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The Contributions Of Aristotle And Aristotle

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Aristotle (384 BCE- 322 BCE) was born in Stagirus in north Greece. He was the son of Nichomachus who was court physician to King Amyntas of Macedonia. As a child Aristotle lost his Father and was then living under the guardianship of Proxenus, who later at the age of eighteen had sent Aristotle to study under Plato. Aristotle and Plato’s theory differed in many ways and so, even after staying with Plato for twenty years and becoming highly able and worthy Aristotle was not made the leader of Plato’s Academy. After that Aristotle went to different Kingdoms and studied all the subjects that were present during his time and not only learnt them but also made contributions in every subject either it was zoology, physics, metaphysics, ethics, poetics, …show more content…

His theories were completely different from that of his teacher Plato because Plato believed in the concept of ultimate reality through reason or reflection but Aristotle, on the other hand believed in ultimate eternity. Earlier his works and theories were criticised but then during the later middle ages, Aristotle’s work was rediscovered and adopted by the medieval scholars. Even after thousands of centuries to his death, yet today Aristotle is believed to be one of the most influential people who ever existed in the world. He was the founder to many new fields and also had made contributions in every field that then existed. He laid the foundation for reasoning, established the role of senses, the laws of logic, differentiated plants and animals on the basis of their characteristics and many more things. We shall further discuss about one of his most famous work, Aristotle’s Poetics in detail, discussing about the concept of comedy, epic and tragedy given by …show more content…

He considers Plot or Fable to be the most important of all elements and defines it “as the harmonious arrangement of the incidents”4. He says that a plot should have a proper beginning, middle and end. He divides the plot into two types: complex and simple. According to Aristotle, complex plots are better than simple plots because a complex plot has both recognition and reversal of intention. There are five elements of a plot which include Tragic Hero, Hamartia, Peripeteia, Anagnorisis, Catharsis. A tragic hero is one who arouses the feeling of pity and fear in the audiences. The character of a tragic hero should neither be perfect nor utterly wicked, rather it should be good because seeing a tragedy occur in a perfect man’s life would be unfair and in a wicked man’s life would bring up a feeling of happiness. Aristotle defines hamartia as the ‘tragic flaw’. It is the error in judgement or misstep through which the fortunes of the tragic hero leads to hamartia. Anagnorisis is the moment when the character makes a critical discovery. It originally meant recognition in Greek context. Peripeteia is also called the reversal of fortunes. Aristotle describes catharsis as the purging of emotions of pity and fear that are aroused in the viewer of the tragedy. The story of Oedipus Rex best suits the five elements of plot. He kills his real father and marries

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