*anyone catch the song in the title?
In On Poetics, Aristotle claimed that a tragedy was made or broken by a great plot, and that characters were secondary and relatively unimportant.
Don't get me wrong. Aristotle was a great guy. Very smart. Classic. But I'm not sure if I think comedy (where characters are central) should be a higher art form than tragedy, or if Aristotle was wrong, but I disagree with his conclusions on some level.
It's the quirks. The characters. The slightly irrational desire to mess with other people who think politics can be rational. The unpredictable ones. The oddballs. Even the megalomaniacs are fascinating.
And words. The way people use them. The unintentionally profound. The intendedly profound that is actually mundane and stilted. The words that last. The words that don't. The unforeseen ironies. The ability of our lives to create stories in retrospect, with themes and refrains and foreshadowing and everything that makes great literature. It's genius.
I'm an English (former) major. I love history. It's all connected.
I'm such a geek. :-P
Favorite quote of the day: "Outisde of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read." -Groucho Marx
No comments:
Post a Comment