words, phrases, sentences - such inversion mimics the
actual use of language by people in situations of fear, worry or anger; it gives the
effect of improvisation, allowing the audience to share the excitement of the
situation

Other figures mentioned by him: accumulation, variation, climax, metaphors

● Sources of mediocrity in literary composition:

1. Love of money
2. Love of pleasure

“men no longer then look upwards . . . their greatness of soul wastes away . . .”

● Many parallels between Longinus and the Romantics

Revision Questions
1. According to Socrates, what is the lowest grade of cognitive activity?

a. Imagination
b. Belief
c. Thought
d. Confusion
2. What does Socrates mean to illustrate with the allegory of the cave?

a. The effects of education on the soul

b. The effects of the intelligible realm on the soul
c. The effects of the visible realm on the soul
d. The stages of moral development through which a philosopher king must
pass
3. On which three grounds did Plato objected to poetry?

a. Educational, philosophical and moral

b. Sexuality, morality and philosophical
c. Educational, obscenity and sexuality
d. Philosophical, sexuality and obscenity
4. Plato wrote his treatise in form of:

a. Dialogues
b. Paragraphs
c. Poetry
d. Storytelling
5. Aristotle’s well-known treatises are:

a. Dialogues
b. Poetics and Rhetoric
c. Poetry and Drama
d. Tragedy and Epic
6. Who summarizes Aristotle’s views in reply to Plato’s charges in brief: “Tragedy
(Art) gives new knowledge, yields aesthetic satisfaction and produces a better
state of mind.”

a. Bywater
b. Scott-James
c. David Daiches
d. S.H. Butcher
7. Which of the following lines of the definition of tragedy deals with the function of
tragedy?

a. an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude

b. several kinds being found in separate parts of the play
c. in the form of action, not of narrative
d. through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation (catharsis) of these
and similar emotions
8. Aristotle classifies various forms of art with the help of ______, ______ and
______ of their imitation of life.

a. Words, colours and music

b. Serious, comic and real aspect of life
c. Object, medium and manner
d. Action, narration and recitation.
9. The book Tragedy: Serious Drama in Relation to Aristotle’s Poetics throws
illuminating light on the theory of catharsis? Who is the writer of this book?

a. F.L. Lucas
b. W. Macniele Dixon
c. Ingram Bywater
d. S.H.Butcher
10. According to F.L. Lucas, the concept of Catharsis is better translated as:

a. Purgation
b. Purification
c. Moderation/tempering
d. Kenosis/emptying
11. Which of the following sequence in the arrangement of the important parts of
tragedy is correct?

a. Spectacle, Song, Diction, Thought, Plot and Character

b. Plot, Character, Thought, Diction, Song and Spectacle
c. Spectacle, Song, Diction, Thought, Character and Plot
d. Plot, Character, Diction, Song, Spectacle and Thought
12. Who is the author of Ars Poetica?

a. Plato
b. Cicero
c. Longinus
d. Horace
12. How many principal sources of Sublimity are there according to Longinus?

a. three
b. four
c. five
d. six
13. What is the meaning of ‘hamartia’ as used by Aristotle?

a. Working of fate against the hero

b. An error of the hero
c. Strength of the hero
d. The tragic fate of the hero
14. What is the meaning of ‘anagnorisis’ as used by Aristotle?

a. The hero’s recognition of his tragic flaw

b. The hero’s ignorance of his tragic flaw
c. The hero’s recognition of his kin or his adversary
d. The hero’s recognition of his tragic end
15. Who is the originator of the theory of imitation in literature?

a. Socrates
b. Plato
c. Aristotle
d. Horace
16. Which of these works is originally titled ‘Peri Hupsous’?

a. Ars Poetica
b. Epistle to the Pisones
c. Poetics
d. On the Sublime
17. What is the Sublime?

a. That which eludes definition

b. That which improves the intellect
c. That which elevates and transports
d. That which improves moral character
18. Which of these phrases comes from Ars Poetica?

a. In media res (in the middle of things)

b. Ab ovo (from the egg i.e. from the beginning)
c. Ut pictora poesis ( as is painting so is poetry)
d. All of these