Aristotle's Poetics and the Problem of Tragic Conflict

Abstract

Despite the broad diversity in our century of views about tragedy, most critics show remarkable agreement about one point: that ‘conflict’ is a central defining characteristic of the form. Tragedy has repeatedly been discussed in terms of a struggle, which involves competing demands or forces that press in on man and shape his conduct. Although the structure of such a conflict has been variously formulated, in general it has been conceived in one of three ways: 1) as a psychological dilemma of inner decision-making, in which the hero must choose between opposing claims that he cannot mediate; 2) as a social collision between agents who hold to different but often equally valid ethical claims; 3) as a religious struggle implicating man in resistance against a force of divine necessity, such as fate, oracles, or the gods.A wide host of influences could be marshalled to explain the development of popularity of these modern conceptions. Existentialism has had a hand in forming theories of tragedy that concentrate on crises of decision-making. Hegel's critical views of drama in theVorlesungen ueber die Aesthetikhave had an impact on the idea that tragic struggle emerges within the state and the potential competition between civic and familial obligations. And German Romantic critics, for example, Schiller and Schlegel, have made their mark on the notion that the tragic hero asserts his dignity against an external force of necessity threatening personal autonomy. But it has often been argued that these relatively modern influences are themselves derivative. According to many critics, theories of tragic conflict are ultimately indebted to Aristotle's Poetics. The Greek treatise is seen as the primary source for an idea that has by now become commonplace.