Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 09:57:11 -0600 (CST)
Subject: BHA: Re: The Poetics


I'll chime in a little on Aristotle, though like Tobin I want to be sure
this doesn't run outside the limits of what's within the bounds of the
list.

Tobin writes:
 
> Agreed.  My concern is that Aristotle has been taken in later ages as valid
> for all forms of tragedy, or even all forms of drama.  

This fate points out something interesting: taking Aristotle as the
established truth, rather than as a really smart guy who established some
good methods is what happened, as I understand it, in both science and
literature.  Thus the revolt against Aristotle in science in the early
modern period.  From reading the nice writeup on Aristotle as a
descriptive biologist in Harre's Great Scientific Experiments, you can see
that the real Aristotle was the methodological one, not the dogmatic
version.  Similarly for literature: the great strength of his Poetics is
that they attempt to describe how literary texts work, what their major
components are, what the relationship between them is, etc.  By contrast
with Plato, for whom such things, having no real being are not worthy of
serious consideration of this kind.

So Aristotle's inapplicability to Sanskrit drama derives from a
fundamental strength, it seems to me.  Now the matter of Euripides is
something again.  Sometime I'll have to reread the major tragedies and
think about this.  

Yours,

Tim Dayton



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