Poetics (Penguin Classics S.)

Here he roots the visual arts in the human desire for knowledge (48b10–19, cf. Rhetoric, 1371b4–10).

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).

For Aristotle, the evolution of human culture is in large part the evolution of tekhnê.

The second argument approaches from the opposite direction: tragedy is impossible without plot, but it is possible without character; if character is dispensable, it cannot be as important as plot.

The theoretical framework for this outline history of poetry is provided by the first three chapters, which construct a matrix of three different ways in which poems can be distinguished from other kinds of imitation and from each other – in terms of their medium, object and mode.

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

So Aristotle sees the history of poetry as a development towards greater coherence in plot-structure, and towards the more truly imitative dramatic mode. But the dichotomy between the imitation of admirable and inferior agents and activities which he assumes was present in the earliest poetry remains constant. Chapter 2 explained its theoretical ra

Aristotle was born at Stagira, in the dominion of the kings of Macedonia, in 384 BC. For twenty years he studied at Athens in the Academy of Plato, on whose death in 347 he left, and, some time later, became tutor of the young Alexander the Great. When Alexander succeeded to the throne of Macedonia in 336, Aristotle returned to Athens and establish

So Aristotle’s first argument for the primacy of plot is as follows: tragedy aims to excite fear and pity; these emotions are responses to success and failure; success and failure depend on action; hence action is the most essential thing in tragedy; therefore plot is the most important element.