Aristotle, Frye, and the Theory of Tragedy

Abstract

N ORTHROP FRYE has recognized a basic kinship between his Anatomy of Criticism and Aristotle's Poetics. After noting with 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 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-