-THINKING ACTIVITY-
Plato was a great poet, a mystic and a plilosopher. Aristotle the most diatinguished disciple of plato. He was a critic, scholar, logical and practical philosopher, the 4th cen bc to inquiry was philosophical investigations which form the subject of his great works in form of dialogues.
He was not a professed critic of literature and his critical observations are not found in any single book.
He was the first systemic critic who inquired into the nature of imaginative literature and put forword theories which are both illuminating and provocative. According to him all arts are imitative or mimetic in nature. He wrote in the repubic that " ideas are the ultimate reality." Things are conceived as ideas before they take practical shapes so, idea is original and the thing is copy of that idea.
Plato's three main objections to poetry are that poetry is not ethical, philosophical and pragmatic, in other words, he objected to poetry from the point of viewof education from philosophical point of view and from moral point of view.
👉In brief
(1) plato's objectiom to poetry from the point of view of education:
- (a) In The republic book 11 he condemns poetry as fostering evil habits and vices in children. Homer's epics were part of studies, heros of epics were not examples of sounds or ideal morality. They were lusty, cunning, and cruel war mongers. Even gods were no better.( troy- Achilles beheading apollo's statue, oracles molested... Insults of gods, gods fight among themselves , they punish instead of forgive ahaliyaindra, kunti's children, narad's obsession to marry, hercules son of zeus and alcmene, hera's jealousy snakes frenzy to kill children....)
- Plato writes: " if we mean our future guardians to regard the habit of quarreling among themselves as of all things the basest, no word should be said to them of the wars in the heaven,or of the plots and fighting of the gods against one another, for they are not true... If they would only believe as we would tell them that quarreling is unholy, and that never up to this time has there been any quarreling between critizens. There tales (of epics) must not be admitted into our state.
- In the republic book 10: poetry does not lead to, but drives us away from the realization of the ultimate reality the truth.
- Philosophy is better than poetry because philosophy deals with idea and poetry is twice removed from original idea.
- plato says :"the imitator or maker of the image knows nothing or true existence,he knows appearence only the imitative art is an inferior who marries an inferior and has inferior offspring". (dorothea's ideal in middlemarch shattered kshtriya dharma - not to hit enemy without weapon, tess's providence, evil wins & god is silent, unrewarde virtue....)
- In the same book in the republic soul of man has higher principles of reason (which is the essence of it's being) as well as lower contituted of based impulses and emotions.
- Poetry waters and nourishes the baser impulses of men emotional, sentimental, and sorrowful.
- Plato says: then the imitative poet who aims at being popular is not by nature made, nor is his art intended, to please or to affect the rational principle in the soul, but he will prefer the passionate and fitful temper, which is easily limited and therefore we shall be right in refusing to admit him into a well ordered stste, because he awakens and nourishes and strenghthen the feelings and impairs the reason.
- Thus are plato's principal charges on poetry and objection to it.
the plot(Fable), or mythos, which is the harmonious combination/arrangements of incidents and actions in the story.
Aristotle argues that, among these six, the plot is the most important. To the question whether plot makes a tragedy or character, Aristotle argues that without action there cannot be tragedy at the same time character/s are required to do action. The 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. Tragedy is written not eerily to imitate man but to imitate man in action. That is, according to Aristotle, happiness consists in a certain kind of activity rather than in a certain quality of character.
* It (Plot) is in the words of David Daiches: ‘the way in which the action works itself out, the whole casual chain which leads to the final outcome.’
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. Aristotle notes that forming a solid plot is far more difficult than creating good characters or diction.
Having asserted that the plot is the most important of the six parts of tragedy, he ranks the remainder as follows, from most important to least: character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle.
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