Shakespeare’s Othello and Aristotle’s Poetics

1. Shakespeare’s Othello andAristotle’s Poetics Marcus Nevitt (m.nevitt@shef.ac.uk)

3. Session Outline All quotations from Aristotle’s Poetics taken from Ingram Bywater (trans.), De Poeticain , The basic works of Aristotle (New York: Random House , 1941)

4. Why is Othelloa tragedy?

5. Q1 (1622) Q2 1630 1st Folio (1623) 1st Printings of Othello (all posthumous)

6. Why is Othello a tragedy? Computer says… 1. Shakespeare working from an Aristotelian template. 2. Partly because hamartia is a tragic flaw in the tragic hero’s character http://classical-student.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/othello-shakespeares-aristotelian.html

7. Why is Othello a tragedy? Computer says… It’s a tragedy because it tries to observe Aristotle’s three unities of time, place and action.

8. Some Implications of ‘Computer Says…’ • Othello is a tragedy because Shakespeare is following well-established PRESCRIPTIONS. • It’s a tragedy because it fits template/pattern for a genre seen since antiquity. • It’s a tragedy because Renaissance tragedy (e.g. Shakespeare, Webster) and Classical tragedy (e.g. Aeschylus, Sophocles) do the same things. • SESSION AIM = COMPLICATE/NUANCE SUCH IDEAS

9. Aristotle and Aristotelian Red Herrings

10. Aristotle (384-322 BC) Logic (Organon) (1a) Categories(or Categoriae) (16a) De Interpretatione("On Interpretation") (24a) Prior Analytics(or Analytica Priora) (71a) Posterior Analytics(or Analytica Posteriora) (100a) Topics(or Topica) (164a) Sophistical Refutations(or De Sophisticis Elenchis) Physics (the study of nature) (184a) Physics(or Physica) (268a) On the Heavens(or De Caelo) (314a) On Generation and Corruption(or De Generatione et Corruptione) (338a) Meteorology(or Meteorologica) (391a) On the Universe** (or De Mundo) (402a) On the Soul(or De Anima) The Parva Naturalia ("Little Physical Treatises"): (436a) Sense and Sensibilia(or De Sensu et Sensibilibus) (449b) On Memory(or De Memoria et Reminiscentia) (453b) On Sleep(or De Somno et Vigilia) (458a) On Dreams(or De Insomniis) (462b) On Divination in Sleep(or De Divinatione per Somnum) (464b) On Length and Shortness of Life(or De Longitudine et Brevitate Vitae) (467b) On Youth, Old Age, Life and Death, and Respiration(or De Juventute et Senectute, De Vita et Morte, De Respiratione) (481a) On Breath** (or De Spiritu) (486a) History of Animals(or Historia Animalium) (639a) Parts of Animals(or De Partibus Animalium) (698a) Movement of Animals(or De Motu Animalium) (704a) Progression of Animals(or De Incessu Animalium) (715a) Generation of Animals(or De Generatione Animalium) (791a) On Colors** (or De Coloribus) (800a) On Things Heard** (or De audibilibus) ( 805a) Physiognomonics** (or Physiognomonica) (815a) On Plants** (or De Plantis) (830a) On Marvellous Things Heard** (or De mirabilibus auscultationibus) (847a) Mechanics** (or Mechanica) (859a) Problems* (or Problemata) (968a) On Indivisible Lines** (or De LineisInsecabilibus) (973a) The Situations and Names of Winds** (or VentorumSitus) (974a) On Melissus, Xenophanes, and Gorgias** Metaphysics (980a) Metaphysics(or Metaphysica) Ethics and politics (1094a) Nicomachean Ethics(or Ethica Nicomachea) (1181a) Magna Moralia* ("Great Ethics") (1214a) Eudemian Ethics (or EthicaEudemia) (1249a) On Virtues and Vices** (or De Virtutibus et VitiisLibellus) (1252a) Politics(or Politica) (1343a) Economics* (or Oeconomica) Rhetoric and poetics (1354a) Rhetoric(or Ars Rhetorica) (1420a) Rhetoric to Alexander** (or Rhetorica ad Alexandrum) (1447a) Poetics(or Ars Poetica)

11. Aristotelian Polymathy and the Poetics • Studied with Plato at the Academy for 20 years (though it never names him, The Poetics a direct response to Plato’s Republic) • One of greatest logicians of antiquity (cf emphasis on tragic plot, and how plots are constructed and connected, rather than tragic character). Tragic plots, for Aristotle, must be logically intelligible. • One of greatest natural philosophers of antiquity (cf dissection and anatomical logic of Poetics) – thinking about how parts relate to the whole. • There are six parts consequently in tragedy (1461) • From the point of view … of its quantity … a tragedy has the following parts: Prologue, Episode, Exode, and a choral portion, distinguished into Prologue and Episode

12. Aristotelian Red Herrings 1 • Hamartia The change in the hero’s fortunes (in tragedy) must be not from misery to happiness, but on the contrary from happiness to misery; and the cause of it must lie not in any depravity, but in some great error on his part. Aristotle, Poetics in Nevitt and Pollard, pp. 24-5. • Seeing hamartia as “fatal flaw” sends us to character rather than the development of plot as the root of tragedy (un-Aristotelian) • Fundamental error is a constitutive element in the tragic plot – so not arbitrary or unmotivated. • Hamartia –as error in which protagonist is either blameworth or unblameworthy – is causally explicable i.e. there’s a plot-based explanation for the error.

13. Aristotelian Red Herrings 2 • Aristotle and the Unities of Time, Place and Action. • The perfect Plot … must have a single, and not (as some tell us) a double issue (1467:13) • [Epic has] no fixed limit of time, whereas Tragedy endeavours to keep as far as possible within a single circuit of the sun, or something near that. This, I say, is another point of difference between them, though at first the practice in this respect was just the same in tragedies as in epic poems (1460: 13) • Aristotle not nearly so prescriptive his later European neoclassical interpreters. Aristotle only really interested in the unity of action/plot. • Quotation 2, merely a description of ways in which tragedy frequently differs from epic – i.e. not prescription

14. Key Ideas in The Poetics

15. Tragic Plot/ Tragic Character a) The Fable/Plot … is simply this, the combination of incidents or things done in the story; whereas Character is what makes us ascribe certain moral qualities to the agents … (1460) b) Tragedy is essentially an imitation not of persons but of action and life, of happiness and misery. All human happiness [eudamonia] or misery takes the form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind of activity, not a quality. Character gives us qualities, but it is in our actions – what we do – that we are happy or the reverse. In a play accordingly they do not act in order to portray the Characters; they include characters for the sake of the action … (1461) c) Tragedy is impossible without action, but there may be one without character (1461) d) The life and soul of Tragedy is the Plot; and … the Characters come second – compare the parallel in painting, where the most beautiful colours laid on without order will not give one the same pleasure as a simple black-and-white sketch of a portrait (1461) • Plot as most important constituent feature of tragedy. Contrast with method acting (where character drives plot). • With character downgraded, actors’ roles/ performance also downplayed: “The tragic effect is quite possible without a public performance and actors” [1462] • b) We live to be active and our activities mark us out as happy or otherwise. • Statement d) controvertible in cultures where art is not necessarily representational. But Aristotle, after Plato, sees art as a variety of Mimesis (imitation or representation) • Character much less important in pre Hellenistic Greek theatre (before death of Alexander the Great) which was a theatre of masks (giving the barest indication of class, gender and age.

16. Complex Plots: Reversal and Discovery,Peripeteia and Anagnorisis Plots are either simple or complex … simple, when the change in the hero’s fortunes takes place without Peripety or Discovery; and complex when it involves one or the other, or both. (1465) A Peripety is the change of the kind described from one state of things within the play to its opposite … in the probable or necessary sequence of events as it is for instance in Oedipus: here the opposite state of things is produced by the Messenger who, coming to gladden Oedipus and to remove his fears as to his mother, reveals the secret of his birth. A Discovery is … a change from ignorance to knowledge, and thus to either love or hate … The finest form of Discovery is one attended by by Peripeties, like that which goes with the Discovery in Oedipus … a Peripety, will arouse either pity or fear – actions of that nature being what Tragedy is assumed to represent (1465) • Peripeteia (reversal) and Anagnorisis (discovery) both crucial plot devices • Cf Death of Cordelia in King Lear. • Reversals central to Aristotelian tragedy since they provoke pity or fear. • BUT HOW AND WHY?

17. Pity and Fear in the Poetics [The Characters of tragedy] shall be good … Tragedy is an imitation of personages better than the ordinary man (1470) A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself … with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions (1460) Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but also of incidents arousing pity and fear. Such incidents have the very greatest effect on the mind when they occur unexpectedly and at the same time in consequence of one another. (1464-5) Pity is occasioned by undeserved misfortune and fear by [the misfortunes] of one like ourselves. (1467) • Bad, unexpected, (though explicable) things happen to good people – cf importance of peripeteia • Potential disconnect between being good and leading a flourishing life (eudamonia) • i.e. there’s something here about the limits of human agency. Even good people are vulnerable to reversals. • This causes pity (we feel for characters in tragedy) and fear (we feel for ourselves). • Pity as response to suffering of another person • Pity not just unadulterated emotional gushing … there’s a cognitive basis for it.

18. The Mental Conditions of Pity Pity may be defined as a feeling of pain at an apparent evil, destructive or painful, which befalls one who does not deserve it, and which we might expect to befall ourselves or some friend of ours, and moreoever befall us soon. For if we are to feel pity we must obviously be capable of supposing that some evil may happen to us or some friend of ours … In order to feel pity we must also believe in the goodness of at least some people; if you think nobody good, you will believe that everybody deserves evil fortune. Aristotle, RhetoricBk II ch. 8. • Aristotle insists that there’s a cognitive basis for pity. • We think certain things which enables us to feel in certain ways. • Aristotle prizes tragedy so highly because it enables us to experience this fellow-feeling which has important ethical and social functions. • Aristotle thus puts feeling/affect at the heart of one form of literary pleasure.

19. Catharsis A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself … with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions (1460) • Given degree of commentary on this word, perhaps surprising to discover that it’s only used once in the entire Poetics • Means “purgation” (medical contexts of healing and curing) and “purification” (religious) or “clearing up” (domestic, practical). • Given importance of pity to Aristotle, makes no sense for catharsis to mean purging/ expelling/ getting rid. • Rather catharsis is a clearing up/ rebalancing of our emotional capacities. If we’re getting rid of anything it’s excesses of pity and fear.

20. The Poetics as a Response to Plato’s Republic

21. Suffering and Fortitude in Plato’s Republic One who pays a just penalty must not be called miserable, and his misery then laid at heaven’s door. The poet will only be allowed to say that the wicked were miserable because they needed chastisement, and the punishment of heaven did them good. If our commonwealth is to be well-ordered we must fight to the last against any member of it being suffered to speak of the divine, which is good, being responsible for evil. Plato, The Republic trans. F.M Cornford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941), p. 70 Another thing we must banish is the wailing and lamentations of the famous heroes. For this reason: if two friends are both men of high character, neither of them will think that death has any terrors for his comrade; and so he will not mourn for his friend’s sake, as if something terrible has befallen him … We also believe that such a man, above all, possesses within himself all that is necessary for a good life and is least dependent on others, so that he has less to fear from the loss of a son or brother or of his wealth or any other possession. When such misfortune comes, he will bear it patiently without lamenting Plato, The Republic IX p. 757-76 • All divine rewards and punishments are deserved • “The self-sufficiency of goodness”, Martha Nausbaum. • This position later taken up by Roman stoic philosophers • For Plato it’s more important to consider the downfalls experienced when someone acts unjustly ( probing of causation and ethics)

22. Art and the Challenge to Rationality in Plato’s Republic Paintings and works of art in general are far removed from reality, and that the element in our nature which is accessible to art, and responds to its advances is equally far from wisdom … A man of high character will bear any stroke of fortune, such as the loss of a son or of anything else he holds dear … What encourages him to resist his grief is the lawful authority of reason, while the impulse to give way comes from the feeling itself. It is never certain that misfortune may not be a blessing; nothing is gained by chafing at it; nothing human is a matter for great concern; and grief hinders us from calling in the help we most urgently need. By this I mean reflection on what has happened, letting reason decide on the best move in the game of life that the fall of the dice permits. Instead of behaving like a child who goes on shrieking after a fall and hugging the wounded part, we should accustom the mind at once to raise up the fallen and cure the hurt … This steadfast disposition does not naturally attract the dramatic poet, and his skill is not designed to find favour with it. If he is to have a popular success, he must address himself to the fretful type with its rich variety of material for representation. Plato, The Republic X p. 327-9 • The seductions of art • Wisdom comes through the rational perception of nature (and not representations/images of nature). • Mimesis can inhibit rational perception of the universe. • For Plato grief and pity a block on a rational perception of the universe

23. What Aristotle Responds to In Plato’s Republic… • The Republic determines that although some arts may be allowed in this city, tragedy must be banned. Because it is fiction, tragedy encourages lies, which he ascribes to all poetry. • Tragedy is more dangerous than other literary forms, however, because it relies on direct representation (mimesis) – allowing characters to speak for themselves – rather than indirect narration. • For Plato, this formal quality leads to tragedy’s most unsettling feature: by inviting listeners to identify with passionate, suffering speakers, it encourages surrender to pleasurable emotional intensity, which undermines the rationality of the ideal city.

24. Further Reading • Belfiore, E., 'Pleasure, tragedy and Aristotelian psychology', Classical Quarterly 35 (1985), 349-61 • Nussbaum, Martha C., 'Tragedy and self-sufficiency: Plato and Aristotle on fear and pity', Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 10 (1992), 107- 59 • Nussbaum, Martha .C., 'Luck and the tragic emotions', The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge 1986), 378- 94 • Schaper, E., 'Aristotle's catharsis and aesthetic pleasure', Philosophical Quarterly 18 (1968), 131-43

25. Prompt for Workshop Session • a) What drives the tragedy of Othello? • b) How do we know this to be true?