Oedipus the king free essay sample

Aristotelian philosophy teaches that knowing material reality can be achieved by properly Identifying the essential traits of things and distinguishing things from other things by forming classification schemes based on those traits. The theorys great power is that it canproduce useful, independently verifiable categories of analysisitwe all can agree on the epics essential traits, then we can conduct reasonable scholarly discussions about epics. Since Aristotle also was Interested (like his teacher. Plato) in the proper organization of human communities, from the one- amily oikos (whence economy) to the city-state of the polis, he also tried to describe the social functions of literature. This continues to be an important line of study In modern literary theory. One of the methods weakness arises from disagreements about what, If anything, can be called essential from the start (a prion), outside some kind of social, political, historical processes that made it. We will write a custom essay sample on Oedipus the king or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page A second weakness, shared by some practitioners of Structuralism (q. v. ), is Aristotles fondness for defnltion and categorizatino by binary oppositions: states which are supposed to be mutually exclusive (i. . , live or dead, on or off, in that you cant be both, but must be one or the other). Many of the oppositions by which he constructed his literary analysis are suspect or simply wrong, at least in our own era (e. g. , comedy or tragedy has become confused with tragi-comedy and satire). Post- Aristotelian thinking tends to avoid relying upon unexamined binary oppositions and to look backwards, in order to situate literatures traits in the processes which created them, but otherwise we owe a great methodological debt to The Philosopher, as he was known to medieval readers. Some Aristotelian principles† ) Genre and generic attributes Aristotle sought to anchor his definitions of literary genres in exemplary works and authors. Of tragedians, he considered Sophocles the best, and his Oedipus Tyrannus (Oedipus the King) the finest example. Thats immediately debatable because great works by two other major tragedians survived (Aeschylus and Euripides). In the case of epics, his task was easier because only one authors work were widely known to him, those of Homer. According to Aristotle, the lost Homeric mock battle narrative, Margites, is to comic drama as the Iliad and the Odyssey are to ragedy. Note that this suggests genres originate in pairs, each balancing qualities the other excels In with qualities it lacks and its partner has In abundance. When distinguishing between epic and tragedy, he said epic has a multiplicity of plots, each of which Is fully developed in the epics larger scope, but the tragedy is a compressed development of a single plot. Aristotle says epics have a major advantage over tragedy because of their multiplicity of Incident, the capacity to enlarge its action to incorporate several series of events which may have happened imultaneously [representing them in narrative series by means of flashbacks, etc. ]. For Aristotle, all literature is an art of imitation (Gk. mimesis, whence mime). As artists imitated life to produce their literature, audiences would be inspired to imitate, in some fashion, what they read, heard or saw on the stage. The social function of epic as an exemplar of good behavior was easier for Aristotle to assume in Classical Greece. Recently, the hero-aesthetic has been dethroned as a necessary and great model of human aspiration, at least as it motivates citizens to become warriors. Comedy produced an immediate problem for Aristotle, however, since comedies tend to be about bad behavior and people doing ugly, immoral, or ridiculous things. He accepted that the primary object of comedy as imitation: imitation of low charactersnot morally bad, but ludicrous, ugly but not painful or destructive. He defended comedies mimetic representation of ludicrous behavior because it would incite audiences to avoid its imitation. 3) Proper proportion A tragedy imitates action that is serious, complete, and of an appropriate magnitude (neither trivial nor too vast). 4) Literatures function The tragedy evokes two kinds of emotions, pity and fear, in order to cleanse the mind of dangerous but natural human tendencies, especially overgrown pride in our accomplishments. This emotional purging (katharsis), when shared by the whole population, restored the city to health. 5) Character construction Tragic characters all have two qualities by which we Judge them: thought and character. In order of importance, proper characters should have the following qualities: goodness in a moral sense, appropriateness to social mores, truth to life (probability in small details), and consistency (i. . , not disturbingly divided in nature). 6) Sub-components of dramatic theater Tragedies have these six parts: plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle (today, special effects), and song. ) Literature and human nature According to Aristotle, our qualities are determined by our characters, those basic combinations of traits we were born with or develop as we grow, but we are made happy or wretched by our actions. Therefore, the great literature concentrates on showing us those actions at crucial moments and the first principle of any drama is its plot (i. e. , the act ion). A perfect tragedy should imitate complex actions (see #12) that excite pity and fear (#4) while leading a man who is extraordinarily good and Just to misfortune by some error of Judgment or frailty of character. That frailty of character is the famous tragic flaw or hamartia, actually something closer toa tragic imbalance qualities in the construction of a tragedys plot are: it has a beginning, middle, and end (i. e. , is complete); and it is of appropriate size to be easily embraced in one view or easily embraced by the memory [long enough to move a character from alamity to good fortune, or from good fortune to calamity. For this reason, Aristotle says good plays resemble living organisms. (This idea has a rebirth in Romanticisms organic form theory. An episodic plot is: one that moves from incident to incident without necessary or probable cause. You can still find modern literary reviews that condemn a works plot as episodic, though since Modernism, fiction has tended to test that boundary and many of the rest Aristotle tried to establish. 9) Unity of action In addition to unity of form and time, Aristotle also said a plot should be unified. However, definitions of this tend to be circu lar: the plot centers around an action that is unified. 10) Poetry vs. istorythe truth problem The ancients and medieval theorists were troubled that poetic works of all kinds (narrative fiction, drama, lyrics) are technically lies. isnt lying a bad thing, something to be punished. Aristotle saw the poet and historian as his opposing binary opposites to solve this problem. The poets Job differs from the historians in that: the historian must relate what happened, but the poet may relate what may (or may have) happened. (Also see Sidney, Defense of Poesy. ) 11) Simple vs. complex plots While Aristotle tended to favor literary traits that unified, he was not against complexity, itself. For him, a complex plot is distinguished from a simple one because it has one or both of these special features which produce important effects in the audience: reversal of expectations (peripeteia) and/or recognition (usually of someones identity, often of ones own true identity [anagnorisis]). Both of these events occur nearly simultaneously near the end of Oedipus Tyrannus. Aristotelian analysis divides the plays action into two parts complication and nraveling, the latter of which might begin with the reversal of expectations and end with the self-discovery or recognition scene. 2) Literature and the agon Like most Classical Greeks, Aristotle saw most of the universe as a pattern of struggle, or agon, in which opposed forces battled for supremacy. Tragedy and epic, alike, according to Aristotle, might develop a kind of collision between opposing character types in which one must subdue the other. He said tragedy should have a double thread, which can be identified by: its concern for two groups of actors hose ends are opposite because of their opposite natures (e. g. , in epic, Odysseus triumphant return vs. the suitors destruction; in tragedy, Antigones unwavering insistence on the old burial customs vs. Creons equally stubborn demand that she 13) Spectacle / Special Effects vs. Tragic or Comic effects Aristotle distinguished clearly between works which operated upon the audiences minds by manipulating the emotions via thoughtful processes from those which sought their impact by shocking the audience with scenes which were taboo in ordinary social life (e. g. , murders, open sexuality, violent accidents). The movies, Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street, and all their many imitators, are examples of tragedies that use spectacle to move the audiences emotions.