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Aristotle wrote the Poetics as a work of literary criticism. He reviewed and analyzed many plays written in his time. This essay discusses the features of Greek tragedy in the context of those Poetics and how these features are manifested in Sophocles' Oedipus.
Greek tragedy has all the elements of drama presented by Aristotle in his Poetics. These elements are reversal, discovery and calamity. Further, according to Aristotle the divisions of tragedy are the prologue, episode, exode, and choral song. (Poetics 1452b). Oedipus, a tragedy written by Sophocles, embodies each of these characteristics and provides...
Oedipus, saved and raised by another, listens to yet another oracle and discovers the terrible truth of his fate, which is, of course, to kill his father and marry is mother. This is the plot. When he leaves his "father," not Laius, but the man who found and raised him the tragedy begins to unfold. In his attempts to escape the fate the Gods have chosen, he makes the decision that will seal it. He experiences a reversal in luck when he…
The Greeks acted out these stories with great emphasis on the emotional. They used huge masks to illustrate their thoughts and feelings. The chorus, a group that sang the tale like a common day narrator, followed the characters as the Gods might. The play was a spectacle of grand proportion and design. Aristotle used this and other plays to illustrate his concepts of tragedy and the parts of the whole that made it so. Aristotle used the play to show how things can happen. One's fortune is reversed by his perception, and his ignorance transformed into knowledge at the tragic end of the tale.
Aristotle the Philosopher. Contributors J.L. Ackrill - author. Publisher: Oxford University Press. Place of Publication: Oxford, UK. Publication Year: 1981.
Characteristics of Greek Tragedy as retrieved August 15, 2004 at http://www.classics, upenn.edu/myth/tragedy/theater.php
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