Meanwhile his home is in a
wretched plight- suitors are wasting his substance and plotting
against his son. At length, tempest-tost, he himself arrives; he makes
certain persons acquainted with him; he attacks the suitors with his
own hand, and is himself preserved while he destroys them. This is the
essence of the plot; the rest is episode.
POETICS|18
XVIII
Every tragedy falls into two parts- Complication and Unraveling
or Denouement. Incidents extraneous to the action are frequently
combined with a portion of the action proper, to form the
Complication; the rest is the Unraveling. By the Complication I mean
all that extends from the beginning of the action to the part which
marks the turning-point to good or bad fortune. The Unraveling is that
which extends from the beginning of the change to the end. Thus, in
the Lynceus of Theodectes, the Complication consists of the
incidents presupposed in the drama, the seizure of the child, and then
again ... [the Unraveling] extends from the accusation of murder to
the end.
There are four kinds of Tragedy: the Complex, depending entirely
on Reversal of the Situation and Recognition; the Pathetic (where
the motive is passion)- such as the tragedies on Ajax and Ixion; the
Ethical (where the motives are ethical)- such as the Phthiotides and
the Peleus. The fourth kind is the Simple. [We here exclude the purely
spectacular element], exemplified by the Phorcides, the Prometheus,
and scenes laid in Hades.
Pages:
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42