Aris old tot
May. 5th, 2004 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyI was woken this morning by my subconscious trying to write Murdock/Krycek. With slugs. And, yes, I mean Murdock, not Mulder.
On the Albatrician front, I have finished with the Latin translations. (Applause, loud cheers.) Which means I really have no excuses left: I must do more secondary reading. (Boos, hissing, catcalls from the upper gallery.) You will understand that my attitude toward this reading is not, perhaps, the best and most cooperative it could be. In point of fact, I am bitter and resentful and tempted to start throwing things.
But that actually isn't the reason I bring this up. (Stunned, silent amazement.) I'm currently fighting (and, please, do use Flynn and Rathbone for the visual there) with John Kerrigan's Revenge Tragedy, which one of my committee members insisted I read, and my director, drat her, backed them up. As![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
heres_luck has already been privileged to learn, my bad attitude is manifesting itself as a strong inclination to nit-pick and argue with everything the man has to say.
Not professional, no. Nor is it conducive to getting the damn reading done and getting on with things. But in the particular case I really just can't keep my mouth shut ... because I need information and outside opinions from people who have perhaps had a better relationship with Aristotle and the Poetics than I have.
I was introduced to Aristotle's theory of tragedy in tenth grade, where we were presented with it as a rubric by which to diagram and analyze all tragedy. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that this strategy DOES NOT WORK, let us acknowledge that this approach does not encourage the student to read Aristotle himself with any kind of subtlety.
I have actually read the Poetics: five years ago, and inconveniently what actually remains in my mind pigeon-holed under ARISTOTLE, Poetics, the, is much more closely akin to the simple schematic I was taught at the age of fourteen. Since it's this schematic Kerrigan is dealing with, and I think misrepresenting ... well, you can see why I'd like other thinkers to step in.
First off, Kerrigan seems to think that the Poetics can be applied broad-spectrum to all tragedy. Which it can't. I know this personally because of the incredible frustrations and creative misreadings necessary to any attempt to apply the Poetics to plays that don't follow its rather narrow prescriptive formula. I also know this because the independent study which led me to read the Poetics five years ago also led me to read commentaries on the Poetics, some of which said quite specifically and openly that Aristotle's theory of tragedy applies to Oedipus Rex and plays like it, which the commentator estimated at perhaps 10% of the corpus of Greek tragedy.
Then Kerrigan represents the schematic of Aristotelian tragedy as going peripeteia, anagnorisis, pathos: reversal, recognition, and what I suppose we, in English, would actually call "tragedy." Now, as I said, I spent a lot of time as a fourteen-year-old learning how to chart Aristotelian tragedy onto helpless and unsuspecting plays, and according to my memory of what I was taught, Kerrigan has left out the vital step of hamartia, the transgression springing from hubris. (You have no idea how difficult it is to make sense of the Agamemnon when you have to read Agamemnon's walking on the cloak as the critical moment of hamartia around which the play revolves. But I digress.) The anagnorisis, in the reductive flow-chart I was taught, is the recognition of the hubris which caused the hamartia. Kerrigan doesn't admit hamartia to his argument, but he also doesn't offer a convincing explanation of what the anagnorisis is an anagnorisis of.
Now, one may or may not agree with Aristotle. As I've indicated, I think he offers a brilliant reading of Oedipus Rex and not much else. But one cannot--or should not--misrepresent Aristotle in order to shanghai him into supporting one's argument. What I want to know is: is that a reasonable interpretation of what Kerrigan is doing (based, yes, merely on my representation of his argument), or am I seeing giants where there are really only windmills?
Comments, opinions, lengthy exegeses welcome.
On the Albatrician front, I have finished with the Latin translations. (Applause, loud cheers.) Which means I really have no excuses left: I must do more secondary reading. (Boos, hissing, catcalls from the upper gallery.) You will understand that my attitude toward this reading is not, perhaps, the best and most cooperative it could be. In point of fact, I am bitter and resentful and tempted to start throwing things.
But that actually isn't the reason I bring this up. (Stunned, silent amazement.) I'm currently fighting (and, please, do use Flynn and Rathbone for the visual there) with John Kerrigan's Revenge Tragedy, which one of my committee members insisted I read, and my director, drat her, backed them up. As
heres_luck has already been privileged to learn, my bad attitude is manifesting itself as a strong inclination to nit-pick and argue with everything the man has to say.Not professional, no. Nor is it conducive to getting the damn reading done and getting on with things. But in the particular case I really just can't keep my mouth shut ... because I need information and outside opinions from people who have perhaps had a better relationship with Aristotle and the Poetics than I have.
I was introduced to Aristotle's theory of tragedy in tenth grade, where we were presented with it as a rubric by which to diagram and analyze all tragedy. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that this strategy DOES NOT WORK, let us acknowledge that this approach does not encourage the student to read Aristotle himself with any kind of subtlety.
I have actually read the Poetics: five years ago, and inconveniently what actually remains in my mind pigeon-holed under ARISTOTLE, Poetics, the, is much more closely akin to the simple schematic I was taught at the age of fourteen. Since it's this schematic Kerrigan is dealing with, and I think misrepresenting ... well, you can see why I'd like other thinkers to step in.
First off, Kerrigan seems to think that the Poetics can be applied broad-spectrum to all tragedy. Which it can't. I know this personally because of the incredible frustrations and creative misreadings necessary to any attempt to apply the Poetics to plays that don't follow its rather narrow prescriptive formula. I also know this because the independent study which led me to read the Poetics five years ago also led me to read commentaries on the Poetics, some of which said quite specifically and openly that Aristotle's theory of tragedy applies to Oedipus Rex and plays like it, which the commentator estimated at perhaps 10% of the corpus of Greek tragedy.
Then Kerrigan represents the schematic of Aristotelian tragedy as going peripeteia, anagnorisis, pathos: reversal, recognition, and what I suppose we, in English, would actually call "tragedy." Now, as I said, I spent a lot of time as a fourteen-year-old learning how to chart Aristotelian tragedy onto helpless and unsuspecting plays, and according to my memory of what I was taught, Kerrigan has left out the vital step of hamartia, the transgression springing from hubris. (You have no idea how difficult it is to make sense of the Agamemnon when you have to read Agamemnon's walking on the cloak as the critical moment of hamartia around which the play revolves. But I digress.) The anagnorisis, in the reductive flow-chart I was taught, is the recognition of the hubris which caused the hamartia. Kerrigan doesn't admit hamartia to his argument, but he also doesn't offer a convincing explanation of what the anagnorisis is an anagnorisis of.
Now, one may or may not agree with Aristotle. As I've indicated, I think he offers a brilliant reading of Oedipus Rex and not much else. But one cannot--or should not--misrepresent Aristotle in order to shanghai him into supporting one's argument. What I want to know is: is that a reasonable interpretation of what Kerrigan is doing (based, yes, merely on my representation of his argument), or am I seeing giants where there are really only windmills?
Comments, opinions, lengthy exegeses welcome.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-05-05 07:49 am (UTC)Murdock as in The A-Team ?
no subject
Date: 2004-05-05 08:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-05 12:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-05 07:49 am (UTC)I also agree on both the necessity of hamartia and the apparent exclusion of it from Kerrigan's argument.
I met Kerrigan in the context of Shakespearian Tragedy rather than classical (he has now left the University - some years ago, in fact) and I'd like to recommend Kiernan Ryan's Shakespeare (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0133555461/qid=1083768454/sr=1-9/ref=sr_1_8_9/202-1783624-8630209#product-details) over Kerrigan. Sorry if that's no use to you whatsoever. Kiernan Ryan is himself a man who built a career on one singular idea, but it's an idea I like.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-05 08:10 am (UTC)I will keep Kiernan Ryan in mind for the next time I feel capable of reading Shakespearian scholarship for pleasure.
Sadly, I'm stuck with Kerrigan.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-05 09:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-05 07:54 am (UTC)It's one way of engaging with a text. Even if you're feeling essentially negative about both the text and the method of engagement right now, you can turn it into your own positive, productive output by using it as a way to get at what you really think. As long as you do that part, there's no problem having a bit of a go at someone else's scholarhip (especially if it's full of holes).
no subject
Date: 2004-05-05 08:19 am (UTC)I thought even people who believed Aristotle described all Greek tragedy acknowledged it didn't fit other models, notably Senecan and Elizabethan/Jacobean?
no subject
Date: 2004-05-05 08:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-05 10:36 am (UTC)Pamela
no subject
Date: 2004-05-05 11:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-05 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-05 05:40 pm (UTC)That is brilliant.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-06 07:48 am (UTC)