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Untying Aristotle's Poetics for Storytellers
This book offers a clear and readable version of Aristotle’s Poetics , and a fresh look at his ideas on plot and plot structure. The Greek tragedy is the great-grandfather of the movie industry, and most of the principles that go into the production of a successful Hollywood script were first formulated by Aristotle. But due to its terse style, the Poetics has never been well understood. Commentators have pointed out apparent self-contradictions, logical errors, lack of coherence and cryptic passages. This new take resolves many of these problems. Aristotle's model of the tragedy is explained in a way where the pieces fit together and that makes sense in the real world of storytelling. We see a beautiful and coherent theoretical model reveal itself. Aristotle is a deep thinker capable of penetrating to the heart of his subject. His model is based on the study of the Greek tragedy, which evolved in response to spectator and judge reactions. This anchors it to the practical realities of what works and does not work. He himself anchors it in his philosophy and understanding of human nature. In the first part of Untying Aristotle's Poetics for Storytellers , Aristotle's model of the tragedy is explained. The second part is a new, rendering of the Poetics, which will help you avoid many of the traps that until now have led readers and interpreters astray.
121 pages, Paperback
Published March 21, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 26, 2020
This is a translation of Poetics, which I decided to read on the energetic, almost fanatical recommendation of Aaron Sorkin in one of his MasterClass videos. Overall Rune Myrland's version is very clear and very readable. Notes in the back are handy - you can check details quickly, jumping to and fro with hyperlinks on Kindle. Supplementing the translation of Aristotle's ancient handbook, Rune Myrland offers a new handbook for the handbook. In those short chapters, he restates and synthesizes what Aristotle says from a modern storyteller's perspective. I really enjoyed both Poetics and commentary. (You can read a post by the author outlining the need for this treatment, but keep in mind that the post is not representative of the book's easy, pleasant style.)
The only reason I would take off a point (I won't) is that in a few places I wished for a little more polish. Here and there, the translation made a choice that I didn't fully agree with or that didn't meet quite the same standard of clarity. Most of the time, Myrland's version (I would argue) is the easiest and most straightforward way to read Poetics, but very occasionally that wasn't true.
Maybe it's unfair to criticize, because I think the book serves its purpose very well. It isn't meant to be erudite, but practical. And the quality and helpfulness of the rest make up for what I consider only a few small defects. My other complaint, I suppose, was that the commentary, though quite wonderful for contextualizing Poetics in the ancient world and in today's, sometimes ended up feeling a bit repetitive or a bit fanciful with interpretation. This is subjective, and I felt it didn't harm anything, and may even have been valuable. There was a faint sense that greater polish was possible, that's all.
Aristotle's pamphlet was never meant to be a holy scripture, but a very condensed little guide. This was probably the ancient equivalent of a slide deck for giving lectures (it is one hell of a slide deck, if so). Poetics itself I loved, and I was very enthusiastic about this book as a whole. Especially with another translation to fall back on for extra clues, this may well be the perfect way to read Poetics for many people.
On that note, what translation could the other one be?
After looking at many, I decided the 2002 Benardete/Davis translation is the most direct and scholarly. It gives you much more of the original phrasing and extremely detailed notes. I also compared most sections with the public domain Bywater (1909, here) and Butcher (1934, here and here) translations, which would be fine if you wanted to read Poetics free. All of these have their charms. Finally, the translation by Malcolm Heath (1996) is really nice and modern, and I loved the introductory essay. If you wanted just one volume, don't particularly care about how the Greek idioms sounded, and I just hain't sold you on Rune Myrland's handbook-with-a-handbook approach, then Malcolm Heath's would be my recommendation. But ultimately, I resorted to Benardete/Davis for the last word on the text when I wanted a last word.
So what is Poetics, anyway?
I'm so glad you asked!
In 350 BC, Aristotle - former student of Plato and Socrates, former teacher of Alexander the Great, founder of a school called the Lyceum, and still considered the best scientist living at the time - wrote this handbook on representational art, the first surviving attempt. From a modern perspective, he seems to have intuited better than anyone else just how deep the ideas of signals and representation go. It wasn't lost on him that waves/rhythms/signals unite music and language and dance and painting, for example. It wasn't lost on him that art could be representational or abstract, that it could distract or reveal. It wasn't lost on him that empathy was critical to art. There were many ideas not lost on him.
But the handbook needs a focus, and it's really about what gives Greek tragedy that special gut-wrenching quality it has. In analyzing this, Aristotle makes some astoundingly sharp observations about character, plot, emotion, audience. This old slide deck is the original source of "catharsis." Many elements need to work together, and he explains them one by one. At the center of all that conflict in tragedy is a notion of unintended or intended mistakes, of partial or missing information that causes great, catastrophic harm. Mistakes make tragedy tragedy, and each story revolves around one mistake in particular, trying to maximize the audience's ability to relate while experiencing horror at the mistake, whether it's intentional, unintentional, or some combination. Highlighting tragedies in century after century of drama without any doubt changed history in ways we'll never fully catalog or understand.
I'm inclined to agree with Aaron Sorkin and Kurt Vonnegut... for all their sky-high praise, this wasn't a disappointment. I can see how you might call these 60 or so pages the bible of drama.
The only reason I would take off a point (I won't) is that in a few places I wished for a little more polish. Here and there, the translation made a choice that I didn't fully agree with or that didn't meet quite the same standard of clarity. Most of the time, Myrland's version (I would argue) is the easiest and most straightforward way to read Poetics, but very occasionally that wasn't true.
Maybe it's unfair to criticize, because I think the book serves its purpose very well. It isn't meant to be erudite, but practical. And the quality and helpfulness of the rest make up for what I consider only a few small defects. My other complaint, I suppose, was that the commentary, though quite wonderful for contextualizing Poetics in the ancient world and in today's, sometimes ended up feeling a bit repetitive or a bit fanciful with interpretation. This is subjective, and I felt it didn't harm anything, and may even have been valuable. There was a faint sense that greater polish was possible, that's all.
Aristotle's pamphlet was never meant to be a holy scripture, but a very condensed little guide. This was probably the ancient equivalent of a slide deck for giving lectures (it is one hell of a slide deck, if so). Poetics itself I loved, and I was very enthusiastic about this book as a whole. Especially with another translation to fall back on for extra clues, this may well be the perfect way to read Poetics for many people.
On that note, what translation could the other one be?
After looking at many, I decided the 2002 Benardete/Davis translation is the most direct and scholarly. It gives you much more of the original phrasing and extremely detailed notes. I also compared most sections with the public domain Bywater (1909, here) and Butcher (1934, here and here) translations, which would be fine if you wanted to read Poetics free. All of these have their charms. Finally, the translation by Malcolm Heath (1996) is really nice and modern, and I loved the introductory essay. If you wanted just one volume, don't particularly care about how the Greek idioms sounded, and I just hain't sold you on Rune Myrland's handbook-with-a-handbook approach, then Malcolm Heath's would be my recommendation. But ultimately, I resorted to Benardete/Davis for the last word on the text when I wanted a last word.
So what is Poetics, anyway?
I'm so glad you asked!
In 350 BC, Aristotle - former student of Plato and Socrates, former teacher of Alexander the Great, founder of a school called the Lyceum, and still considered the best scientist living at the time - wrote this handbook on representational art, the first surviving attempt. From a modern perspective, he seems to have intuited better than anyone else just how deep the ideas of signals and representation go. It wasn't lost on him that waves/rhythms/signals unite music and language and dance and painting, for example. It wasn't lost on him that art could be representational or abstract, that it could distract or reveal. It wasn't lost on him that empathy was critical to art. There were many ideas not lost on him.
But the handbook needs a focus, and it's really about what gives Greek tragedy that special gut-wrenching quality it has. In analyzing this, Aristotle makes some astoundingly sharp observations about character, plot, emotion, audience. This old slide deck is the original source of "catharsis." Many elements need to work together, and he explains them one by one. At the center of all that conflict in tragedy is a notion of unintended or intended mistakes, of partial or missing information that causes great, catastrophic harm. Mistakes make tragedy tragedy, and each story revolves around one mistake in particular, trying to maximize the audience's ability to relate while experiencing horror at the mistake, whether it's intentional, unintentional, or some combination. Highlighting tragedies in century after century of drama without any doubt changed history in ways we'll never fully catalog or understand.
I'm inclined to agree with Aaron Sorkin and Kurt Vonnegut... for all their sky-high praise, this wasn't a disappointment. I can see how you might call these 60 or so pages the bible of drama.
February 27, 2019
Wish I had known about this short treatise long ago. Aristotle covers what a writer is doing, how to do it, and why somethings just don't work. His observations are as valid today as they were when he wrote this.
September 27, 2020
I am glad I finally got the chance to read Aristotle's Poetics. I'm even more glad I chose this version as it was easy to read and the complementary explanations at the beginning of the book helped put everything in context.
I feel I am going to have to read this book many times in my life.
I feel I am going to have to read this book many times in my life.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews