PRECIS

Aristotle attempts to make differences between three types of poetry: comedies, tragedies, and epics.  He says that imitation is prevalent in all of the different types.  Audiences don’t have to be afraid when horrific acts are demonstrated on stage because we understand that this is just an imitation of a human action and not the actual action.  One difference between tragedy and epics is the length of each.  Epics have one type of verse and are in narrative form and its action has no fixed limit of time (229).  All the parts of an epic are included in a tragedy but all parts of a tragedy are not in an epic (230).   Aristotle also says that there are six parts to every tragedy: a fable or plot, characters, diction, thought, spectacle, and melody (231).  He goes on to explain what each one means in a dizzying amount of words.  I think that Aristotle gets his point across about the differences between the three types of poetry but does so in a labor intensive way for the reader.  It was easier to pinpoint some of his more simple sentences to make sense out of his more complex ones.  It would be so much easier and friendlier to read if as a whole the chapters were simpler.  It’s too exhausting to read too much at one time.  I took a couple breaks and moved my way through slowly and think I will understand it better after having a conversation about its content.