Aristotle, Frye, and the Theory of Tragedy

LEON GOLDEN

NORTHROP Anatomy of

FRYE

has

recognized and

basic Poetics.

kinship After

between noting

his with

Criticism

Aristotle's

regret the parochialism of many contemporary critics, he warmly alludes to Aristotle's conception of a "totally intelligible structure of knowledge attainable about poetry which is not poetry itself, or the experience of it, but poetics."' This conception, reflected concisely in the opening lines of the Poetics, becomes the program of the Anatomy. Frye, however, aspires to improve on his model by making use of all the relevant doctrines and techniques of criticism developed since Aristotle wrote. Tragedy is the central theme of the Poetics and a subject of major importance in the Anatomy as well. In comparing the two approaches to this genre we are struck by their wide divergence in method and conclusions. Clearly both Aristotle and Frye make profound contributions

to our understanding of tragedy but neither succeeds in providing a definitive statement that clarifies the nature of the genre as it has emerged and developed in the western literary tradition. I propose in this paper to assess our current understanding of the nature of tragedy
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based on the contributions made by Aristotle and Frye and then to suggest a method by which these important theoretical statements can be harmonized to lead us to a fuller understanding of the potentialities and boundaries of the genre. The major tenets of Aristotle's theory of tragedy are well known. I summarize them here for later comparison with Frye. For Aristotle tragedy is an imitation (mimesis) of actions involving the pitiable and fearful dimensions of human existence. This form of imitation repre sents a noble (spoudaios) hero as its object; it uses artistically enhanced language as its means; and its manner of presentation is dramatic rather than narrative. The representation of pity (the feeling we have toward the undeserved misfortune of others) and fear (the same feeling when directed at our own vulnerability to such misfortune) requires that the tragic hero fall from happiness to misery because of some intellectual, not moral, error (hamartia). The effectiveness of any given tragedy is dependent upon its possessing a plot that is complete, is of the proper magnitude, and is developed in accordance with the laws of necessity and probability. The ultimate goal and essential pleasure associated with tragis mimesis is catharsis. Catharsis, a much disputed term, has been interpreted in four principal ways: (1) as a form of medical purgation in which the pathological elements of pity and fear are purged from the

spectator; (2) as a form of moral purification in which the spectator achieves the proper mean between excess and deficiency in experiencing pity and fear; (3) as a structural process by which the tragic deed of the hero is, in the course of the play, purified of its moral pollution; and (4) as the process of intellectual clarification by which the spectator comes to understand, under a universal heading, the nature of the particular pitiable and fearful events that have been depicted.2 The ultimate thrust of the Aristotelian theory of tragedy will, of course, depend on which interpretation of catharsis we accept but the basic nature of Aristotle's approach to tragedy is clear even without a final decision about this important term. Aristotle's goal is to set forth the conditions under which the essential tragic effect and pleasure will be most fully achieved. His definition of tragedy is thus a prescription for the creation of an ideal work of art rather than a general statement applicable to all works traditionally included within the limits of the genre. Most of the plays cited for one reason or another in the Poetics cannot be dealt with effectively in terms of the definition of tragedy set forth in Chapter VI and few of the tragedies written since Aristotle's time will fit snugly within the confines of that definition. Recognizing that Aristotle's definition of tragedy is a statement of the ideal conditions for the

fulfillment

of

the

tragic

form

prepares

us

for

understanding

Frye's widely divergent approach. Frye identifies five modes and six phases of tragedy at different stages of his argument but he does not treat these in any systematic form. The modes do relate to a development downward from stories about heroes who are superior in kind to other men and their environment to stories about heroes who are inferior in degree both to other men and to their environment. Frye identifies salient features characteristic of each level of development from the Dionysiac to the elegiac, high mimetic, low mimetic, and ironic modes. Pity and fear (not necessarily in the Aristotelian sense), hamartia (without moral coloring), and catharsis (in the sense of purgation) are attributed to some of the modes but they do not form a system of central, unifying ideas that establishes the essential meaning of the concept of tragedy. The six phases of tragedy represent a development from the heroic to the ironic world view. Here, too, however we do not have so much a systematic theory as a citation and analysis of particular examples. Frye does assert that two commonly held "reductive formulas" for tragedy are partially but not completely valid: (1) that tragedy exhibits the omnipotence of an external fate and (2) that the tragic process is primarily a violation of moral law. Frye cites a number of examples which clash with these formulas.

We see that Frye, unlike Aristotle, is concerned with establishing a critical position that will be relevant to the tremendous variety of works traditionally included within the genre of tragedy. His discussion of five modes and six phases recognizes the full range of manifestations tragedy has taken in its historical development. Unfortunately, Frye's analysis remains mostly on the level of a perceptive description of the salient features of each mode and phase and does not establish a systematic argument that would demonstrate the organic relationship among these modes and phases. The major Aristotelian concepts of pity and fear, hamartia, and catharsis are judged to occur in some dimensions of the tragic experience but not in others and Frye supplies no substitutions for them which would organize tragedy as a clearly unified territory within the wide landscape of artistic mimesis. The strength of Aristotle's theory is that it identifies with precision a central, perhaps the central theme of the genre; its weakness is that it fails to account for the great body of works which have historically been designated as tragedies. Frye's approach to tragedy makes a significant contribution toward overcoming this limitation but he, in turn, fails to provide us with a rigorous system of standards and criteria through which the boundaries of the genre can be fixed and its constituent elements analyzed. It thus appears that a major contribution to the

theory of tragedy could be made if it were possible to follow Frye in his attempt to do justice to the entire range of tragedies without abandoning Aristotelian rigor in establishing the definition of the genre. Such a compromise between the two approaches is not impossible; indeed, the mechanism for attaining it is implicit in the Aristotelian system itself. It is possible to isolate four parameters in the Aristotelian analysis of tragedy: (1) the moral stature of the hero: whether he is noble (spoudaios) or ignoble (phaulos); (2) the nature of the error (hamartia) committed by the hero: whether it is intellectual or moral; (3)

the destiny of the hero: whether he moves from happiness to misery or the reverse; and (4) the response of the audience: whether pity and fear are evoked and subjected to the process of catharsis in any of its possible interpretations. When we apply these categories to the data provided by the history of tragedy, we find four distinct patterns of tragic action. We shall now analyze these patterns in detail and suggest that, as a system, they represent a rigorous approach to the phenomenon of tragedy that is fully adequate to deal with the diverse elements historically united in this genre. We shall begin with the pattern of tragic action which Aristotle specifically identifies as ideal in the Poetics and which, in my view, is
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represented in Greek tragedy only by the Oedipus Tyrannus. In this pattern a spoudaios hero, that is, one of moral nobility and integrity, makes an intellectual rather than a moral mistake (hamartia) which triggers a fall from happiness to misery and evokes the response of pity and fear from the audience. For Aristotle the evocation of pity and fear is the proper goal of tragedy and it is only by this pattern of tragic action that the goal can be achieved. To see the reason for this we must understand clearly the meaning of pity and fear for Aristotle. In Chapter XIII of the Poetics he defines these terms as follows: ".. . for pity is aroused by someone who undeservedly falls into misfortune, and fear is evoked by our recognizing that it is someone like ourselves who encounters this misfortune (pity, as I say, arising for the former reason,

fear for the latter)." Thus for Aristotle pity refers to our sympathetic response to the undeserved misfortune of someone else and fear indicates, narrowly and specifically, the anxiety we feel that such misfortune can befall those who have the same degree of intelligence and moral stature as ourselves. In order for the emotions of pity and fear to be evoked we must have a tragic hero of sufficient moral stature to deserve our respect and one with whom it is easy for us to identify. Moreover, this hero must commit a significant error (hamartia) or else the events of the drama would not be motivated and would not be linked by necessity and probability; nevertheless the error must be intellectual
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rather than moral or else the undeserved quality of the misfortune would be destroyed and with it the necessary preconditions for the evocation of pity and fear. The Oedipus Tyrannus offers a good example of this pattern of tragic action.3 Oedipus is clearly spoudaios because he always strives to accomplish morally justifiable goals: he flees from Corinth when it seems

possible that he might commit terrible crimes against those he assumes to be his parents; he exerts himself without limit in seeking to lift the plague from the people of Thebes; and, with total integrity, he brings to light the truth about himself despite all efforts by others to prevent his terrible moment of self-discovery. Some critics have seen Oedipus' rashness and quickness to anger as signs of a moral flaw in his character. They have failed to notice that such episodes occur when Oedipus' life is in danger or when a citizen of great reputation and authority appears to be withholding significant information that is necessary for the safety of the state. Oedipus' very human response in these situations is not his flaw; rather, his essential hamartia is his failure to understand the true relationship between his own, finite human existence and the infinitely powerful and mysterious nature of Apollo. Oedipus' attempt to avoid committing incest and parricide and his efforts to free Thebes from its suffering are the very virtues out of which his profound misunderstanding

of

Apollo

arises.

In

the

Oedipus

Tyrannus

we

observe

the

evocation of both pity and fear because we are led to respect the moral stature of the hero, to understand and pardon the intellectual mistake which triggers his downfall, and to recognize ourselves as vulnerable to the same fate. The second pattern of tragic action is observed in those situations where pity alone is evoked without any concomitant fear in the technical Aristotelian senses of those terms. In this pattern the hero is no longer fully spoudaios but has only a hint of this quality and the mistake he makes is essentially a moral one. The fall from happiness to misery occurs with the same intensity as in the first pattern. Works that illustrate the second pattern of tragic action must have a hero who at least aspires to act in accordance with moral virtue but is too weak to resist the external pressures that drive him to commit a debased or criminal act. The fact that the hero did not initially will his act but succumbed to external pressure makes it possible for us to feel some measure of sympathy and anguish for an undeserved element in his fate. The morally debased quality of his actions, however, interferes with the recognition of our own vulnerability to a similar destiny and thus frustrates the evocation of Aristotelian "fear."

Euripides' Medea is a clear example.4 Medea tells us how totally she had devoted herself to Jason's interests when he cunningly won her affection as part of his strategy for obtaining the golden fleece. She committed heinous crimes and cut all ties to her home and country to serve his needs. Her anger at her betrayal by the always pragmatic Jason drives her to seek revenge against him. She discovers the appropriate means in a plan that requires her to murder her own children because only in this way can she hurt Jason as much as he has hurt her. From the moment she adopts the plan to the moment she completes it, we see Medea in an anguished and ambivalent state of mind toward the children. In feigning compliance with Jason's recommendations for her future life, she is brought to the verge of tears when she mentions the children to him and thinks of the terrible destiny she has designed for them. Her torment is intensified when she learns that Creon's daughter has accepted the fatal gifts from her children for now she knows that there can be no turning back from her decision. She agonizingly vacillates before taking the final, irrevocable step toward killing them as she sees how much they mean to her and how much she will suffer after she has murdered them. Nevertheless, the injury Jason has done to her pride threatens her existence so seriously that it must be redressed at any cost. In a poignant soliloquy, marked by passages of deep maternal love and flashes of angry indignation, Medea sees clearly that an evil
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passion for revenge will dominate all her rational misgivings about the act she is going to perform. It is possible to censure Medea for her inability to control her passions and her refusal to place the children's interests above her own but it is also clear that her fury is not willed by her but caused by Jason's callous treatment. Medea herself clearly is capable of the most intense love and loyalty as well as the most violent anger and vengeance. Because Medea realizes that the murder of her children is an evil and irrational act she cannot be a spoudaios hero like Oedipus in the Oedipus Tyrannus. We can, however, still pity her fate as not being fully deserved because she did not hate her children or desire to harm them. She acted in response to the pressure exerted by Jason's cruel and cynical abandonment and committed an act she did not will and struggled hard not to perform. Aristotelian "fear" is largely absent here, however, since very few of us can imagine making the same decision as Medea under any sort of external duress. Thus the second pattern of tragic action shows some palpable differences from the pattern identified as ideal by Aristotle. The spoudaios quality of the hero is greatly diminished, he commits a serious moral error rather than simply an intellectual one, and he falls from happiness to misery in such a way as to elicit only pity, not fear, in the technical Aristotelian senses of those terms.

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The third pattern of tragic action involves the complete obliteration of pity and fear. In it a depraved rather than spoudaios hero commits the gravest moral errors and moves, because or in spite of them, not from happiness to misery but from misery to happiness. In this type of tragedy a profound flaw is usually uncovered in the order and governance of the universe. Euripides' Orestes offers an excellent example of this type of

tragedy.5 Although the entire play is permeated with absurdist elements, a discussion of the ending will be sufficient for our present purposes. Orestes and Electra, having been betrayed by Menelaus, find themselves facing a death sentence in Argos. With their friend Pylades they plot to take appropriate vengeance on Menelaus by killing Menelaus' wife, Helen, before their own death sentence can be carried out. In addition, Electra urges that they seize Helen's daughter, Hermione, as a hostage. She notes that if Menelaus wants to take vengeance for Helen's death, they need only to threaten to cut Hermione's throat and Menelaus, who is a coward, will think better of it and allow them to escape. The plan is enthusiastically agreed upon, and Pylades and Orestes enter the palace to take their joyous revenge on Helen who is murderously attacked while Electra shouts encouragement from in front of the palace.

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The grim absurdity of human existence pictured in this play is underscored when Hermione appears and, taken in by Electra's cunning,

agrees with kindly human decency to intercede for Orestes and Electra with Helen. When Hermione has been seized, Electra is proud of this "heroic" action which will teach Menelaus to respect his formidable adversaries. In place of the awesome confrontations found in Homer, Aeschylus, and Sophocles we have here a competition in cunning, deceit, and cowardice which emphasizes the absurdity of the human condition. Before, however, the murder of Helen can be consummated, we are told by a servant that she has mysteriously disappeared into the sky. The climax of the play brings Menelaus onto the. scene to discover the fate of Helen and take vengeance on those who may have harmed her. In a sardonic debate Orestes regrets that Helen disappeared before he could kill her, and Menelaus, who believes that Orestes actually has murdered his wife, threatens vengeance if he attempts to enhance his reputation as a matricide by the additional slaughter of Hermione. Orestes trades insults with Menelaus as he holds his sword to Hermione's throat and orders Pylades and Electra to set the palace afire. At this moment the greatest absurdity of all takes place as Apollo appears in the role of deus ex machina and suddenly reverses the action of the play. He announces that he has transported Helen to live in the heavens

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for ever, that Menelaus is to remarry, that Orestes is to take his sword away from Hermione's throat and marry her instead, and that Pylades and Electra are also to be married. Orestes welcomes and obeys the injunctions of Apollo but notes a threatening and fearful quality in the god's voice. So this "tragedy" comes to an end. In this pattern of tragic action pity and fear are destroyed since the necessary conditions for them are not present. In order to have pity and fear we need a spoudaios hero who makes an intellectual (not moral) error which triggers but does not fully cause his fall from happiness to misery. In the Orestes instead of a spoudaios hero we have a morally depraved one who moves from misery to happiness under divine sanction in a way that defies both reason and justice. We respond to this revelation of profound irrationality in the universe not with pity and fear but rather with emotional shock, mirthless laughter, and a sense of spiritual desolation over the mockery and meaninglessness of human existence. The fourth pattern of tragic action stands in polar opposition to the third. Instead of pity and fear being obliterated by an explosion of cosmic evil they are transcended by an impressive manifestation of divine love for man. A clear example of this rather unusual dimension of tragedy is found in Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus.6
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The Oedipus of the Oedipus at Colonus has undergone the purifying fire of suffering and, though not purged of his human passions, has attained a deeper understanding of the human condition. He clearly perceives that he has been punished far too severely for any crime he has committed, that he has been betrayed and manipulated by his sons and Creon, and that he has benefited from the love and kindness of Antigone, Ismene, and Theseus. As in the Oedipus Tyrannus, divine purpose is an ever-present controlling factor, but in this play it changes from a painfully mysterious force to a benign and affirmative one. The action of the Oedipus at Colonus provides several dramatic occasions for revealing the aspects of Oedipus' character and destiny which determine the play's specific tragic form. Oedipus' essential innocence is expressed in his argument with Creon when the latter cruelly attempts to take him back to Thebes against his will. Oedipus declares that no evil or sin within himself drove him to commit the terrible deeds whose source lay in a fearful ignorance over which he had no control. He would not willingly or knowingly have married Jocasta, nor would he willingly and knowingly have slain his father, but when attacked by apparent strangers, in a desolate area, he defended his own life and he poignantly calls upon his dead father's spirit to bear witness for him. Most important, however, is the manifestation of the benign interest

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which the gods now take in Oedipus. In the climactic scene of the play the blind Oedipus is suddenly given mysterious powers and guides his sighted companions to a sacred place where a divine voice summons him to his ultimate destiny and reward. Mystically, the heavens open and receive Oedipus who at the end of a troubled life is the recipient of infinite divine grace. Divine intervention has raised Oedipus above the human condition. As a result of that intervention he makes no mistake that leads him from happiness to misery but is instead led by divine grace from suffering to supreme happiness. His stature is now far above our own and since we cannot view him as someone like ourselves who has incurred undeserved misfortune because of an intellectual error, we do not respond with the emotions of pity and fear, but must rather view his final triumph with awe. Thus the Oedipus at Colonus as a tragedy directly contradicts the experience we have of the Oedipus Tyrannus as a tragedy. In place of a spoudaios hero who makes an intellectual mistake, it offers us a divinely protected hero who makes no essential error; in place of a fall from happiness to misery, it describes the reverse movement from misery to

happiness; in place of pity and fear, it evokes awe and wonder. We have now identified four patterns of tragic action and provided an example from Greek tragedy to illustrate each of them. Similar
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examples can be found in Shakespearean and modern tragedy.7 The first form of tragedy we shall call high tragedy: it is the form specifically defined by Aristotle in the Poetics and involves a spoudaios hero who makes an intellectual mistake and whose fall from happiness to misery evokes from the audience the emotions of pity and fear (in the technical Aristotelian senses of those terms). The second form we shall call pathetic tragedy: it portrays a hero who is not fully spoudaios but who manifests at least a trace or hint of nobility and who, under the pressure of some external force, makes both moral and intellectual errors that lead to his downfall from happiness to misery. The fate of the hero of pathetic tragedy evokes only pity, not fear, from the audience. The third form we shall call absurd tragedy: it depicts a depraved or ignoble hero who commits a combination of moral and intelectual errors that are terrifyingly complemented by grim flaws in the universe itself. In its extreme form, this type of tragedy presents its depraved or ignoble hero as moving triumphantly from misery to happiness although a number of works stop just short of this radical manifestation of cosmic absurdity. Instead of evoking pity and fear, absurd tragedy obliterates those emotions by creating a mood of spiritual desolation and a sense of the meaninglessness and mockery of human existence. The fourth form of tragedy

we shall call heroic tragedy: it presents a hero who is superior to ordinary standards of human nobility because he has been granted
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divine interest and protection. The hero commits no essential error, moves from misery or relative misery to supreme happiness, and evokes awe from the audience. Absurd tragedy destroys pity and fear; heroic tragedy completely transcends them. The analysis of tragedy given above is based on an extrapolation from the criteria set down by Aristotle in the Poetics. We have noted that Aristotle's specific and literal discussion of tragedy centers on the ideal conditions for the evocation of pity and fear which are seen to be the truly tragic emotions. Aristotle's concern with these ideal conditions is reflected in his famous definition of tragedy which applies fully to only a small number of works. The history of tragedy provides us with many more examples of pathetic tragedy than of Aristotelian high tragedy. The attempt to make a literal application of Aristotle's definition to tragedy, in general, results in a distortion either of the definition or of empirical reality. The expansion of the Aristotelian system provided in our analysis overcomes the narrowness inherent in the original definition and makes the Aristotelian approach truly viable in terms of the

history of tragedy. Frye does attempt to deal with the greatly varied forms which tragedy has manifested throughout its historical development, but he does not provide firm and specific criteria by which the related forms of tragedy
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can be compared and analyzed. Thus in his discussion of the five modes of tragedy we learn that there is a Dionysiac mode that deals with "stories of dying gods"; an elegiac mode that "presents a heroism unspoiled by irony"; a high mimetic mode which "mingles the heroic with the ironic" and in which "pity and fear become, respectively, favorable and adverse moral judgment, which are relevant to tragedy but not central to it"; a low mimetic mode in which "pity and fear are neither purged nor absorbed into pleasures, but are communicated externally, as sensation" and whose root idea "is the exclusion of an individual on our own level from a social group to which he is trying to belong": and an ironic mode in which pity and fear are not "raised" but rather "reflected" to the reader and which represents "simply the study of tragic

isolation as such" inasmuch as its tragic hero "does not necessarily have any tragic hamartia or pathetic obsession: he is only somebody who gets isolated from his society."8 I find a similar problem in Frye's subsequent discussion of six phases of tragedy. His first phase is one "in which the central character is given the greatest possible dignity in contrast to the other characters, so that we get the perspective of a stag pulled down by wolves"; his second phase "is in one way or another the tragedy of innocence in the sense of inexperience, usually involving young people"; his third phase

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is one "in which a strong emphasis is thrown on the success or completeness of the hero's achievement"; his fourth phase involves "the

typical fall of the hero through hybris and hamartia"; his fifth phase is an ironic perspective of tragedy which "presents for the most part the tragedy of lost direction and lack of knowledge, not unlike the second phase except that the context is the world of adult experience"; his sixth plhase represents "a world of shock and horror in which the central images are images of sparagmos, that is, cannibalism, mutilation, and torture."9 Frye's discussion of tragedy thus provides some perceptive descriptive statements about possible kinds of tragic experience but it does not provide us with firm and objective criteria by which the various modes and phases of tragedy can be compared and understood. In place of Aristotle's rigorous but very narrow prescription for the attainment of the ideal form of tragedy and Frye's comprehensive but too subjective description of the varieties of tragic experience, we have presented a system of analysis rooted in an expansion of, and extrapolation from, the objective criteria utilized by Aristotle in the Poetics. This system provides a means of making an objective analysis and comparison of all the various patterns of tragedy and of observing the unity that underlies their diversity.
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