Aristotle's Poetics emphasizes the importance of plot as the 'soul of tragedy,' insisting that a tragedy must have a coherent structure with a proper beginning, middle, and end. He highlights the significance of unity in time, place, and action, arguing against episodic plots and poetic justice. The most effective tragedies incorporate elements of peripety and anagnorisis to elicit pity and fear, with a focus on probability and necessity in the unfolding events.

1. From Aristotle’s Poetics

2.  “A tragedy is impossible without plot, but
there may be one without character.”
 Aristotle has considered plot as the “soul of
tragedy”

3.  is “Biological”
 He compares tragedy with a Living Organism
 “Skeleton”

4.  In Greek, the word ‘Poet’ means “maker”.
 Story General
 Plot Specific
 The Poet reduces the story into its essentials,
he sketches the general outline.
 The making of story into plot is called
episodizing.

5.  “… complete in itself, also having magnitude”
 Completeness=Proper/Logical Beginning
Proper/Logical Middle
Proper/Logical Ending
 Connected Incidents or Events
 Logical sequence

6.  It involves Size or the Length of the plot.
 The proper magnitude demands that the plot
be neither too short, nor too long.
 Beauty depends upon size.
 The length of the plot should be such that its
parts can be easily remembered in relation to
the whole.

7. Middle
Beginning End

8.  Aristotle compares the action of a tragedy to
a living organism.
 Structural unity
 Plot must not be ‘Episodic’.

9.  The change from Happiness to Misery seems
more appropriate for the arousal of pity and
fear.
 Therefore, Aristotle seems to prefer the fatal
plot to a fortunate plot.

10.  Aristotle Prefers the complex plot as it is
having both Peripety and Anagnorisis for the
downfall of the hero.
 Peripety: Reversal of Situation
 Anagnorisis: Discovery ofTruth
 The best tragedy is the one which uses both
these techniques at one time.

11.  Peripety andAnagnorisis occurring
simultaneously heightens the tragic effect.
 However in all cases these must occur
according to the laws of probability and
necessity, and not arbitrarily.

12.  Complication
It is that part of tragedy which extends
from the part where the turning point occurs.
 Denouement
It is that which extends from the turning
point to the end of tragedy

14.  The Denouement should be aimed towards a
SINGLE end, and not towards the ‘double-
end’ in which there are reward s for some of
the persons and punishment for other.
 Aristotle is against ‘poetic justice’ in tragedy.
 Also againstTragicomedy.

15. 1) Unity of Place
2) Unity ofTime
3) Unity of Action

16.  There has to be a single action consisting of
episodes, which are logically connected and
casually related.