Aristotle on Dramatic Musical Composition

Aristotle on Dramatic Musical Composition PDF Author: Gregory L. Scott
Publisher: Existenceps
ISBN: 9780999704943
Category : Aesthetics, Ancient
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
This book revolutionizes the 1000-year old tradition that stems from the first commentaries on the Poetics by the Arabic scholars. (No commentary exists from antiquity or Byzantine times.) Starting with those scholars, Aristotle's treatise has always been thought to be about poetic-literary theory, with tragedy being its paradigm. Scott demonstrates, however, that Aristotle (c. 384-322 BCE) employs poiesis not in the way universally assumed until now, as "poetry," which the sophist Gorgias only coined in 415 BCE. Rather, Aristotle follows Diotima, who in the Symposium of Plato (c. 424-347) explains poiesis as mousike kai metra (typically "'music' and verses"). One reason Aristotle employs the Diotiman and not the Gorgian sense of poiesis is that not one poem exists in the so-called "Poetics"; another reason is that the definition of tragedy includes "music." Scott subsequently demonstrates that Aristotle considers tragedy not to be a species of literature but one of dramatic musical theater that also requires dance and spectacle. Chapter 2 includes a revised version of Scott's "The Poetics of Performance" (Cambridge University Press, 1999). The book also supplements his arguments of "Purging the Poetics" (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2003), reprinted here as Chapter 5, providing the additional reasons why Aristotle could not have written the clause with the words catharsis, pity, and fear in the definition of tragedy, as a number of internationally known ancient Greek specialists have already been accepting. As part of his reasons, Scott shows that, despite their recent, very admirable paleography, Leonardo Tarán and Dmitri Gutas too often mangle the philosophical interpretations and even some of the philology regarding the "musical" terms, especially when they try to sweep the problems of catharsis under the rug. Also, Tarán and Gutas never even recognize the Diotiman sense of poiesis that Aristotle uses, nor do they recognize the philosophical contradictions with keeping the katharsis-clause. All of this allows a fresh and better reading of the treatise that even with its fundamental misinterpretations has been a major part of the foundation of Western literary, dramatic and artistic theory. UPDATES & ERRATA: www.epspress.com/ADMCupdates.html Contents Volume 1 includes: Plato's meanings of poiesis as "music-dance and verse" and his use of rhuthmos often not as "rhythm" but "dance"; the importance of dance in the state for Plato; Aristotle's agreement with his mentor on the meaning of the musical terms and the requirement of dance not only in the Poetics but in the Politics, along with the proof that Aristotle considers tragedy to be a species of dramatic "musical" art, not literature. 364 pages. List: Hardcover $68; Softcover $48. Volume 1 is available at www.amazon.com/dp/0999704923 Volume 2 (this book) includes the issues of catharsis, pity, and fear, and a complete rebuttal of the only attempted rigorous reply (by Stephen Halliwell in Between Ecstasy and Truth, 2011) to "Purging the Poetics." This volume also contains: Aristotle's response to Plato without catharsis; comedy; whether or not the principles of "musical" dramatic theater can be applied to art forms like literature and cinema; the history of the Poetics with regards to the two fundamental misconceptions; Bibliography; and Index for both volumes.

Aristotle on Dramatic Musical Composition

Aristotle on Dramatic Musical Composition PDF Author: Gregory L. Scott
Publisher: Existenceps
ISBN: 9780999704943
Category : Aesthetics, Ancient
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book revolutionizes the 1000-year old tradition that stems from the first commentaries on the Poetics by the Arabic scholars. (No commentary exists from antiquity or Byzantine times.) Starting with those scholars, Aristotle's treatise has always been thought to be about poetic-literary theory, with tragedy being its paradigm. Scott demonstrates, however, that Aristotle (c. 384-322 BCE) employs poiesis not in the way universally assumed until now, as "poetry," which the sophist Gorgias only coined in 415 BCE. Rather, Aristotle follows Diotima, who in the Symposium of Plato (c. 424-347) explains poiesis as mousike kai metra (typically "'music' and verses"). One reason Aristotle employs the Diotiman and not the Gorgian sense of poiesis is that not one poem exists in the so-called "Poetics"; another reason is that the definition of tragedy includes "music." Scott subsequently demonstrates that Aristotle considers tragedy not to be a species of literature but one of dramatic musical theater that also requires dance and spectacle. Chapter 2 includes a revised version of Scott's "The Poetics of Performance" (Cambridge University Press, 1999). The book also supplements his arguments of "Purging the Poetics" (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2003), reprinted here as Chapter 5, providing the additional reasons why Aristotle could not have written the clause with the words catharsis, pity, and fear in the definition of tragedy, as a number of internationally known ancient Greek specialists have already been accepting. As part of his reasons, Scott shows that, despite their recent, very admirable paleography, Leonardo Tarán and Dmitri Gutas too often mangle the philosophical interpretations and even some of the philology regarding the "musical" terms, especially when they try to sweep the problems of catharsis under the rug. Also, Tarán and Gutas never even recognize the Diotiman sense of poiesis that Aristotle uses, nor do they recognize the philosophical contradictions with keeping the katharsis-clause. All of this allows a fresh and better reading of the treatise that even with its fundamental misinterpretations has been a major part of the foundation of Western literary, dramatic and artistic theory. UPDATES & ERRATA: www.epspress.com/ADMCupdates.html Contents Volume 1 includes: Plato's meanings of poiesis as "music-dance and verse" and his use of rhuthmos often not as "rhythm" but "dance"; the importance of dance in the state for Plato; Aristotle's agreement with his mentor on the meaning of the musical terms and the requirement of dance not only in the Poetics but in the Politics, along with the proof that Aristotle considers tragedy to be a species of dramatic "musical" art, not literature. 364 pages. List: Hardcover $68; Softcover $48. Volume 1 is available at www.amazon.com/dp/0999704923 Volume 2 (this book) includes the issues of catharsis, pity, and fear, and a complete rebuttal of the only attempted rigorous reply (by Stephen Halliwell in Between Ecstasy and Truth, 2011) to "Purging the Poetics." This volume also contains: Aristotle's response to Plato without catharsis; comedy; whether or not the principles of "musical" dramatic theater can be applied to art forms like literature and cinema; the history of the Poetics with regards to the two fundamental misconceptions; Bibliography; and Index for both volumes.

Aristotle DRAMATICS

Aristotle DRAMATICS PDF Author: Gregory Scott
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781952627002
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
This book includes a translation and commentary on the Greek text known as PERI POIETIKES. The translation interprets the Greek following Diotima of Plato's SYMPOSIUM for the first time ever. She explains the most fundamental term poi?sis as "'music' and verse' rather than what the tradition assumed since the first commentaries by the Arabic scholars 1000 years ago, "language in verse," that is "poetry," which the sophist Gorgias only coined when Aristotle's mentor Plato was a young man. The translation emends the famous version of Ingram Bywater, correcting seven core Greek terms like poi?sis, rhuthmos (rhythm or dance), melos (limb, melody or music) and harmonia (harmony, song, or music). As a result, and contrary to the tradition, Aristotle is seen to be examining dramatic "musical" creation for the theater rather than mere literature . Many unsolved dilemmas vanish, such as why there is not poem or no treatment of any purely literary forms of ancient Greece in the treatise. Only three "dramatic" art forms are analyzed: tragedy, comedy and epic (which is said in its definition to be composed on dramatic principles even though it does not have the singing and dancing chorus that the fully dramatic arts have); hence the more apt title. Criticisms that have leveled at Aristotle by literary theorists over centuries lose their sting as a consequence because his intention is shown not to present a theory of literature. The additional and doubly ironic criticism by drama theorists that Aristotle does not appreciate performance likewise evaporates. The rigorous arguments justifying the translation, have been published in ARISTOTLE ON DRAMATIC MUSICAL COMPOSITION: THE REAL ROLE OF LITERATURE, CATHARSIS, MUSIC AND DANCE IN THE POETICS by the same author (New York: ExistencePS Press, 2nd. ed., 2018), with core chapters being published by Cambridge University Press (1999) and Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy (2003).

The Poetics of Aristotle

The Poetics of Aristotle PDF Author: Aristotle
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781544217574
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 82

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Book Description
In it, Aristotle offers an account of what he calls "poetry" (a term which in Greek literally means "making" and in this context includes drama - comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play - as well as lyric poetry and epic poetry). They are similar in the fact that they are all imitations but different in the three ways that Aristotle describes: 1. Differences in music rhythm, harmony, meter and melody. 2. Difference of goodness in the characters. 3. Difference in how the narrative is presented: telling a story or acting it out. In examining its "first principles," Aristotle finds two: 1) imitation and 2) genres and other concepts by which that of truth is applied/revealed in the poesis. His analysis of tragedy constitutes the core of the discussion. Although Aristotle's Poetics is universally acknowledged in the Western critical tradition, "almost every detail about his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions."

The Poetics Of Aristotle

The Poetics Of Aristotle PDF Author: Aristotle
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 62

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Book Description
Where the epic poem makes use only of language, the playing of the lyre implies rhythm and melody. Some poetic forms include a mixture of all the materials for example, the Greek tragic drama included a singing chorus, so music and language were part of the performance. These points also transmit the standard view. Even a recent work argues that translating rhuthmos here as "rhythm" is absurd - the melody already has its own inherent musical rhythm, and the Greek can mean what Plato says it means in Laws. This correctly conveys what dramatic musical creation, the theme of poetics, had in ancient Greece: music, dance, and language. Furthermore, the musical instrument cited in Chapter 1 is not the lyre but the kithara, which was played in the drama while the kithara player was dancing, even if that meant simply walking in a proper manner.

The Poetics in its Aristotelian Context

The Poetics in its Aristotelian Context PDF Author: Pierre Destrée
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000053482
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
This volume integrates aspects of the Poetics into the broader corpus of Aristotelian philosophy. It both deals with some old problems raised by the treatise, suggesting possible solutions through contextualization, and also identifies new ways in which poetic concepts could relate to Aristotelian philosophy. In the past, contextualization has most commonly been used by scholars in order to try to solve the meaning of difficult concepts in the Poetics (such as catharsis, mimesis, or tragic pleasure). In this volume, rather than looking to explain a specific concept, the contributors observe the concatenation of Aristotelian ideas in various treatises in order to explore some aesthetic, moral and political implications of the philosopher’s views of tragedy, comedy and related genres. Questions addressed include: Does Aristotle see his interest in drama as part of his larger research on human natures? What are the implications of tragic plots dealing with close family members for the polis? What should be the role of drama and music in the education of citizens? How does dramatic poetry relate to other arts and what are the ethical ramifications of the connections? How specific are certain emotions to literary genres and how do those connect to Aristotle’s extended account of pathe? Finally, how do internal elements of composition and language in poetry relate to other domains of Aristotelian thought? The Poetics in its Aristotelian Context offers a fascinating new insight to the Poetics, and will be of use to anyone working on the Poetics, or Aristotelian philosophy more broadly.

The Poetics of Aristotle

The Poetics of Aristotle PDF Author: Aristotle
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Aesthetics
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description


Averroes' Middle Commentary on Aristotle's Poetics

Averroes' Middle Commentary on Aristotle's Poetics PDF Author: Averroës
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Aristotle's Poetics has held the attention of scholars and authors through the ages, and Averroes has long been known as "the commentator" on Aristotle. His Middle Commentary on Aristotle's Poetics is important because of its striking content. Here, an author steeped in Aristotle's thought and highly familiar with an entirely different poetical tradition shows in careful detail what is commendable about Greek poetics and commendable as well as blameworthy about Arabic poetics.

Aristotle's Favorite Tragedy

Aristotle's Favorite Tragedy PDF Author: Gregory L. Scott
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781523829491
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 74

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Book Description
Generations of readers have taken Oedipus to be Aristotle's paradigmatic tragedy, based on Poetics 13, where Aristotle says a moderately good man who makes a mistake (hamartia) is the cause of pity and fear. Yet in Chapter 14 Aristotle explicitly states that the Oedipus-type play is second-best, after the type ending happily, including Cresphontes and Iphigenia (in Tauris). No specialist has ever been able to resolve this inconsistency to the satisfaction of the profession. In this book, Scott demonstrates that for Aristotle Ch 14's ranking is truly the most important one for tragedy in general. Scott is able to accomplish this because his recent ground-breaking work on the Poetics provides him with a unique vantage point. That is, in 2003 (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy) he extended the arguments of M.D. Petrusevski, who himself in 1954 argued that Aristotle could not have written the word katharsis in the definition of tragedy (in Ch 6). Scott gave in 2003 the basic reasons why Aristotle also could not have written the words pity and fear in the definition, because then they should belong to all tragedy and yet they do not even come close to belonging to most tragedies given Aristotle's own words. Having those conditions in the definition would be like having "blonde-haired" in the definition of man. In this book, Scott supplements those arguments in order to help resolve the dilemma of the inconsistent ranking of plots. Aristotle explicitly says that four (of the nine) plot-types in Chs 13 and 14 have no pity, and we can easily deduce that four others, including the two that end happily (the double-structured plot of Ch 13 and the favorite plot-type of Ch 14), also have no relevant pity. Pity (and fear) only apply in those chapters to plots like Oedipus. Given other considerations, by the end of the book we can understand that Oedipus is only one (or a mixture of two) of the very rarely discussed sub-types of tragedy mentioned in Ch 18, whereas Ch 14 is about tragedy in general. All of this easily resolves the dilemma of the inconsistent rankings, and shows that for Aristotle, unlike for modern audiences, tragedy is simply serious drama that can-and even in its paradigmatic general form-does end happily. In addition, Scott resolves a number of related problems, demonstrating, for example, that the Antigone given in the Ch 14 ranking must be the lost version of Euripides that ends joyfully, with Haemon marrying Antigone. One reason is that Aristotle says the play has no suffering (apathes). This is all contrary to the received tradition, in which commentators assume that Aristotle meant the version by Sophocles that ends horribly with multiple suicides and with shock (miaron), and in which the commentators try to explain Aristotle's theory accordingly.

The Poetics of Aristotle

The Poetics of Aristotle PDF Author: Aristotle
Publisher: Prabhat Prakashan
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Book Description
is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory. This has been the traditional view for centuries. However, recent work is now challenging whether Aristotle focuses on literary theory per se (given that not one poem exists in the treatise) or whether he focuses instead on dramatic musical theory that only has language as one of the elements.

Aristotle's Poetics

Aristotle's Poetics PDF Author: Aristotle
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0809005271
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
Introduced by Francis Fergusson, the Poetics, written in the fourth century B.C., is still an essential study of the art of drama, indeed the most fundamental one we have. It has been used by both playwrights and theorists of many periods, and interpreted, in the course of its two thousand years of life, in various ways. The literature which has accumulated around it is, as Mr. Fergusson points out, "full of disputes so erudite that the nonspecialist can only look on in respectful silence." But the Poetics itself is still with us, in all its suggestiveness, for the modern reader to make use of in his turn and for his own purposes. Francis Fergusson's lucid, informative, and entertaining Introduction will prove invaluable to anyone who wishes to understand and appreciate the Poetics. Using Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, as Aristotle did, to illustrate his analysis, Mr. Fergusson pints out that Aristotle did not lay down strict rules, as is often thought: "The Poetics," he says, "is much more like a cookbook than it is like a textbook of elementary engineering." Read in this way, it is an essential guide not only to Sophoclean tragedy, but to the work of so modern a playwright as Bertolt Brecht, who considered his own "epic drama" the first non-Aristotelian form.