Aristotle's concept of plot (Part-2)

Aristotle's concept of plot remained unquestionable till the beginning of this century when E. M. Forster questioned the relevance of Aristotlean concept of plot structure. It is, however, ironical that Forester does not come out with anything specifically new and fails to establish his abnegation to Aristotlean theory. Forester lays emphasis on the element of cause and defines plot "as a narrative of events" with "the emphasis falling on causality". He says :
The king died and then the queen died is a story. 'The kind died and then the queen died of grief' is a plot. The time sequence is preserved but the sense of casuality overshadows it14.
It is obvious that Forster is little different to Aristotle in his emphasis on the element of causality. He further elaborates his thesis by alluding to two principal demands of a plot intelligence and memory. Intelligence lays emphasis on interconnection between any two events and memory is an indirect reference to magnitude and size. "The plot maker", says "expects us to remember, we expect him to leave no loose ends"15. The plot structure of a short story demands intelligence when it is causally knit. Yet the demand of memory in connection with the plot of short story is of limited significance as the definition of the genre itself restricts the presence of loose ends.
The Aristotlean views on the plot of the tragedy bear a close relation with the function of a tragedy, i.e. catharsis of pity and fear. K.G. Shrivastava's views in his elaboration of the controversial term katharsis capture our attention :
It is true that the plot is the expression or representation of the poetic vision itself is the structure because in order to be fully bodied force, it has got to be identical with the plot17.
Shrivastava's identification of plot with vision ratifies the importance of plot and consequently Aristotlean thesis on plot in connection with the plot structure of a tragedy.
In the definition of tragedy Aristotle speaks of 'catharsis' as the specific function of a tragedy. For centuries tragedy was considered to produce specific moral effect. Through purification of passions most of the critics until nineteenth century like Jacob, Bernays firmly established the fact that catharsis is a metaphor taken from medical science. Even John Miltons was of the same view. The reason behind the critics' inclination towards this kind of interpretation is probably the fact that Aristotle was some of a physician. F. L. Lucas asserts that catharsis "A definitely medical metaphor" – A metaphor of an apparent. S. H. Butcher and B. Y. Water are prone more to purgation theory. The views of B. Y. Water invite our attention. I hope it is not rash to surmise that the much depated word Katharsis, purification or 'purgation', may have come into Aristotle's mouth from the same source. It has all the appearance of being an old word which is accepted and re–interpreted by Aristotle rather than a word freely chosen by him to denote the exact phenomenon he wishes to describe.
Plato in his appreciation of a tragedy discusses the excitation of pity as function of a tragedy and Aristotle adds fear to it. Aristotle in his Rhetoric regards pity and fear as two sister emotions. Probably through Catharsis of pity and fear he means that the function of tragedy is to make us fear for ourselves the distress we pity in others. The doctrine is based on the fact that the person capable of pity is the person who nurtures the possibility of fear. The person capable of pity is the person with rich and strong imagination and is, therefore, capable of experiencing the pain and ego such as that which we see affecting of threatening a person pitied. It is thus obvious from the above description that the Katharsis of pity and fear is not a process in two different steps but it is a singular and composite response of a man capable of thought and imagination. To the action around which the whole tragic framework has been composed. The views of Stephen Halelo invite our attention. He points out :
Pity and fear (though, of course, not these alone) are to be regarded not as uncontrollable instincts or forces, but as responses to reality which are possible for a mind in which thought and emotion are integrated and interdependent.
Halliwell further justifies the same idea of integrated response to tragic action and says :
But is also helps us to see how Aristotle conceives of the tragic emotions not as overwhelming waves of material of poetic drama. The framework for the experience of these emotions is nothing other than the cognitive understanding of the mimetic representation of human action and character.
In Rhetoric Aristotle defines fear as a form of pain or disturbance arising from an impression which is destructive or painful. He defines pity as a form of pain act – an evident evil of a destructive or painful variety in the case of one who does not deserve it. If the object of pity shares with us our essentials a pity is gradually transformed into fear. Thus, pity and fear are correlated feelings and we pity others where under like circumstance we fear for ourselves. It is important to note that fear is not caused by the direct apprehension of misfortune impending over our life but it is a sympathetic shudder we feel for a hero who in his essentials resembles us. The fear in case of a tragedy does not paralyse the mind of stun and sense as this is the direct of some impending calamity. The fear in the case of a tragedy is based on our imaginative, intellectual union with the hero. The spectator through the enlarging power of pity is elevated out of himself and identifies himself with the fade of mankind. He quits the narrow sphere of an individual and identifies himself with the fate of mankind.
Tragedy must possess a typical universal value depicting the combination of the inevitable and the unexpected. Pity and fear, awakened in connection with larger aspects of human suffering become universalised emotion sparing what is personal and self regarding. In the grow of tragic excitement, these feelings are so transformed that the net result is in noble emotional satisfaction. The emotion of pity and fear, thus hold immense significance as they bring about the catharsis and decide the fate of tragedy. If there is only pity, the tragedy would become unjustly sentimental. If there is only fear, the work becomes the melodrama. Catharsis is surely the principle expressing how emotions of an individual are made impersonal and how they are universalised. It is clear then that Aristotle theory of catharsis gives us the larger vision of the world around us by assimilating various paradoxes of spontaneity and consciousness, of intellect and emotions and of inward and outward dynamics of human mind.

References
1Aristotle, On the Art of Poetry Trans. Ingram Byewater (New Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1925) 23.
2Aristotle, On the Art of Poetry 26–27.
3Aristotle, On the Art of Poetry 35.
4David Daiches, Critical Approaches to Literature (London : Longmans, 1959) 24.
5Daiches 28.
6Daiches 28.
7Aristotle, Poetics, Tr. S. H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, (New Delhi : Kalyani, Reprint 1987) 27.
8Aristotle, Poetics, S. H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, 31.
9Butcher 31.
10Humphry House, Aristotle's Poetics (New Delhi : Kalyani, 1988) 49.
11Humphry House 59.
12Humphry House 59.
13Humphry House 59.
14Butcher 41.
15J. W. H. Alknis, Literary Criticism in Antiquity (London : Methuen, 1973) 19.
16Stephen Helliwel, Aristotle's Poetics (London : Duckworth, 1986) 213.
17E. M. Forster, The Aspects of Novel (1927; London : Penguin, 1990) 87.
18E. M. Forster 88.
19Bernard Bergonzi, The Situation of the Novel (London : Pelican Books, 1971) 252.
20K. G. Shrivastava, Aristotle's Doctrine of Tragic Catharsis (Allahabad : Kitab Mahal, 1982) 159.
21F. L. Lucas, Tragedy : Serious Drama in Relation to Aristotle's Poetics (New York : Collier Books, 1967) 123.
22Ingram Bywater, Aristotle on the Art of Poetry (New Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1985) 15–16.
23Halliwell, 173–174.

ARISTOTLE(PART-1)

Aristotle takes all species of aesthetic expression to be nothing but a form of mimesis. He in a beginning of his trities makes his views on the origin of poetry and fine art very clear. He says :

Epic poetry is tragedy, as also comedy Dithysambic poetry and most flute playing and lyre–playings are all, viewed, as a whole, modes of imitation. But at the same time they differ from one another in three ways, either by a difference of kind in their means, or by differences of the objects, or in the manner of their imitations1.

Aristotle defines the whole space of mimesis along three main axes. The object of imitation, the medium of imitation and the manner of imitation from the point of view of dramatic presentation he lays emphasis on two main types of man, those above the average and those below the average. It is obvious that these two types of object account for two different genres : Tragedy and Comedy. He asserts :

This difference is that distinguishes Tragedy and comedy also; the one would make it personages worse, and the other, than the men of the present day2.

It is this clear that the object of imitation accounts for the principal discussion between tragedy and comedy, thus, the difference of the objects of imitation accounts for these two different and distinct form of dramatic imitation.

The manner of imitation is another very important factor which determines the genre and nature of imitation. The imitator may imitate a common object in a same medium yet the output may be different from each other. The writer of an epic and that of tragedy imitate a man above the average but if the manner of imitation is dramatic he produces a tragedy and if he imitates in a descriptive manner he produces an epic.

Aristotle firmly asserts that tragedy is supreme of all forms of imitations. Probably it is so far the simple reason that a tragedy skillfully assimilate two different forms of imitation. It presents a unique synthesis of speech and action. Speech is imitated in speech and action is rendered in action. Aristotle defines :

A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language with pleasurable accessories, each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work, in a dramatic, not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions3

The above quoted definition can be divided into four different clauses – The first clause comes out with a general and generic identity of tragedy. The second clause gives us a nature of the action, i.e. imitated by the playwright which makes us infer the nature of object of imitation. The third clause tells about a medium and manner of imitation and the fourth clause which is better known as catharsis clause tells us about the function of a tragedy. Thus, in the first three clause he makes clear the object medium and manner of the tragic composition and in fourth clause he discusses at length about function of a tragedy.

The concept of plot is almost as old a phenomenon in the history of criticism as is criticism itself which always acquired privileged status among other elements. Aristotle was, however, the first great critic who analysed the term carefully and its different constituents. It is, however, a pleasant irony that Aristotle's discussion on plot and other constituent elements has survived all the major attacks on it and his Poetics provides us with the most authentic discussion on the structural elements of a work of art. Aristotle, with his elaborate discussion on plot and other constituent elements of tragedy provides us with first methodological interpretation of a tragedy and initiates the tradition of textual criticism as against the moral approach of Plato. The words of David Daiches capture our attention here. He, in his famous book "Critical Approaches to Literature", says :

Aristotle's method is essentially one of examining observed phenomenon with a view to noting their qualities and characteristics. His concern is the ontological one of discovering what in fact literature is rather than the normative one of describing what it should be. He is describing, not legislating, yet his description is so organised as to make an account of the nature of literature involve emerges in terms of its function¹.

Aristotle devotes around fourteen chapters in the Poetics to the study of tragedy and the greatest importance is given to the study of plot. The other five elements, character, thought, diction, songs and spectacles are placed in subordination to plot. It is this element which constructs the aesthetics of a tragedy. By plot, Aristotle doesn't mean the "mere summarizable epitome of events"², but it is a determination of the dynamics of the action; "the whole causal change which leads to the final outcome"³. This is principally the reason why Aristotle imparts inordinate importance to plot and takes it to be "the soul of the tragedy". This also seems to be the justification to the controversial statement that "there can be a tragedy without a character but not without a plot"⁴.

Aristotle's ideal of a proper construction are manifest in his famous statement that a tragedy must have a beginning, a middle and an end. It is obligatory to analyse three division of a plot. About the beginning, Aristotle says :

That a beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by casual necessity or comes to be⁵.

The first one imitates the structure of a tragedy without any violation and the second one constricts the structure of first kind to the middle alone. In the second type much is left to the imagination of the reader about the beginning and the end which accounts for a kind of amorphous function which is pre–characteristic of short story only. Aristotle in his discussion on the plot of a tragedy lays optimum stress on unity and length. Aristotle while discussing the unity and length lays emphasis on the completeness and order. He says :

Again, a beautiful object, whether it be a living organism or any whole composed of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement of parts, but must also be of a certain magnitude; for beauty depends on magnitude and order⁶.

It is obvious here that Aristotle lays greater stress on the orderly manifestation of the constituents of a tragedy. Here Aristotle compares a work of art with the living creatures and hence denies the possibility that he speaks in terms of a formally imposed inanimate unity. The words of Humphry House capture our attention. He says :

This comparison of the unity of a work of art to that of a "living creature" is so important because it provides a vivid refutation of the charge that Aristotle is describing a formal, dead, mechanical kind of unity⁷.

It is an interesting observation here that the observations of Aristotle are applicable even today without any variation to almost every species of creative writing, even short story which is comparatively a new birth. The short story despite the novelty of form and genre shows its commitments to Aristotlean concept of completeness and order. Aristotle lays stress on the two criteria of probability and necessity for the purpose of coherence in the dramatic structure. There are numerous interpetations for these two words as they offer a variety of them. The word probable, in conjugation with necessary refers to Aristotle's insistence on the organic manifestation of events in the plot structure. To understand and interpret the word probable, Humphry House follows a method of contrast and examines the world 'improbability'. He says :

We can better understand what is meant by this double criteria by considering the word which Aristotle used to describe its opposite⁸.

Humphry House's study establishes the term meaning as rational and convincing. Obviously, Aristotle's stress here is on the organic correlation among the events. The criteria probable and necessary in mutual complementation with each other refers to a higher degree of organic rationality and an outright denial to the inclusion of superfluous incidents. Humphry House infers that "probable and necessary" taken together, imply a higher degree of rationality"⁹. He further says that "in this respect the criteria is intended to exclude from the play such things as chance; unrelated events for which adequate origins are not shown within the play itself ......"¹⁰.

It is again an interesting observation that the criteria of probability and necessity are as much relevant in the structure of short story as they are in the structure of a tragedy, an epic or a novel. In the case of in the structure of a short story the criteria of probability and necessity makes an inevitable structural need as the logical coherence is always an undeniable need in the plot structure of a short story as it deals with greater compactness than any other work of literature.

Aristotle describes two kinds of plot, Simple and Complex. the complex plot involves the two defining elements – Peripety and Anagnorisis. Peripety is defined as "a change from one state of thing within the play to its opposite of the kind described and that too in the probable or necessary sequence of events"¹¹. Consequent upon peripety is anagnorisis. Aptly translated as discovery, it is defined by Aristotle as a change from ignorance to knowledge. J.W.H. Atknis elaborates the concept and takes it to be "the reversal of intention, a deed done in blindness"¹². The plot structure of a tragedy involves both these elements nearly in a cause and effect relationship. Stephen Helliwell thinks that – "Aristotle conceives the recognition and reversal ideal in combination"¹³.