Poetics (Penguin Classics S.)

Chapters 13 and 14 address the question of the best kind of tragic plot.

Recognition reveals that, because things are not what they seemed, what a person has done or is about to do is not what he thought it was

Aristotle’s dictum that poetry is concerned, not with what has happened, but with ‘the kind of thing that would happen,

Hamartia, then, includes errors made in ignorance or through mis-judgement; but it will also include moral errors of a kind which do not imply wickedness. Aristotle’s attempt to prescribe the best kind of tragic plot is therefore not as narrowly prescriptive as it may seem at first sight. His procedure is negative. He excludes various kinds of plot

We must be careful here. Poetic plots do not deal in generalizations (‘people usually get up in the morning’); they make statements about what a particular individual does at a particular time (‘Bill got up this morning’).

This act of recognition involves an exercise of our capacity for cognition; and the exercise of any capacity is, for Aristotle, in itself pleasurable (Nicomachean Ethics, 1174b14–5a21).

In general, the ability to do something well does not depend on understanding, nor does understanding necessarily imply an ability to do it well.

Chapter 10 defines two classes of plot. A simple plot satisfies three conditions: the events are ‘in the sense defined continuous and unified’ (that is, connected in accordance with necessity or probability); there is a change of fortune (as specified in chapter 7); and there is no reversal or recognition. A complex plot also satisfies the first tw

Recognition (anagnôrisis) is ‘a change from ignorance to knowledge’ (52a29–31).