Aesthetics -- Early works to 1800; Music -- Philosophy and aesthetics; Poetry -- Early works to 1800
letter; and another Discovery was required to reveal him to Iphigenia.
Two parts of the Plot, then, Peripety and Discovery, are on matters of
this sort. A third part is Suffering; which we may define as an action
of a destructive or painful nature, such as murders on the stage,
tortures, woundings, and the like. The other two have been already
explained.
12
The parts of Tragedy to be treated as formative elements in the whole
were mentioned in a previous Chapter. From the point of view, however,
of its quantity, i.e. the separate sections into which it is divided, a
tragedy has the following parts: Prologue, Episode, Exode, and a choral
portion, distinguished into Parode and Stasimon; these two are common to
all tragedies, whereas songs from the stage and Commoe are only found
in some. The Prologue is all that precedes the Parode of the chorus; an
Episode all that comes in between two whole choral songs; the Exode
all that follows after the last choral song. In the choral portion the
Parode is the whole first statement of the chorus; a Stasimon, a song of
the chorus without anapaests or trochees; a Commas, a lamentation sung
by chorus and actor in concert. The parts of Tragedy to be used as
formative elements in the whole we have already mentioned; the above
are its parts from the point of view of its quantity, or the separate
sections into which it is divided.
13
The next points after what we have said above will be these: (1) What is
the poet to aim at, and what is he to avoid, in constructing his Plots?
and (2) What are the conditions on which the tragic effect depends?
We assume that, for the finest form of Tragedy, the Plot must be not
simple but complex; and further, that it must imitate actions arousing
pity and fear, since that is the distinctive function of this kind of
imitation. It follows, therefore, that there are three forms of Plot to
be avoided. (1) A good man must not be seen passing from happiness to
misery, or (2) a bad man from misery to happiness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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