Aristotelian Structure
“…most important of all is the structure of the
incidents. For Tragedy is an imitation, not of
men, but of an action and of life, and life
consists in action, and its end is a mode of
action, not a quality.” – Aristotle
“SPA” Brothers
• Socrates (469 BC–399 BC)
– A series of questions are asked not
only to draw individual answers, but
to encourage fundamental insight into
the issue at hand.
• To solve a problem, it would be
broken down into a series of
questions, the answers to which
gradually distill the answer you seek.
– The influence of this approach is
most strongly felt today in the use of
the Scientific Method, in which
hypothesis is the first stage.
– Socrates did not write philosophical
texts. The knowledge of the man, his
life, and his philosophy is based on
writings by his students and
contemporaries. Foremost among
them is Plato
“SPA” Brothers
• Plato (abt. 428 BC – abt.
347 BC)
– Focused on the intellectual
consequences of denying
the reality of the material
world
• Believed that the material
world as it seems to us is
not the real world, but only
a shadow of the real world
• Aristotle (384 BC – 322
BC)
– Student to Plato
– Wrote on many subjects,
including physics,
metaphysics, poetry,
theater, music, logic,
rhetoric, politics,
government, ethics,
biology, and zoology.
The Beginnings…
• First book about drama theory was written by
Plato called The Republic
–Written to be a model for an ideal society
•Believed in the ideals
–There is a form of perfectness somewhere else
»Heaven, Mt. Olympus? Not found on earth
»It is from this “ideal” of perfectness is copied and found on
earth
–These copies are inadequate and corrupted
»Any object we find in the earth is not perfect
–To Plato, theatre was a copy of a copy and the
farther away you got from the ideal, the more
corrupt it was
The Ideal
The Ideal in “heaven”
The Ideal on Earth
Theatre
Educating Perfectly
• The key to creating a perfect society is education
– If you educate children perfectly, they will create a perfect society
– How do you do educate them perfectly?
• Tell them perfect stories
• If your story involves people doing bad things and corruption, then
the children will do those bad things
– The only kind of acceptable types of stories or drama is where
perfect people do perfect things
• Acting is morally a suspect profession because actors
are always being someone else and to know yourself,
actors can never behave morally because they can't
know themselves
– they also play really bad people
Examples of Platonic Standards
• Harry Potter
– promotes witchcraft
– There is a bad wizard
and there are witches
• Movies being rated
– giving you a reason
not to see the movie
The Rebuttal
• Aristotle responded to The
Republic by writing The Poetics
– In it, he asked WHAT IS DRAMA???
• An imitation of an action
–Not an imitation of human behavior, but of
protagonist/objective/obstacle
»human behavior is BORING!
• Comes from mimesis (a copy or imitation)
–means by which we learn
–pleasurable
–we like watching people pretend to be
somebody else
– WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF
DRAMA/FILM???
• We like to be entertained, but in the back
of your mind, you’re also wondering what
you’re learning
• It can be a tool to educate as well as
entertain
Aristotle’s Elements of Theatre
1. Plot
The sequence of events that make up the story
2. Character
People who fulfill that story
3. Thought
Emotions they feel
4. Diction
Words they say
5. Music
How they say those words OR
The musical underscore
6. Spectacle
A space
Plot Diagram
Climax
Denoument
Rising Action
Exposition
Inciting Incident
Protagonists
• Protagonist/Objective/Obstacle
• Protagonists
– Not necessarily the main character, or the one we like
the best, but the character who drives the action, who
has the strongest objective and faces all the
obstacles
• Protagonists are:
– Volitional – has a very strong objective and pursues it
strongly
– Normative – behaves the way we think normal
everyday people would
– Likable
– Moral or Immoral – a protagonist doesn’t have to be
moral
Inciting Incident
• The moment or event that the protagonist
realizes that they need to pursue their
objective
– Things get to a point where it is unendurable
or things are out of harmony
– Something happens and knocks “it” out of
balance and the job of the protagonist is to
put it back in balance
• In Media Res – the inciting incident has already
happened when the piece starts
Diagram Continued…
• Rising Action
– Everything that happens after, little obstacles
throughout the story that the protagonist has to
overcome
• Crisis
– The moment in which we come to wonder if the
protagonist will ever achieve the objective and the
outcome is still in doubt
• Climax
– The outcome is certain
• Denoument
– Everything after the outcome is certain
Your Assignment:
• Write a 7-10 page story using the
Aristotelian structure
– Exposition, Inciting Incident, Rising Action,
Crisis, Climax, Denoument
• Must have
– Protagonist
– Objective
– Obstacle