Ricoeur Reading Aristotle's Poetics on Emplotment

Ricoeur Reading of Aristotl'es Poetics on Emplotment

Selected Quotes from
Time and Narrative, Emplotment: A Reading of Aristotle's Poetics

Ricoeur's Reason for the Reading ARistotle's poetics

1. Correlation of muthos and distentio animi

"... I found in his concept of emplotment (muthos) the opposite reply to Augentine's distentio animi. Augustine groaned under the existential burden of discordance. Aristotle discerns in the poetic act par excellence--the composing of the tragic poem--the triumph of concordance over discordance. It goes without saying that it is I, the reader of Augustine and Aristotle, who establishes this relationship between a lived experience where discordance rends concordance and an eminently verbal experience where concordance mends discordance." (31)

2. fine distinction of muthos and mimesis
"... the concept of mimetic activity (mimesis) started me on the way to a second problematic, that of creative imitation, by means of the plot of lived temporal experience. This second theme is difficult to distinguish from the first one in Aristotle, in as much as for him memitic activity tends to be confused with emplotment... Indeed, the Poetics is silent about the relationship between the poetic activity and temporal experience." (31)

HYPOTHESIS OF RICOEUR ON EMPLOTMENT AND MIMETIC ACTIVITY
melodic theme of double reflection affect the concepts of emplotment and mimetic activity:
On the side of emplotment it will be necessary to remove a certain number of restrictions and prohibitions that are inherent in the privilege the Poetics accords to drama (tragedy and comedy) and to the epic. I concede there is something apparently paradoxical in making narrative activity the category encompassing drama, epic and history, when, on the one hand, what Aristotle calls history (historia) in the context of the Poetics plays the role of counterexample and when, on the other hand, narrative--or at least what he calls diagetic poetry--is opposed to drama within the single encompassing category of mimesis. Furthermore, it is not diegetic but tragic poetry that most bears the structural virtues of the art of composition.

On the side of mimetic activity, the full unfolding of the concept of mimesis demands not just that action's referential relation to the "real" be made less allusive, but also that this domain should receive other determinations besides the ethical ones--themselves considerable--that Aristotle assigns to it, if it is to rejoin the problematic set up by Augustine concerning our discordant experience of time... It will not be possible to say how narrative is related to time until we have posed in its full scope the question of an interweaving reference [reference croisee]--based upon our lived temporal experience--of fictional and historical narrative. (TN1:32)


poetics the term that both launches and situates the whole analysis of mimesis-muthos
"It alone puts the mark of production, construction, dynamism on all the analysis, and first of all on the two terms muthos and mimesis, which have to be taken as operations, not as structures." (TN1:33)

reason for the stress on the dymanic aspect of poetics
"If I am so insistent about this dynamic aspect which the adjective "poetic" imposes on all of the subsequent analysis, it is by design. When, in the second part of this work and in volume 2, i shall speak of the primacy of our narrative understanding, in relation to explanation (sociological or otherwise) in history and explanation (structural or otherwise) in narrative fiction, i shall be defending the primacy of the activity that produces plots in relation to every sort of static structure, achronological paradigm, or temporal invariant." (TN1:33)

MIMESIS
"Aristotle's Poetics contains just one all-encompassing concept, that of mimesis." (33)
"... defined contextually and through one of its uses... imitation or representation of action. Or still more precisely: the imitating or representing of action in the medium of metrical language, hence accompanied by rhythms (to which are added, in the case of tragedy, the prime example, spectacle and melody). Still it is the imitation or representation of action proper to tragedy, comedy, and epic that alone is taken into account. This is not yet defined in a form proper to its level of generality. Only the imitation or representation of action proper to tragedy is expressly defined" (TN1:33)

Quasi-identification of mimesis/muthos
"This quasi-identification is warranted first by placing the six parts into a hierarchy that gives priority to the "what" or the object of representation (plot, characters, thought) in relation to the "by which" or means (language and melody) and the "how" or mode (spectacle); then by a second hierarchization internal to the "what" that sets the action above the characters and the thought... is warranted by the formula:"the imitation of action is the Plot." (TN1:34)

"This equivalence first of all excludes any interpretation of Aristotle's mimesis in terms of a copy or identical replica. Imitating or representing is a mimetic activity inasmuch as it produces something, namely the organization of events by emplotment" (TN1:34)

ACTION in the mimetic activity
"If therefore we are to conserve the character of mimesis as being an activity which poiesis confers on it, and if, moreover, we hold tightly to the guideline of defining mimesis by muthos, then we ought not hesitate in understanding action--action as the object in the expression mimesis praxeos (50b3)--as the correlate of the mimetic activity governed by the organization of the events (into a system)." (TN1:34) Emphasis mine.

"The strict correlation between mimesis and muthos suggests giving the genitive form praxeos the dominant, although perhaps not the exclusive, sense of being the noematic correlate of the practical noesis. The action is the "construct" of that construction that the mimetic activity consists of." (TN1:34-35)

"The noematic correlation is therefore between mimesis praxeos, take as one syntagmatic expression, and the organization of the events, as another. To extend this relation of correlation within the first expression to include mimesis and praxis is thus plausible, fecund--and risky."
(TN1:35)

Constraints in Poetics for the Articulation of the model of Emplotment
1. It" is intended to account for the distinction between comedy, on the one hand, and tragedy and epic, on the other. It is not linked to the action as such but to the characters, who Aristotle rigorously subordinates to the action..."
2. "... is the one that separates epic, on the one hand, from tragedy and comedy, on the other, which find themselves on the same side of the dividing line this time. This constraint merits the greatest attention since it runs counter to my plan to consider narrative as the common genus and epic as one species of narrative

Constraints aimed at accounting for tragedy, comedy, and epic and at justifying Aristotle’s preference for tragedy:

1. intended to account for the distinction between comedy, and ---- tragedy and epic; it is not linked to the action as such but the characters rigorously subordinated by Aristotle to action

2. separates epic, and ---- tragedy and comedy

· It is noteworthy, first, that it is not a constraint that divides the objects, the “what” of the representation, but its “how” or mode.

· It is one thing for whoever does the imitating, therefore for the author of the mimetic activity, no matter what the art form or what the quality of the characters in question, that this author acts as a “narrator” (apangelia, apangelionta). It is another thing to make the characters the authors of the representation in that they “are presented as functioning and in action.” (48a23) [TN1:37]

“By so giving action priority over character, Aristotle establishes the mimetic status of action.” (TN1: 37)

Theory of Muthos

• “is abstracted from the definition of tragedy we find in chapter 6 Poetics” (Tn1: 38)
• Ricoeur’s hypothesis: “whether the paradigm of order, characteristics of tragedy, is capable of extension and transformation to the point where it can be applied to the whole narrative field.” (38)
• “the tragic muthos is set up as the poetic solution to the speculative paradox of time, inasmuch as the inventing of order is pursued to the exclusion of every temporal charateristics
• “The definition of muthos as the organization of the events first emphasizes concordance. And this concordance is characterized by three features: completeness, wholeness, and appropriate magnitude.” (38)
• Whole (holos)
• “The accent, in the analysis of this idea of a “whole”, is therefore put on the absence of chance and on conformity to the requirements of necessity and probability governing succession. If succession can be subordinated in this way to some logical connection, it is because the ideas of beginning, middle, and end are not taken from experience. They are not the features of some real action but the effects of the ordering of a poem.” (39)
• Limit (horos)
• “It is only in the plot that the action has a contour, a limit (horos) and as a consequence a magnitude. (39)
• “if the length is sufficient to permit a change from bad fortune to good or from good fortune to bad come about in an inevitable or probable sequence of events, this is a satisfactory limit (horos) of magnitude” (51a12-15)Certainly, this length must be temporal—a reversal takes time. But it is the work’s time, not the time of events in the world. [TN1:39]

Not only is time not considered, it is excluded... in considering epic (chapter 23), as submitted to the requirements of completeness and wholeness best illustrated by tragedy, Aristotle opposes two sorts of unity to each other: on the one hand, the temporal unity (henos khronou) that characterizes “a single period of time with all that happened therein to one or more persons, no matter how little the relation one event may have with one another” (59a23-24), and on the other hand, the dramatic unity that characterizes “a single action” (59a22) (which forms a whole, complete in itself, having a beginning, a middle and an end). (39)

INCLUDED DISCORDANCE in Concordance

"The tragic model is not purely a model of concordance, but rather of discordant concordance." (TN1,42)

DISCORDANCE is present in each stage of the Aristotelian analysis, even though it is only dealt with thematically in terms of the complex (versus the simple) plot. It is already manifest in the canonical definition of tragedy as an imitation of action that is serious and "complete" (teleios) (49b25)" (TN1, 42)

the definition of tragedy also contains another indication: "and effecting through pity and fear [what we call] the catharsis of such emotions "(49b26-27).... catharsis, whatever the term means, is brought about by the plot. And the first discordance is the fearful and pitiable incidents. They constitute the major threat to the plot's coherence." (42-43)

Discordant concordance is intended still more directly by the analysis of surprise.

We reach the heart of discordant concordance, still common to both simpleand episodic plots, with the central phenomenon of the tragic action Aristotle calls “reversal” (metabole) in Chapter 11. In tragedy, reversals turn good fortune into bad, but its direction may be reversed.” (43)

“The reversals characteristics of the complex plot are, as is well known, reversal (peripeteia)—coup de theatre in Dupont-roc and Lallot’s apt phrase—and recognition (anagnorisis), to which must be added suffering (pathos).” (43)

The pitiable and the fearful are qualities closely tied to the most unexpected changes of fortune oriented toward unhappiness. It is these discordant incidents the plots tends to make necessary and probable. And in so doing, it purifies them, or better, purges them. (44) empahsis is mine

By including the discordant in the concordant, the plot includes the affecting within the intelligible. Aristotle thus comes to say that pathos is one ingredient of the imitating or representing of praxis. So poetry conjoins these terms that ethics opposes. (44)

If the pitiable and the fearful can be incorporated into the plot, it is because these emotions have, as Else says (p. 375), their own rationale, which in turn, serves as a criterion for tragic quality of each change of fortune. (44)

"... it is these tragic emotions that require that the hero be prevented by some "fault" from attaining excellence in the order of virtue and justice, without however vice or wickedness being responsible for his fall into misfortune." (45)

Ricoeur's main statement on the nature of discordance (tragic emotions):
"It is the composition of the plot that that purges the emotions, by bringing to representation the pitiable and the fearful incidents, and it is these purged emotions that govern our discernment of the tragic." (45)
In the words of Aristotle quoted by Ricouer: "And since the pleasure the poet is to provide is that which comes [apo] pity and fear through [dia] an imitation, clearly this effect must be embodied [empoieteon] in [en] the events of the plot" (53b12-13).


THE TWO SIDES OF THE POETIC CONFIGURATION
Mimesis

"It does not seen to me to be governed by the equating of the two expressions "the imitation (or representation) of action" and "the organization of the events."

"There is no doubt that the prevalent sense of mimesis is the one instituted by its being joined to muthos."

• 'If we continue to translate mimesis by "imitation," we have to understand something completely contrary to a copy of some pre-existing reality and speak instead of a creative imitation." empahsis is mine
• "And if we translate mimesis by "representation" (as do Dupont-roc and Lallot), we must understand by this word some redoubling of presence, as we could still do for Platonic mimesis, but rather the break that opens the space for fiction." empahsis is mine

"... the Aristotelian mimesis is the emblem of the shift [decrochage] that, to use our vocabulary today, produces the "literariness" of the work of literature.

"Still the equation of mimesis and muthos does not completely fill up the meaning of the expression mimesis praxeos." (45-46)

• We may of course--as we did above--construe the objective genitive as the noematic correlate of imitation or representation and equate this correlate to the whole expression "the organization of events, " which Aristotle makes the "what"--the object--of mimesis. But that the praxis belongs at the same time to the real domain, covered by ethics, and the imaginary one, covered by poetics, suggests that mimesis functions not just as a break but also as a connection, one which establishes precisely the status of the "metaphorical" transposition of the practical field by the muthos.

• ...we have to preserve in the meaning of the term mimesis a reference to the first side of the poetic composition. I call this reference mimesis1 to distinguish it from mimesis2--the mimesis of creation--which remains a pivot point.
• Mimesis, we recall, as an activity, the mimetic activity, does not reach its intended term through the dynamism of the poetic text alone. It also requires a spectator or reader. So there is another side of poetic composition as well, which I call mimesis3..." (46) empahsis is mine

...if we are to talk of a "mimetic displacement" or quasi-metaphorical "transposition" from ethics to poetics, we have to conceive of mimetic activity as a connection and not just as a break. It is in fact the movement from mimesis1 to mimesis2. If it is beyond doubt that the term muthos indicates discontinuity, the word praxis, by its double allegiance, assures continuity between two realms of actions--ethics and poetics. (47)

"The Poetics does not speak of structure but of structuration. Structuration is an oriented activity that is only completed in the spectator or reader." (48)