August 26, 2011

Aristotle’s Poetics — the Great Grand-Pappy of Writing Texts

Filed under: Aristotle's Poetics,Writing,Writing Tools — Tags: , , , , — Brian Triber @ 8:15 pm

Image by Kelson
[Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons
Aristotle.

Following John Quincy Adams’ Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory, and Gustav Freytag’s Technique of the Drama, I decided to work backwards to the text on writing that still inspires books on how to write: Aristotle’s Poetics.

While Adams covers primarily speech writing of all sorts, and Freytag covers 17th century German Drama, Aristotle addresses ancient Greek drama in three forms: Epic, Tragic, and Comic (which he gives a precursory nod to, and then summarily dismisses). Keep in mind that as one reads the text, there are several substitutions of terms that need to be kept in mind. First, whenever Aristotle refers to the poet, what he is really referring to is the playwright. Secondly, references to the “climax” should actually be considered to refer to a crisis. There are other odd semantical differences between ancient Greek and modern English dramatic definitions,l, but they are fairly obvious to the reader.

The only other major point behind editing and posting this work is that, while the work and translation are both in the public domain, and widely available, including on sites like Project Gutenberg, none of the available versions have the original Greek in the translated text. THe online texts, instead, contain Greek text spelled out with anglicized letters: for instance “{delta omega rho omicron nu}” instead of “&deta;ωρον”, which is both very distracting and does a disservice to the translation.

So, without further ado, enjoy my edition of Aristotle’s Poetics.

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August 1, 2011

Good Old Freytag. Gus to his friends…


Image by Gabor
[Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons
Gustav Freytag.

I’ve just completed editing and posting Gustav Freytag’s Technique of the Drama to BrianTriber.com. I’ve yet to complete linking the Index to the rest of the text, but I’ll do that gradually. (It’s extremely time consuming and I have other projects that need attention — rest assured it will be done, but a lot of what an index used to do for books has been replaced by the computer’s Find function, so I feel less rushed about it.)

Of course, editing any text is like inhabiting the author’s world more intensely than simply reading it. It provides insight into not only the subject, but a taste of the way the writer thinks and structures (in this case, as was true with John Quincy Adams’ Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory, the structure of the work was based on the structure discussed in the work.) So, there are a few thoughts unique to Freytag’s Technique that I’d like to share.

First, regarding Freytag and this particular work. There were points — infrequent but noticeable — when I found the text challenging not necessarily because of its subject, but its content. To clarify, Freytag was a product of his generation. As such, there were numerous nationalistic, racist, and sexist references in the text. If taken as a snapshot of the times, one realizes how much Freytag and his colleagues looked down upon female actors, Jews, and non-Germans in the theater setting. He was, of course, unaware of what would come down the pike almost half a century after his death, but as a time capsule, the piece certainly has future echoes of what would happen in Europe under the Kaiser and again under the Nazis.

Now, having said that, the book itself is an excellent deconstruction of theatrical arts in Germany circa 1880 or so (the sixth edition was translated into English in 1900). There are a few quirks regarding Freytag’s pyramid (on the right). The illustration, from Chapter 2 of the book, shows his pyramid. The quick breakdown is that each of the lettered nodes represents one of the five acts of the drama. The number of scenes per act is left up to the playwright. What the diagram may suggest (which you must be careful not to interpret it this way) is that the diagram is not only chronological, but also to scale. In other words, that each of the acts appear to take the same amount of stage time. The truth is, as derived from the text, that each act’s performance time is dependent on the number of scenes in the act. So, for instance, The Merchant of Venice is comprised of five acts, but the climax actually occurs about two-thirds through the play, and the catastrophe (more often referred to as the denouement) is the last eighth of the performance time.


Parts of the Drama: (a)introduction, (b)rise, (c)climax, (d)return or fall, (e)catastrophe.

Shakespearean theater evolved, of course, into other forms in other regions. Eventually German theater, modern English theater, Yiddish theater, and American theater all gave way to the motion picture and its 3-act structure (or 4-act structure, depending upon who you ask). This same 5-act structure finds its way into television, with 4 commercial breaks. This means that the introduction now takes 30 seconds or up to five minutes at the start of the show, the rise around 20 minutes, starting after the first commercial break and bringing us to the middle of the segment after the second commercial break. The climax and return take around five minutes toward the end of this same segment, and the catastrophe completes the show at around 30 seconds following the last commercial break. In film, Freytag’s five acts are broken into approximately 30, 30, 30, 20, and 10 minutes respectively, although with some action films, like the Transformers franchise, the climax is exaggerated into an hour-long spectacle, the return and catastrophe given barely 5 minutes to split between them.

The point here is that the dramatic form has been evolving over time to lean more heavily on the middle of the story, and simultaneously truncating the end of the story. I’m not sure what this says about our viewing habits, wether we’re being re-trained to appreciate a new structure, or whether the marketplace is pressuring film and television to adopt to the viewing public’s changing tastes. After alL, in a world of short-attention-span, it becomes difficult to keep the viewer after the climax has been resolved — once the emotional buy-in for the main characters have been resolved at the climax, how does one keep such an audience’s attention into the denouement? The answer seems to be to truncate the ending. (Television and movie series seem to have a leg up on this since multiple story lines are interwoven and get resolved in different episodes, so the denouement only has to address the main story line of the episode. Torchwood, Season 2 is a good example of this.)

Then the question becomes: do authors adopt their story structure to match the visual media to increase their audience? This seems like a slippery slope, but at the same time, it’s worthy of an experiment. After all, if the goal is to get a message across, shouldn’t it be tailored to the audience? I realize that this can border on agitprop, but there are stories that may benefit from this. Still, there is a reason the novel form still exists as it does, but you’ll notice it is much changed from where it was 75 or 150 years ago. I suppose the real answer will come along in the future, as our media continues to change. Who knows what impact the e-book will have on structure?

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July 28, 2011

Freytag’s “Technique of the Drama” — Chapter VI now available.


Image by Gabor
[Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons
Gustav Freytag.

Chapter VI of Gustav Freytag’s Technique of the Drama is now available on the Technique of Drama page.

This section covers the following topics on playwriting and stage drama: Material. Work. Fitting for the stage. Cutting out. Length of the piece. Acquaintance with the stage.

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July 27, 2011

Freytag’s “Technique of the Drama” — Chapter V now available.


Image by Gabor
[Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons
Gustav Freytag.

Chapter V of Gustav Freytag’s Technique of the Drama is now available on the Technique of Drama page.

This section covers the following topics on playwriting and stage drama: Iambic pentameter. Tetrameter. Trimeter. Alexandrine. Verse of the Nibelungen Lied. Dramatic element of verse. Color.

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July 26, 2011

Freytag’s “Technique of the Drama” — Chapter IV, Part 3 now available.


Image by Gabor
[Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons
Gustav Freytag.

Chapter IV, Part 3 of Gustav Freytag’s Technique of the Drama is now available on the Technique of Drama page.

This section covers the following topics on playwriting and stage drama: The characters must have dramatic unity. The drama must have but one chief hero. Double heroes. Lovers. The action must be based on characteristics of the persons. Easily understood. Mingling of good and evil. Humor. Accident. The characters in the different acts. Demands of the actor. The conception of the stage arrangement must be vivid in the poet’s mind. The province of the spectacle play. What is it to write effectively?

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July 25, 2011

Freytag’s “Technique of the Drama” — Chapter IV, Part 2 now available.


Image by Gabor
[Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons
Gustav Freytag.

Chapter IV, Part 2 of Gustav Freytag’s Technique of the Drama is now available on the Technique of Drama page.

This section covers the following topics on playwriting and stage drama: The character dependent on the action. Example of Wallenstein. Characters with portraiture. Historical characters. Poets and history. Opposition between characters and action. The epic hero intrinsically undramatic. Euripides. The Germans and their legends. Older German history. Nature of historical heroes. Inner poverty. Mingling of opposites. Lack of unity. Influence of Christendom. Henry IV. Attitude of the poet toward the appearances of reality. Opposition between poet and actor.

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July 24, 2011

Freytag’s “Technique of the Drama” — Chapter IV, Part 1 now available.


Image by Gabor
[Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons
Gustav Freytag.

Chapter IV, Part 1 of Gustav Freytag’s Technique of the Drama is now available on the Technique of Drama page.

This section covers the following topics on playwriting and stage drama: Assumptions of dramatic characterization, creation, and after-creation. Variety of peoples and characters. Germans and Latins. Difference according to poets. Shakespeare’s characters. Lessing, Goethe, Schiller.

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Freytag’s “Technique of the Drama” — Chapter III, Part 2 now available.


Image by Gabor
[Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons
Gustav Freytag.

Chapter III, Part 2 of Gustav Freytag’s Technique of the Drama is now available on the Technique of Drama page.

This section covers the following topics on playwriting and stage drama: Conduct of action through the scenes. Monologues. Messenger scenes. Dialogue scenes. Different structure. Love scenes. Three persons. Ensemble scenes. Their laws. The galley scene in Antony and Cleopatra. Banquet scene in Piccolomini. Riitli scene. Parliament in Demetrius. Mass scenes. Distributed voices. Battles.

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July 21, 2011

Freytag’s “Technique of the Drama” — Chapter III, Part 1 now available.


Image by Gabor
[Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons
Gustav Freytag.

Chapter III, Part 1 of Gustav Freytag’s Technique of the Drama is now available on the Technique of Drama page.

This section covers the following topics on playwriting and stage drama: Entrances. Scenes. Units of the poet. Their combination into scenes. Structure of the scene. Intervals. Change of scenery. Chief scenes and subordinate scenes.

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July 18, 2011

Freytag’s “Technique of the Drama” — Chapter II, Part 5 now available.


Image by Gabor
[Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons
Gustav Freytag.

Chapter II, Part 5 of Gustav Freytag’s Technique of the Drama is now available on the Technique of Drama page.

This section covers the following topics on playwriting and stage drama: Influence of the curtain on the modern stage. Development of the act. The five parts. Their technical peculiarities. First act. Second. Third. Fourth. Fifth. Examples. Construction of the double drama, Wallenstein.

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