Some Afterthoughts on Monday Night's Discussion

Left: Aristotle (384 B.C. to 322 B.C.), computer generated graphic by Kolja Mendler.

Kudos to the twelve participants in Monday night's discussion of Aristotle's "On Tragedy," a selection from his "Poetics."

We talked about Aristotle's prescription for tragedy: it must contain (a) a peripety, or turning point, (b) a discovery, or revelation, and (c) "suffering." He also says tragedy must elicit fear and pity in the audience.

Aristotle's tragic hero is what he calls an "intermediate type," i.e., neither a very good person nor a very bad one, and the hero's change in fortune "must be due not to any depravity, but to some grave mistake on the part of a man ..."

In looking back at Sophocles's Oedipus the King (the subject of our Aug. 2010 meeting), we talked about how the play fits the bill for an Aristotelian tragedy. When I asked the group what was Oedipus's "grave error", the response was his slaying of his father Laius in an ancient act of "road rage."

Further questions: What if Oedipus had never discovered that he had killed his birth father and married his birth mother? Does the tragedy lie solely in finding out that he has commited parricide and engaged in incest? Or does it lie in the actions that ensue (Joscasta killing herself, Oedipus poking his eyes out and fleeing Thebes)?

If he had never found out, would his ignorance be at the expense of Thebes, which would still suffer pestilence because of Oedipus's actions years earlier? Oedipus must take the hit so that his city can heal itself.