Audio Books There are five sources of sublimity according to Longinus. They are:
1) GRANDEUR OF THOUGHT,
2) CAPACITY FOR STRONG EMOTION,
3) APPROPRIATE USE OF FIGURES,
4) NOBILITY OF DICTION, and,
5) DIGNITY IN COMPOSITION.
The first two of these five sources are gifts of nature, and the last three can be cultivated by art.
Grand thoughts and strong emotions emanate from the lofty soul. Sublimity is the echo of greatness of soul. It is impossible for those whose thoughts are mean and acts servile to produce anything worth universal respect or admiration. Lofty thoughts and noble emotions belong to the noble soul and lofty mind. meanness and sublimity cannot dwell together.
A mean thought is too low to be expressed through sublime diction. There is a natural synthesis between noble thoughts and sentiments with appropriate use of figures, nobility of diction and dignity of composition. Figures of speech add to the dignity of expression. But they should be used judiciously so that they may not become cumbersome. Sweet and suitable words add to the grandeur, beauty and dignity of expression. A proper arrangement of all these elements would impart sublime harmony and grandeur to the whole work. Audio Books
What is meant by "sublimity" in literature according to Longinus?
Before Longinus the function of great literature was summed up in a formula of three words-- to instruct, to delight, and to persuade. But Longinus found this formula of three words inadequate in evaluating the total effect of the literature produced by the great Greek masters. He found that the epics of Homer and tragedies of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides, and the lyrics of Pindar transported the reader or the spectator to ecstacy or emotional rapture. He called this ecstasy SUBLIMITY. Explaining this term, he said, "Sublimity consists in a certain distinction and consummate excellence in expression, and it's from this and no other source, that the greatest poets and prose-writers have gained their eminence and immortal fame."
Great literature transports the reader out of himself to ecstasy caused by an irresistible magic of speech. The reader is so moved that he can neither think nor feel except what the writer thinks or feels. This kind of literature has the quality of the sublime. This quality of Sublimity, the power to transport or elevate is irresistible- it irresistibly pleases, excites, moves, transports, and elevates all readers of all times. This is the true test of the SUBLIMITY in literature.
Aristotle lays down the general rule that characters in a tragedy should be good but not extremely good. The hero of a tragedy is a human being of average stature. He must not be a perfect character but he must have inherent nobility in him. He is never mean or deliberately villainous. His fall must be the consequences of a basic flaw(weakness) in character which Aristotle calls ‘Hamartia’.
The ideal tragic hero is a man who stands between the two extremes. He is not eminently good or just, though he is inclined to the side of goodness. He brings, misfortune abut himself as a result of his own actions for which he alone is responsible. One common form of Hamartia in Greek tragedies was ‘Hubris’, that is pride or over-weaning self confidence which leads a protagonist to disregard a divine warning or to violate an important moral law. The misfortunes are always out of proportion to his faults. The deserved punishment for an evil deed has no pathos in it. The undeserved suffering of a virtuous person is revolting. The sufferings of a person which are out of proportion for committing an error of judgement arouses pity and fear in the audience. Those who witness the tragedy will guard themselves against such error in real life.
According to Aristotle a tragedy should contain “incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish the catharsis of such emotions.” Catharsis in Greek signifies “purgation”. Many tragic representations of suffering and defeat leave an audience feeling not depressed but relieved or even exalted.
The plot may be simple or complex. In a simple plot there are no puzzling situations that enter into a complex plot in particular Peripetia and Anagnorisis. PERIPETEIA is generally explained as ‘reversal of the situation’ and ANAGNORISIS as ‘recognition’ or ‘discovery’.
By ‘a reversal of the situation’ Aristotle means ‘a reversal of intention’, a deed done in blindness defeating its own purpose: a move to kill an enemy recoiling on one’s own head, the effort to save turning into just its opposite, killing an enemy and discovering him to a kinsman. The discovery of these false moves, taken in ignorance, is ANAGNORISIS—a change from ignorance to knowledge.
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Both PERIPETEIA and ANAGNORISIS please because there is an element of surprise in them. A plot that makes use of them is complex and ‘a perfect tragedy’ should be arranged not on the simple but on the complex plan.
The characteristics of an Ideal Tragic Hero according to Aristotle are :
a) He must be an eminent man.
b) He must be a good man (should be neither immoral nor vicious).
c) His character must be appropriate to his station in his life.
d) He must possess a likeness to human nature.
e) He must be consistent even in his inconsistency.
The ideal tragic hero, according to Aristotle, should be, in the first place a man of eminence. The actions of an eminent man would be 'serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude,' as required by Aristotle. Further, the hero should not only be eminent but also a good man, though not absolutely virtuous. The sufferings, fall and death of an absolutely virtuous man would generate feelings of disgust rather than those of 'terror and compassion' which must be the real production of a tragic play.
Aristotle says that the tragic hero will most effectively evoke both our pity and terror if he is neither thoroughly good nor thoroughly bad but a mixture of both; and also that this tragic effect will be stronger if the hero is "better than we are," in the sense that he is of higher than ordinary moral worth. Such a man is exhibited as suffering a change in fortune from happiness to misery because of his mistaken choice of an action, to which he is led by his hamartia—his "error of judgment" or, as it is often though less literally translated, his tragic flaw. (One common form of hamartia in Greek tragedies was hubris, that "pride" or overweening self-confidence which leads a protagonist to disregard a divine warning or to violate an important moral law.) The tragic hero, like Oedipus in Sophocles' Oedipus the King, moves us to pity because, since he is not an evil man, his misfortune is greater than he deserves; but he moves us also to fear, because we recognize similar possibilities of error in our own lesser and fallible selves. Aristotle grounds his analysis of "the very structure and incidents of the play" on the same principle; the plot, he says, which will most effectively evoke "tragic pity and fear" is one in which the events develop through complication to a catastrophe in which there occurs (often by an anagnorisis, or discovery of facts hitherto unknown to the hero) a sudden peripeteia, or reversal in his fortune from happiness to disaster.
His character must be appropriate to his station in his life which means that his character is the result of his social and cultural background. He must also possess a likeness to human nature; he shouldn't behave like gods, which will not create a feeling of sympathy in the mind of the viewer when the hero suffers tragedy, and the very purpose of the tragedy will be at risk. he must also possess likeness to human nature. He should have the weakness that we do generally have apart from the fine qualities he possess as a hero. He must have consistency. He must be consistent even in his INCONSISTENCY.
The plot being 'the soul of a tragedy', the artistic arrangement of its incidents is of the prime importance. A tragedy should have:
a)Unity of Action,
b) Unity of Time, and,
c) Unity of Place.
Unity of Action
Unity of actions means only those actions, and not all, in the life of the hero which are intimately connected with one another and appear together as one whole. Aristotle says that 'the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed. There may be many more actions in the life of the hero --there are in every man's life--but unless they have something to do with the tragedy that befalls him, they are not relevant to the plot and will all have to be kept out. FOR A THING WHOSE PRESENCE OR ABSENCE MAKES NO VISIBLE DIFFERENCE, IS NOT AN ORGANIC PART OF THE WHOLE.
Unity of Time
Unity of Time is the conformity between the time taken by the events of the play and that taken in their representation on the stage. "Tragedy," he says, "endeavours, as far as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or but slightly to exceed this limit; whereas the epic action has no limits of time.' By this Aristotle doesn't mean to confine the whole play into an event or events that happened within twenty four hours or so in life. He merely states the prevailing practice but is not unaware of the fact that, in this particular matter, 'at first the same freedom was admitted in tragedy as in epic poetry.'
Unity of Place
Unity of Place is the conformity between the scene of the tragic event or events and the time taken by them to happen.
For a good tragic plot to arouse the emotions of pity and fear in the spectator or reader. Pity, as has been said, happens for the undeserved sufferings of the hero, and fear of the worst that may happen to him. The change of fortune therfore should not be from bad to good, but reversely, from good to bad. A happy ending may please us more but it will not afford the true tragic pleasure-- that aroused by the emotions of pity and fear.
The plot, finally, is divisible into two parts complication, and its unraveling or denouement. The former ties the event into a tangled knot, the latter unties it. The first is commonly called rising action and the second falling action.
Plot is the pattern of events and situations in a narrative or dramatic work, as selected and arranged both to emphasize relationships—
usually of cause and effect—between incidents and to elicit a particular kind of interest in the reader or audience, such as surprise or suspense.
Although in a loose sense the term commonly refers to that sequence of chief events which can be summarized from a story or play, modern criticism often makes a stricter distinction between the plot of a work and its STORY: the plot is the selected version of events as presented to the reader or audience in a certain order and duration, whereas the story is the full sequence of events as we imagine them to have taken place in their 'natural' order and duration. The story, then, is the hypothetical
'raw material' of events which we reconstruct from the finished product of the plot. The critical discussion of plots originates in Aristotle's Poetics (4th century BCE), in which his term mythos corresponds roughly with our 'plot'.
Aristotle saw plot as more than just the arrangement of incidents: he assigned to plot the most important function in a drama, as a governing principle of development and coherence to which other elements (including character) must be subordinated. He insisted that a plot should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that its events should form a coherent whole. Plots vary in form from the fully integrated or 'tightly knit' to the loosely EPISODIC.
In general, though, most plots will trace some process of change in which characters are caught up in a developing conflict that is finally resolved.
Catharsis is the the effect of' purgation' or 'purification' achieved by tragic drama, according to Aristotle's argument in his Poetics. Aristotle wrote that a TRAGEDY should succeed 'in arousing pity and fear in such a way as to accomplish a catharsis of such emotions'. There has been much dispute about his meaning, but Aristotle seems to be rejecting Plato's hostile view of poetry as an unhealthy emotional stimulant. His metaphor of emotional cleansing has been read as a solution to the puzzle of audiences' pleasure or relief in witnessing the disturbing events enacted in tragedies. Another interpretation is that it is the PROTAGONIST'S guilt that is purged, rather than the audience's feeling of terror. Adjective: cathartic.
Precisely how to interpret Aristotle's catharsis—which in Greek signifies "purgation," or "purification," or both—is much disputed. On two matters, however, a number of commentators agree. Aristotle in the first place sets out to account for the undeniable, though remarkable, fact that many tragic representations of suffering and defeat leave an audience feeling not depressed, but relieved, or even exalted. In the second place, Aristotle uses this distinctive effect on the reader, which he calls "the pleasure of pity and fear," as the basic way to distinguish the tragic from comic or other forms, and he regards the dramatist's aim to produce this effect in the highest degree as the principle that determines the choice and moral qualities of a tragic protagonist and the organization of the tragic plot.
Accordingly, Aristotle says that the tragic hero will most effectively evoke both our pity and terror if he is neither thoroughly good nor thoroughly bad but a mixture of both; and also that this tragic effect will be stronger if the hero is "better than we are," in the sense that he is of higher than ordinary moral worth. Such a man is exhibited as suffering a change in fortune from happiness to misery because of his mistaken choice of an action, to which he is led by his hamartia—his "error of judgment" or, as it is often though less literally translated, his tragic flaw. (One common form of hamartia in Greek tragedies was hubris, that "pride" or overweening self-confidence which leads a protagonist to disregard a divine warning or to violate an important moral law.)
The tragic hero, like Oedipus in Sophocles' Oedipus the King, moves us to pity because, since he is not an evil man, his misfortune is greater than he deserves; but he moves us also to fear, because we recognize similar possibilities of error in our own lesser and fallible selves. Aristotle grounds his analysis of "the very structure and incidents of the play" on the same principle; the plot, he says, which will most effectively evoke "tragic pity and fear" is one in which the events develop through complication to a catastrophe in which there occurs (often by an anagnorisis, or discovery of facts hitherto unknown to the hero) a sudden peripeteia, or reversal in his fortune from happiness to disaster.
The most important element of tragedy is plot. Plot is the soul of tragedy. Plot means 'the arrangement of the incidents.' Normally the plot is divided into five acts, and each act is further divided into several scenes. The dramatist's main skill lies in dividing the plot -- acts and scenes-- in such a way that they may produce the maximum scenic effect in a natural development.
Character
Characters are the men and women who act. The hero and heroine are two important figures among the characters. The characteristics of an ideal tragic hero, according to Aristotle are:
a) He must be good,
b) His character must be appropriate to his station in his life,
c) He must possess a likeness to human nature, and,
d) His character must be consistent. He must be consistent even in his inconsistency.
Thought
Thought means what the characters think or feel during their career in the development of the plot. The thought is expressed through their speeches or dialogues.
Diction
Diction is the medium of language or expression through which the characters reveal their thoughts and feelings. The diction should be powerful enough to do the task.
Song and Spectacle
Spectacle and song are part of the stage equipment. Grand make-up and costumes are used by actors. The tragic character usually wore a particular kind of boots to appear taller. Music is related mainly to chorus singing.
Plato’s observations on poetry are equally applicable to drama. In addition, he makes a few more comments on the dramatic art.
a)Its appeal to baser Instincts
Unlike poetry, drama is to be staged. The audience consists of heterogeneous multitude. To please them all, the dramatist introduces quarrels and lamentations in tragedy and imitation of thunder and cries of beasts in comedy. Such a drama is capable of arousing man’s bad instincts. Plato did disapprove such plays in his REPUBLIC.
b) Effects of Impersonation
The actors in a play have to impersonate various characters. Such characters include thieves, murderers, cowards and knaves. Constant impersonation results in letting the evil qualities into the actor’s own nature. Plato argues that even acting the part of an innocent character is harmful. Constant impersonation represses individuality and leads to the weakening of one’s character. He admits that impersonation of noble heroes will stimulate virtuous actions such as courage, wisdom, virtue etc. in the actor.
c) Tragic and Comic pleasure
The question ‘what is it in a scene that causes pleasure?’, had occurred to Plato. He gave an explanation of his own. Human nature, he says, is a mixture of heterogeneous feelings such as anger,envy, fear, grief etc. A man weeps or get angry because it pleases him to lose his temper or to go on weeping. In comedy the pleasure takes the form of laughter at what we see on the stage. The entire Greek comedies were satirical in form. We laugh at a coward who pretends to be a brave man. Such pleasure, according to Plato, is of negative kind because it comes from the weakness of the character. We must pity him instead of laughing at him. Also Plato warns against too much pity and too much laughter. Plato here hits upon a profound truth that no character can be comic unless he is lovable.
Things are conceived as ideas before they take practical shape as things. Thus the objects of the world are once removed from reality. Art (literature, painting, sculpture) being the reproduction of these things, is twice removed from reality.Therefore poetry takes men away from reality rather than towards it. So poetry helps neither to mould character nor to promote the well-being of the state-- the two things by which Plato judged all human endeavour.
The poet writes because he is 'inspired' not because he has thought long over a subject. According to Plato this sudden outpouring of the soul cannot be a reliable substitute for truths based on reason. Even if there is profound truth in poetry it needs to be subjected to a further test-- the test of reason. Poetry therefore cannot take the place of philosophy.
Poetry is a product of inspiration rather than of
reason and therefore it appeals to the heart rather than to the
intellect. Poetry is concerned about the beauty of form. An individual who
is in search of truth, can never be guided by poetry. Plato illustrates
this by referring to the tragic poetry of his age, in which weeping and wailing
were indulged to the full to move the hearts of the spectators. So poetry
‘fed and watered’ the passions instead of drying them up and let them rule
instead of ruling them as they ought to be ruled with a view to the happiness
and virtue of mankind.
d) It’s Non-moral character
Finally, Plato
indicts poetry for its lack of concern with morality. In its treatment of
life it treats both virtue and vice alike, sometimes making the one and
sometimes making the other triumph indifferently, without regard for moral
considerations. It pained Plato to see virtue often coming to grief in
the literature of his time. The epics ofHomer, the narrative works of Hesiod,
the odes of Pindar and the tragedies ofAeschylus, Sophocles andEuripides. Such literature,
according to Plato, corrupted both the citizen and the state.
a.Art (poetry) is twice removed from reality.
b.Poetic inspiration
c.The emotional appeal to poetry
d.It’s Non-moral character
PLATO
E x t r a r e a d i n g
An extract from plato’s Ion
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE:
Socrates, Ion
Socrates: Would you or a good prophet be a better interpreter of what these two poets say about divination, not only when they agree, but when they disagree?
Ion: A prophet.
Socrates: And if you were a prophet, would you be able to interpret them when they disagree as well as when they agree?
Ion: Clearly.
Socrates: But how did you come to have this skill about Homer only and not about Hesiod or the other poets? Does not Homer speak the same themes which all other p0ets handle? Is not war his great argument? And does he not speak of human society and of intercourse of men, good and bad, skilled and unskilled, and of the good conversing with one another and with mankind, and about what happens in heaven and in the world below, and the generations of gods
and heroes? Are not these the themes of which Homer sings?
Ion: Very true, Socrates.
Socrates: And do not the other poets sing of the same?
Ion: Yes, Socrates; but not in the same way as Homer.
Socrates: What, in a worse way?
Ion: Yes, in a far worse.
Socrates: And Homer in a better way?
Ion: He is incomparably better.
Socrates: And yet surely, my dear friend Ion, in a discussion about arithmetic, where many people are speaking, and one speaks better than the rest, there is somebody who can judge which of them is the good speaker?
Socrates: And he who judges of the good will be the same as he who judges of the bad speakers?
Ion: The same.
Socrates: And he will be the arithmetician?
Ion: Yes.
Socrates: Well, and in discussions about the wholesomeness of food, when many persons are speaking, and one speaks better than the rest, will he who recognizes the better speaker be a different person from him who recognizes the worse, or the same?
Ion: Clearly the same.
Socrates: And who is he, and what is his name?
Ion: The physician.
Socrates: And speaking generally, in all discussions in which the subject is the same and many men are speaking, will not he who knows the good know the bad speaker also? For if he does not know the bad, neither will he know the good when the same topic is being discussed.
Ion: True.
Socrates: Is not the same person skillful in both?
Ion: Yes.
Socrates: And you say that Homer and the other poets, such as Hesiod and Archilochus, speak of the same things; although not in the same way; but the one speaks well and the other not so well?
Ion:
Socrates: And if you knew the good speaker, you would also know the inferior speakers to be inferior?
Ion: That is true.
Socrates: Then, my dear friend, can I be mistaken in saying that Ion is equally skilled in Homer and in other poets, since he himself acknowledges that the same person will be a good judge of all those who speak of the same things; and that almost all poets do speak of the same things?
Ion: Why then, Socrates, do I lose attention and go to sleep and have absolutely no ideas of the least value, when any one speaks of any other poet; but when Homer is mentioned, I wake up at once and am all attention and have plenty to say?
Socrates: The reason, my friend, is obvious. No one can fail to see that you speak of Homer without any art or knowledge. If you were able to speak of him by rules of art, you would have been able to speak of all other poets; for poetry is a whole.
Ion: Yes.
Socrates: And when any one acquires any other art as a whole, the same may be said of them. Would you like me to explain my meaning, Ion?
Ion: Yes, indeed, Socrates; I very much wish that you would for I love to hear you wise men talk.
Socrates: 0 that we were wise, Ion, and that you could truly call us so; but you rhapsodes and actors, and the poets whose verses you sing, are wise; whereas I am a common man, who only speaks the truth. For consider what a very commonplace and trivial thing is this which I have said-a thing which any man might say: that when a man has acquired a knowledge of a whole art, the enquiry into good and bad is one and the same. Let us consider this matter; is not the art of painting a whole?
Ion: Yes.
Socrates: And there are and have been many painters good and bad.
Ion: Yes.
(The dialogue continues. Plato was highly poetic in his prose though he stood against poetry. Aristotle stood for poetry but his prose was rather dry.)
