How do you even cope with Aristotle being a plotfag?
"The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; Character holds the second place."
(Poetics, Chapter 6, 1450a38–39)
"Tragedy is an imitation not of men but of action and life, of happiness and misery. And life consists in action, and its end is a mode of activity, not a quality. Now character determines men's qualities, but it is by their actions that they are happy or the reverse... Hence the plot is the imitation of the action—for by plot I mean here the arrangement of the incidents."
(Poetics, Chapter 6, 1450a16–22)
Well by “plot” today people mean the premise and melodrama and “high concept” For Aristotle, plot means elegant organization of A leads to B leads to C in terms of the actions of the characters so that it creates a nice domino effect that makes the ending inescapable based on the beginning, reflecting Greek obsession with fate
I don't think most people alive right now could recount the plot of the last piece of media they consumed even if you put a gun to their head.
>>24515922>uh well actually 'wet' meant something else in the ancient greek, people back then they just had a completely different way of understanding wetness you see, so this ancient guy saying water is wet actually means something elseI hate when people cope like this when truth doesn't align with their narrative.
>>24515997You are the one coping
Go back to /v/, /mlp/, or whichever board you called home before.
>>24515997Not really a cope since I don’t have my identity tied up in literature and most of the anti-plot people here like literature which Aristotle would still dislike for having an inelegant plot. With the rise of modernity and the sense of the absurd, there might still be an idea of determinism but less fatalism. I personally tend to prefer fiction which is messier because it is closer to how life actually works. That was Raymond Chandler’s critique of classic mystery, that it the tidiness of the plot is very far from human psychology of murder, since in actual crime cases people often do things which have no rationale or meaning and then try to rationalize them later and there are a lot of unexpected detours without foreshadowing. Aristotle’s ideal of plot sort of mirrors the Greek ideal of visual art. Art was meant to reflected idealized images, plot was idealized actions (not necessarily “good” actions but actions with a very efficient connection). Likewise though a lot of “great plot” stories would get an F on plot from Aristotle. The Count of Monte Cristo or Crime and Punishment are some solid examples of this, the former because it was written in a serialized format and includes a lot of extraneous actions that have nothing to do with the central driving acts, and the latter because characters get involved in a lot of random and messy situations that likewise are totally superfluous to a dynamic plot
Do you think that if Aristotle was alive today he would read the original Shakespeare or a modern english adaptation?
>>24515997came to this thread to say you are retarded.
>>24516730He would read the German translation by Schlegel and Tieck
>>24515884 (OP)Plot as opposed to what? Prose? He's talking about plays, anon.
>>24516764good point. never realized that literature only consists of plot and prose. it's like an italian dish; very minimal ingredients with great results.
>>24516831missing the point hard. you might have autism, anon.
>>24516764He’s talking about fiction in general. Poetics ends with him saying drama is superior to epic poetry and the first reason he gives is that plays usually have tighter plots. The other two reasons are that plays aren’t restricted to epic meter and can incorporate music and spectacle.
>>24516764>>24516831>>24516887>>24517025The point is that Aristotle isn't arguing for plot based off of a focus on the novel. Novels wouldn't be a literary form for nearly another 2000 years. Calling Aristotle a "plotfag" (a term lifted from vitriolic conversations over what makes a novel good) is just inappropriate.
>>24515884 (OP)Aristotle was wrong about basically every one of his claims, yet this is what you're getting upset over?
>>24516764OP here. I am worried nobody in this board could answer to this anon. According to Aristotle there are 6 elements that constitute tragedies: Plot, Characters, Thought (As in, the philosophical elements), diction, spectable, and song.
>>24517927Aristotle would have hated Seinfeld.
>>24516764As opposed to character, like it says in the quoted passage. Which copying it was the only effort OP could put into his thread in lieu of thought.
>>24515922Then he would have loved Xavier Renegade Angel
>>24515884 (OP)I think the deeper you go into human consciousness the more familiar it becomes.
>>24515884 (OP)Kierkegaard would have much less to say about Abraham if genesis 22 just straight up told us how Abraham felt. So I think plot is much more important than the work telling us how characters feel or whatever which is maybe why I can't stand modern slop they put too much "character" into the characters and there's very little to 'read' out of them or maybe I'm a fucking retard
