Aristotle Questionable on Plot
According to Aristotle, plot means ‘the structuring of events’, and ‘tragedy’ is made up of six constituent elements: plot, characters, verbal expression, thought, visual adornment (remember he is talking about dramatic performance), and song-composition. And ‘the greatest of these elements is the structuring of the incidents. For tragedy is an imitation not of men but of life, an action, and they have moral quality in accordance with their characters but are happy or unhappy in accordance with their actions; hence they are not active in order to imitate their characters, but they include the characters along with the actions for the sake of the latter. Thus the structure of events, the plot, is the goal of tragedy, and the goal is the greatest thing of all. Again: a tragedy cannot exist without a plot, but it can without characters…"
"Again: if one strings end to end speeches that are expressive of character and carefully worked in thought and expression, he still will not achieve the result which we said was the aim of tragedy; the job will be done much better by a tragedy that is more deficient in these other respects but has a plot, a structure of events. It is much the same case with painting: the most beautiful pigments smeared on at random will not give as much pleasure as a black-and-white outline picture. Besides, the most powerful means tragedy has for swaying our feelings, namely the peripeties and recognitions, are elements of plot."
So plot is the basic principle, the heart and soul, as it were, of tragedy, the characters come second…"
from Aristotle Poetics, Translated by Gerald F. Else.
It’s true of course that actions define us, but to state that plot is more important than character I think is a mistake. A chicken and egg situation. One must care about what happens to a character if the play, or novel, is to succeed. In order to achieve this, the writer must present the character either sympathetically, or with qualities sufficient to interest the reader. An important method of doing this, of course, is to show how this or that character reacts to certain events that take place.
To say that a tragedy can exist without characters is pretty iffy; as is the suggestion that randomness in painting gives less pleasure than the more ordered. I get way more enjoyment from Turner’s later unfinished works for example
than I do his historical Greek paintings.
In short, without initial interest, you have nothing, and it is by creating in the reader a bond with characters that this interest, and with it the swaying of feelings, is best cultivated. You can have the most fascinating things happen, but if a character isn’t believably developed the effects of all the peripeties and recognitions you can conjure will fall flat
Update: Someone has just kindly pointed out that the top of Aristotle’s head bares remarkable resemblance to this giant puffball mushroom.
September 17th, 2008 at 8:40 AM
Speaking as someone who spent two years studying scholastic philosophy, I think what has to be understood about Aristotle’s Poetics is that phrase "the plot is the soul of the drama." We tend to think of plot as the organized sequence of action. Aristotle, however, understands plot as the "substantial form" of the work as whole. For him, in other words, both action and character are subsumed under the rubric of plot. Action, character, etc. constitute the "prime matter" of the drama; they cohere by virtue of the drama’s soul – or plot. In other words, action and character are part of the drama’s body; the plot is its soul.
September 17th, 2008 at 9:24 AM
Which would explain why he puts it ahead of character in importance I suppose. And why he says that a drama can exist without character, but not vice versa…still, I’m not convinced Frank (very nice to hear from you btw.).
Crime and Punishment is great I think because of what goes on in Ruskolnikov’s mind after he murders the pawnbroker and her sister. Not much of a plot. Suspense though, in that we’re not sure what he’ll do; whether or not he’ll turn himself in.
September 17th, 2008 at 12:32 PM
[...] But we also seek out books for new rather than familiar experiences. How do we remember those? At least as far as fiction is concerned, the answer is: imagination. And arguably the most easily imagined aspect of a book is plot. It needs less effort on the part of the reader’s imagination than, say, descriptions or characters, because plot is more structured and more readily summarized than the latter. We can structure plot according to cause and effect or chronology, and we can summarize it by incidents and episodes. We can of course summarize descriptions and characters as well, but we lose much more in a character summary than a plot summary, and there’s little in the way of structure available in descriptions of characters and scenes. If nothing else, plot is always linear, meaning dynamic, and never static. Admittedly, I am talking out of my ass here, but how come common readers (except the French, but they don’t count) tend to prefer plot-ladden books to plot-less ones? Isn’t that due to the fact that plot sticks more easily? (This, of course, is not to say that plot is more important or more valuable than characters or descriptions, despite Aristotle’s assertion to the contrary; plot, he said, “is the basic principle, the heart and soul, as it were, of tragedy”. One can certainly question such a stance, as Nigel Beale does at his Nota Bene Books.) [...]
September 17th, 2008 at 1:47 PM
Oh, I’m not entirely convinced, either Nigel. I like the idea of the plot as the soul of the drama, but I think you’re right that he’s wrong about character. He’s also wrong, I think, about the nature of tragedy, which he sees as the destruction of a great man brought about by his character flaws. Perhaps by the time Aristotle wrote, the plays were not being done as trilogies as was originally the case. But the point of tragedy is redemption through suffering – Oedipus is assumed into heaven in Oedipus at Colonus and the Furies are changes into the Eumenides at the end of the Oresteia.
September 17th, 2008 at 6:04 PM
I never was able to wrap my head around Aristotle’s ideas in any way that made sense to me. Finally, I understood why, when it was pointed out to me that Aristotle was a reader, not a writer. He was analyzing the creative process very much from the audience’s viewpoint, and not from the creator’s. With that in mind, I can track his thinking better. And also understand why, as a maverick creative type myself, I am tempted more often than not to blow a raspberry in the great philosopher’s direction.
September 17th, 2008 at 6:49 PM
Aeschylus (524-456 BC) and Aristotle (384-365 BC) . . . I think the answer may be located in the lost fourth Satyric play of The Oresteia
; actually, Frank and Nigel, it’s perhaps relevant to this discussion that the trilogy was not divided into acts and scenes proper (as they were, say, later in Shakespeare). I know you both know this; but, there was only one major scene change, remember, in the thing, a fact which does, ISTM, bear upon our understanding of plot and plotting in terms of tragedy.
Also, what Albin Lesky wrote in ‘65 may bear upon the progression under discussion in terms of the character-flaw conundrum: "Aeschylean tragedy shows faith in a sublime and just world order, and is in fact inconceivable without it. Man follows his difficult, often terrible path through guilt and suffering, but it is the path ordained by god which leads to knowledge of his laws. All comes from his will."
And, Frank, I agree with you in your first comment’s final statement; OTOH, I’d prolly write:
IOW, action and character are the head and heart of the drama’s body; the plot is its soul. Therein lies unity, the sum of its parts, its synchro-humming whole.
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