On the Skopos and Threefold End of the Poetics

(c) 2013. Bart A. Mazzetti

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Introduction

The skopos of a work is its purpose or aim. Since reason acts for an end, in order to grasp the purport of any work, one must know toward what goal or end a discourse is tending if he is to follow along properly and understand well what is said. But because the skopos embraces the subject of a science, for reason to grasp this aim one must know the subject genus and its principal parts, i.e. the species into which it is divided and the prin-ciples out of which it is constituted (cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, In I Post. Anal., lect. 41, n. 9). One must also know the formal reason according to which the subject genus is treated, since the subject in a science is that under whose ratio everything is referred in the science (cf. S.Th., Ia, q. 1, art. 7, c.) Again, one must know the subject’s definition, which, as the middle term of demonstration, is the principle of our scientific knowledge of it (idem, IIa-IIae, q. 1, art. 1, c.).

Our purpose in this article is to determine the skopos or aim of Aristotle’s book About the Poetic Art, commonly called the Poetics, both in general and in particular, and to show how this aim gives rise to a threefold end whose members are ordered to one another as proximate, intermediate, and ultimate. But when the end of this doctrine has been grasped, the necessity for a book (or books) about the poetic art will come into view.

Aristotle himself, with the first words of his proem to the Poetics (ch. 1, 1447a 8-13), tells us the matter or subject to be treated in the book, both in general and in particular, his work being about the poetic art itself, and its forms themselves, which is the first part of its skopos or aim. Afterward, in Chapters 1 and 4, he determines the principles constitu-ting the definition of the subject, which is the formal object of the science.

The first of the ends following on the skopos may be gathered from Chapter 5 (1449b 17-18), and the whole of Chapter 25 (1460b 6–1461b 26), among many other places in the text, as well as from the practice of judges of poetry throughout the centuries, that end being the directing of reason in judging what is good and bad in poems. The second and third ends, to be treated further below, will be taken from St. Thomas Aquinas’ proem to his commentary on the Posterior Analytics (cf. lect. 1, n. 6) where he places poetics as a part of logic. Why there is a threefold end of the Poetics following on its skopos and the reason for the ordering of these ends according to the ratios of proximate, intermediate, and ultimate will become evident from what follows.

The Skopos of the Poetics in General

The skopos of the Poetics in general is the poetic art itself, insofar as it is the poetic art, that is to say, insofar as it is an art of imitating delightfully.1 To see that this is its aim, we must begin by considering the whole of Aristotle’s proem to the work:

1 Cf. Charles De Koninck, Notula in Prima Pars Q. 1, Art. 9, Ad 1 (The Charles De Koninck Project): “In order to clarify this response it is to be noted that poetry is in the genus of the arts of imitating, whose other species are painting, music, sculpture, etc. But the definition of the whole genus is “the art of imitating delightfully”. But the difference of poetry is in speech, of music in rhythmical sound, etc.” Ad hanc responsionem declarandum notetur quod poetica est in genere artium imitandi, cujus aliae sunt species pictura, musica, sculptura, etc. Totius autem generis definitio est “ars delectabiliter imitandi”. Differentia autem poetica est sermo, musicae sonus rythmicus, etc.

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About the poetic art itself and its forms themselves, what power each one has, and how plots [10] should be constructed if the making in which poetry consists is to be well disposed; and further, from how many and of what sort of parts [each one] is; and likewise about whatever else belongs to the same method let us speak, beginning according to nature first from first things. (ch. 1, 1447a 8-13)

While the first part of the skopos is clear, namely the subject genus of the science, for a more perfect understanding of his words we must draw out their import, inasmuch as the Philosopher is here studens brevitati.

As Aristotle says, in this book he determines about the poetic art itself. But since the poetic art is one only by a community of predication,2 to understand it distinctly one must descend to the several forms the art takes, since it is immediately divided into them. But to understand these forms, one must look to what power each one itself has, such power being made known through the art’s proper effect.3 But to understand this effect (a point presupposed to Aristotle’s argument here), one must trace it back to the form of the work produced by the art; that is, one must understand the form of each species of poem, since a thing acts through its form,4 the form in a poetic work or ‘poem’5 being its plot or story. Thus, to attain the aforementioned aim, one must understand how plots should be put together, and from how many and what sort of parts, if the making of poems is to be well disposed; that is, if the poiesis is to turn out well. One must also understand “any other things which belong to the same method”, in particular, problems and solutions in the poetic art, as Aristotle makes clear in the final sentence of the surviving work, quoted below. Why it is necessary for one to understand the reasons for a poem’s turning out well will be clear from the next division.

2 On “community of predication”, cf. Charles De Koninck, “The Unity and Diversity of Natural Science”:

St. Thomas’ own Proemium to the Physics distinguishes the various branches of natural science ac-cording to what is less and less universal, and natural science can hardly proceed without divisions based upon decreasing generality, if by generality is meant community of predication, as ‘animal’ is more common than ‘man’. Hence it is that Aristotle, in the first treatise of natural science, the Physics, studies mobile or changeable being in general. What he there establishes is meant to apply to every kind of change. First to absolute change, as when a man comes to be or dies; then to the special kind of change called motion, such as walking, turning pale, or growing.

(See also his remarks on the universal in praedicando quoted at a later point in this discussion.) It will be observed, then, that the study of the poetic art involves the same movement from the general to the particular, insofar as Aristotle unfolds the doctrine about the poetic art by examining its species, principally tragedy, comedy, and epic.3 A thing’s ‘virtue’ being gauged by the utmost of which it is capable, as Aristotle explains in On the Heavens I. 11 (281a 8ff.; cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, S.Th., Ia-IIae, q, 55, art. 3, c.), in accordance with which understanding we define a weightlifter by the greatest amount he can lift, rather than by some part of that amount, or a typist by the greatest number of words he can type per minute, rather than by a smaller number. In the same way the poetic art is defined by the utmost it can do; for example, the art of tragedy by its capacity to produce the pleasure which comes about through the purging of the passions of pity and fear, as opposed to its power to produce pleasure in those (if such there be) who do not stand in need of a cathartic experience.4 Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, SCG, II cap. 2, n. 1 (tr. B.A.M.): “One cannot have perfect knowledge of anything unless its operation is known. For from the mode of operation both the measure of the species and the quality of the power is gauged; but power reveals the nature of a thing: for each thing is naturally apt to act according to this, that such a nature is actually allotted to it”.55 We are using the word “poem” here in the wide sense, as Aristotle uses poiema in the Poetics, to signify any imitation of human action, passion, or character; that is, one, which tells a made-up story of some kind.

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As we have noted above, our first determination of the skopos in general has stated the genus subjectum of this science, which is the poetic art itself. But since every science treats its subject genus under a determined formality,6 to this account we have added that the book treats of the poetic art precisely insofar as it is the poetic art, that is, insofar as it is an art of imitating delightfully, a species of what has come to be called a ‘fine’ art.7 This ratio is evident from the proximate genus of the principal species of poetic art (e.g. epic poetry, tragedy and comedy, etc.), namely, imitation (cf. ch. 1 1447a 15-16), whose end is pleasure or delight (cf. ch. 4, 1448b 9, and passim), and the three differentiae constituting those species, the means, the object, and the manner of imitating (ibid. ch. 1). Taken to-gether, these terms make up the definition of the subject, which is the formal object of the science. Another sign of this conclusion is the distinction Aristotle draws between poetic arts in terms of their proper pleasure. By way of contrast, the art of music, considered as a way of imitating, is a form of fine art, whereas when it is treated in terms of its mathema-tical principles it constitutes a liberal art.8 Hence, the skopos in general of the Poetics is clear.

Its particular aim may be inferred from the words with which Aristotle ends the first book, mentioned above: “Hence, about tragedy and epic poetry in themselves, their kinds and their parts, how many there are and how they differ, and by what causes they turn out well or not, and about critical cavils and their solutions, let what has been said suffice” (ch. 26, 1462b 12-15).9 The skopos of the Poetics in particular, then, is deter-minate knowledge of the specific poetic arts, especially tragedy, epic, and comedy.10

6 Compare the science of metaphysics, which treats of being insofar as it is being, and Sacred Doctrine, which treats its subject under the ratio of God, either because such things are God Himself, or because they have an order to Him as to their beginning and end (S.Th., Ia, q. 1, art.7, c.). On this matter, one should note that in every science there are two things to be considered, namely its subject and its object, in each of which there is something material and something formal. By naming “the poetic art itself” we have stated the sub-ject genus of this science, e.g. “that whose causes and properties we are seeking” (St. Thomas Aquinas, In Lib. Meta., Proem), which is “the subjectum scibile,” i.e. “that about which we seek scientific knowledge, and from which this knowledge is to be inferred” (Charles De Koninck, Natural Science as Philosophy, Quebec: 1959, p. 7). We are now determining the ratio formalis of the science, e.g. the determinate formality according to which the genus subjectum is considered; that is to say, that notion according to which the genus is the proper and commensurate subject of the attributes to be demonstrated of it. Comparing the formal and material objects of a science to the objects of a knowing power or habit, St. Thomas states:

The object of every knowing habit includes two things: first, that which is known materially, and is the material object, so to speak, and secondly, that whereby it is known, which is the formal notion [ratio formalis] of the object. Thus in the science of geometry, the conclusions are what is known ma-terially, while the formal notion of the science consists in the middle terms of demonstration, through which the conclusions are known. (S.Th., IIa-IIae, q. 1, art. 1, c.)

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With respect to these middle terms, St. Thomas explains that “beginning from the whatness itself of a thing (e.g. of God, or being, etc.), sciences demonstrate the proper passions which belong essentially to the genus subjectum with which they are concerned; for the definition is the middle term in a demonstration propter quid” (In VI Meta., lect. 1, n. 1149). In the present case, the middle term is “art of imitating delightfully”. ? Cf. Metaph., Bk. I, ch. 1, 981b 14-25, where Aristotle divides the arts into several kinds, including those which supply the necessities of life (the servile arts, whose end is their usefulness to man); those whose end is giving pleasure or delight (what were afterwards called the fine arts, which are arts of imitation); and those whose end is knowledge of the truth (the mathematical sciences).8 Cf. In Lib. I Boetii de Trin. q. 5., art. 3, ad 7: “For example, [the liberal art of] music considers sounds, not inasmuch as they are sounds, but inasmuch as they are able to be proportioned according to numbers”.9 Unless otherwise noted, all translations appearing in this paper are my own.10 The second book of the Poetics in which Aristotle discussed the forms of comedy has, unfortunately, been lost, as has his consideration of katharsis.

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The Proximate End

The proximate end of the Poetics is to direct reason in judging what is good and bad in poems. That this is an end is clear from the text we have just quoted, as well as from Chapter 5 (1449b 17-18) where Aristotle, speaking of the two species of poem he will first discuss says, “Hence, he who knows what is good and bad about tragedy, knows the same about epic poetry”. Moreover, he devotes an entire Chapter (25) to a discussion of pro-blems arising from critical objections to such poems, and their solutions; and at many places earlier in the text he has pointed out instances of the good and bad in poems. Fur-thermore, that the judge of poetry must be concerned with the good and bad in poems is, as we have noted above, clear from common experience, as well as from the history of criti-cism, and needs no further elaboration here.

The need for this end may be gathered from the following considerations. Although art imitates nature as much as it is able, and perfects what nature is unable to bring to com-pletion, nature, in her own right, often fails to give men the dispositions they need to succeed in a given art. For this reason (often conjoined to other, external factors), many poems fall short of the excellence attainable by the art, some few poems being good, but many others bad. Hence, the lover of poetry must be taught how to judge what is good and bad in poems. Such knowledge requires that he know what poems are in definition (which becomes evident when the skopos of this work is grasped)—which amounts to knowing what they ought to be, i.e. when there has been no defect in the causes of their coming to be—in order to see whether or not their making has turned out well; that is to say, in order to see whether or not they have succeeded or failed precisely as poems, for reasons bearing directly on the nature of the art, rather than on something incidental to it, such as know-ledge proper to another art (for which, see Poetics, ch. 25, at the beginning). For example, to judge tragedy well, one must know the nature of the action it should imitate (i.e. something of serious import), the change of fortune proper to it (i.e. from good to bad), the type of character the protagonist should have (i.e. better than us but not perfect in virtue), and similar matters. Hence, the lover of poetry, if his judgments about the good and bad in poems are to be sound, must understand the doctrine found in the Poetics.11

The Intermediate End

The intermediate end of the Poetics is to inform reason how to judge the truth or fittingness of the assent to the estimation or conjecture one is led to form about human experience in light of a poem’s representation of what life is like, which end is further ordered to the ultimate end: to direct reason in proceeding from what it already knows into new knowledge.12 Concerning these several ends, we must examine a passage from St. Thomas Aquinas mentioned above:

11 On this conclusion, cf. the following: “Because the question what a poem is and why and how it is made is prior to the question whether the poem at hand is a good one, the practice of poetic criticism rests ultimately on some opinion as to the nature and purpose of poetry.” Mark Heath, O.P., Review of A Philosophy of Poetry: Based on Thomistic Principles, by Rev. John Duffy, C.SS.R., in The Thomist, Vol. IX, 1946, p. 588.12 Just as the first act of the understanding is perfected by the formation of a definition, and the second act by an enunciation, so, too, a certain instrument formed by reason, namely, an argument of some kind, perfects the third act. This tool is put together from statements known beforehand, which are therefore called pre-mises, whose terms are so ordered that they cause reason to know something new, e.g. the conclusion, which reason sees to follow necessarily from the premises being so (Cf. Pr. An. I, 1, 24b 18-20). In the present instance such new knowledge may be called poetica scientia (cf. In I Sent., Prol., q. 1, art. 5, ad 3) inasmuch as poetry is a ‘doctrine’, albeit infima doctrina, as St. Thomas says (cf. S.Th. Ia, q. 1, art. 9, obj. 1).

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But sometimes a mere estimation [or conjectural judgement: sola existimatio] inclines [reason]13 to some part of a contradiction on account of some representation, the way in which there comes to be disgust in a man for some food if it be represented to him under the likeness of something disgusting. And to this poetics is ordered; for it belongs to the poet to lead to something virtuous through some fitting representation. But all this pertains to rational philosophy; for it belongs to reason to lead from one thing into another. (Proem, In I Post. Anal., lect. 1, n. 6)

According to this account, a poem, insofar as it is the representation of something, engages the passions of the sensitive appetite (concupiscentia), thereby moving reason to assent to the conclusion of the conjecture it leads one to form (on which subject, see fur-ther below). This being so, it follows that reason needs appropriate criteria by which to judge its assent. (This is the intermediate end.) For just as disgust comes to be in a man for some food when it is represented to him under the likeness of something disgusting, so, too, desire comes to be in him for some action when it is represented under the likeness of something desirable. Hence, insofar as the passions profoundly influence our judgments, and consequently our character, a man must recognize when human action and its attendant passion have been fittingly portrayed so that, knowing which actions are good and noble and to be delighted in, and which are base or ignoble and to be detested, he will be equipped to recognize correctness when it is achieved in their portrayal, lest one delight in inappropriate or immoral representations (a subject to which I return below).

Now the movement of the appetite giving rise to a passion by which one’s reason is inclined to one part of a contradiction is produced immediately by the agency of the poet’s representation. Thus, a poem moves the reason through the pleasing intelligibility of its similitudo, and not through any middle term or similar instrument of reasoning properly so called. Indeed, while it is true that such reasoning does indeed follow on one’s response to a poem, and is in fact essential to a grasp of its meaning, the true moving cause of a poem’s attainment of its utmost effect is the movement of the passions arising from the fancy or conjecture one forms in the very moment of experiencing it. For a better under-standing of this matter, consider the following observation by St. Thomas:

The rhetorician and the poet, on the other hand, induce assent to what they intend not only through what is proper to the thing, but also through the dispositions of the hearer. (In I Peri Herm., lect. 7, no. 6)

Such an assent being necessary inasmuch as “poetica scientia is about things which be-cause of a lack of truth, cannot be grasped by reason; whence it is necessary that reason be seduced, as it were, by certain likenesses”. (In I Sent., Prol., q. 1, art. 1, ad 3),14 a “se-ducing” that must be understood in the light of St. Thomas’ teaching that “…it is evident that according to a passion of the sensitive appetite a man is changed to a certain dispos-ition. Wherefore according as a man is affected by passion, something seems fitting to him which does not seem so when he is not affected” (S.Th., Ia-IIae, q. 9, art. 2, c.).

13 That ‘reason’ is the subject of this sentence is clear from his earlier statements regarding the preceding parts of logic, a fact also indicated by the words sola existimatio being in the ablative case, thereby making them unable to function as the sentence’s subject.14 Cf. also S.Th., Ia-IIae, q. 101, art. 2, ad 2 and ibid., Ia, q. 1, art. 9, ad 1. Also relevant here is Aristotle’s statement in the Rhetoric that the passions are “…all those feelings that so change men as to affect their judgments, and that are also attended by pain or pleasure” (Bk. II, ch. 1, 1378a 20-22).

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As a help in seeing how this species of judgment works, let us consider one’s natural response to a representative poetic utterance, as is provided by the following passage from William Wordsworth’s lyric, The Solitary Reaper:

Will no one tell me what she sings?–Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow,For old, unhappy, far-off things And battles long ago. (ll. 17-20)

By the foregoing words the speaker describes his response to a vision of a “high-land lass… single in the field” singing to herself in a language he cannot understand. In the lines quoted, notice how the speaker forms a “fancy” concerning the meaning of her song, by so doing evoking in the reader a similar response (e.g. “perhaps she sings an old ballad of some heroic but doomed deed of William Wallace”), and so conveys to him a sense of the poignancy of the moment. In their truth to nature such lines appeal in a pleasing way to our compassion, moving it immediately without any laborious process of reasoning inter-vening. In this way the poet moves us to think and feel as he does. A similar experience occurs in daily life when, for instance, a child rejoices to hear forgiving words instead of scolding from his mother after accidentally breaking her favorite vase; or when a young man exults to receive a smile and a nod from an attractive woman he is passing on the street. In such cases one grasps immediately the import of the words or gestures directed at him, experiencing thereby a certain emotional response. In our second example, the young man feels his heart leap up, not because he has plodded through an abstract series of syllogisms, but because his particular reason has grasped at once the significance of the lady’s smile; the change in his disposition issuing in a judgement that this outcome is good and to be desired.

Now although one’s response to a poem agrees with the foregoing in kind, there are significant differences. First, one responds not to the thing itself, but to a likeness of the thing, as it is grasped through some description or other “suitable representation”. Hence, one’s reaction will resemble, but not be identical to, his response to the thing itself. Second, insofar as one grasps the imitation as an imitation, his conjecture takes the form of a comparison of the apprehended “form” with a remembered form similar to it, thereby leading to a moment of delightful recognition that the portrayed thing is “so-and-so”.15

15 St. Thomas explains this experience as follows:

Again, we must observe that if an animal were moved by pleasing and disagreeable things only as affecting the sense there would be no need to suppose that an animal has a power besides the apprehension of those forms which the senses perceive and in which the animal takes pleasure, or from which it shrinks with horror. But the animal needs to seek or avoid certain things not only because they are pleasing or otherwise to the senses, but also on account of other advantages and uses or disadvantages; just as the sheep runs away when it sees a wolf approaching, not on account of its color or shape, but as a natural enemy; and again a bird gathers together straws, not because they are pleasant to the sense, but because they are useful for building its nest. Animals, therefore, need to perceive such intentions, which the exterior sense does not perceive. And some distinct principle is necessary for this, since the perception of sensible forms comes by a sensible change, which is not the case with the perception of the intentions spoken about.

…(Now) the power, which in other animals is called the natural estimative, in man, is called the cogitative, which by some sort of gathering together and comparison discovers these intentions. Therefore it is also called the particular reason… ...for it compares individual intentions, just as the intellectual reason compares universal intentions.... (S.Th., Ia, q. 78, art. 4, obj. 5)

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We can get a clearer understanding of this matter by first looking into the meaning of the word St. Thomas has chosen to signify one’s “assent” in this regard. According to his usage, existimatio names a judgement of reason bearing on operable singulars; one which can be corrupted by delight: “Contingit ergo aliquem peccatem rectam existimati-onem etiam de singularia operabilia in habitu habere…. inquantum judicium rationis, vehe-mentia passionis absorbetur: unde dicitur in 6 ethic., quod delectatio corrumpit existima-tionem prudentiae” (In II Sent., d. 5, q. 1, art. 1, c.). That is to say, sometimes one can make a mistake about a particular thing to be done, even when one knows habitually what is the right thing to be done, by reason of the vehemence of a passion overwhelming one’s presence of mind, thereby corrupting the judgment of prudence. Now in his Proem he clearly uses the word to name a judgement of the reason following on a passion in the sen-sitive appetite moved by the way something has been made to appear; e.g. in his example, by the likening of some food to something disgusting, as one might take away the appetite of another by saying to him, “Are you going to eat that lo mein? It looks like a plate of worms”.

As a help to understanding the process issuing in such a judgement, consider the following passage where, in speaking about the speculative reason’s inquiry into contin-gent things, St. Thomas says:

There are certain things in which it is not possible to… arrive at the quod quid est, and this on account of the uncertainty of their being, as in contingent things insofar as they are contingent. And so such things are not known through their quod quid est, which was the proper object of the understanding, but in another way, namely through some conjecture [quamdam conjecturam] about those things in which full certitude cannot be had. (Qu. Disp. de Ver., q. 15, art. 2, ad 3)

Now if the inquiry of the speculative reason in these matters can be called quam-dam conjecturam, so, a fortiori, can the process of one’s practical reason. Thus we have chosen the word conjecture to signify the “reasoning” issuing in existimatio since, accord-ing to the Oxford English Dictionary, it can mean “the formation of an opinion or suppose-tion as to facts on grounds admittedly insufficient….”; or again “…an unverified suppose-tion put forth to account for something”; or again, a “conclusion as to facts drawn from appearances or indications”. We have also used the word ‘fancy’ in this regard since it can mean “a supposition resting on no solid grounds” (ibid., s.v. fancy). Now one’s response to the expressive power of a poem will take this form, since the subject of imitation has been made to appear (through, e.g. figures of speech, the use of metre, dramatic portrayal, etc.) in a certain way in order to bring about a designated emotional effect.

It also follows from the foregoing considerations that when forming a “conjecture” issuing in a judgement or existimatio, one’s “reasoning” is similar to the formation of a practical syllogism, albeit one which concludes to the kind of thing or things one should do, or seek, or avoid, given the circumstances represented, rather than to what one should

And he goes on to add: “But this same particular reason is naturally guided and moved according to the universal reason, and so in syllogistic reasoning particular conclusions are drawn from universal propo-sitions” (ibid., q. 81, art. 3, c.). Hence, the judgement at work in an experience of this kind belongs to the particular reason and as such follows on a grasp of the ‘meaning’ inherent in the object moving it; that is to say, it follows on a comparison of this ‘intention’ with a remembered meaning or meanings manifesting the given object’s goodness or badness, fittingness or lack of fittingness, for the one experiencing it. Consequent to this comparison is a change in disposition: one’s sensitive appetite, when it apprehends the object as a good, inclines toward it; but when it sees it as an evil, it turns away.

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do, or seek, or avoid, here and now. Hence, such an action does not follow on one’s re-sponse to the representation, but merely the disposition to such an action.

For an informative account of how this process works, consider the following pas-sage (accompanied by our explanatory comments) from Samuel Johnson, a man of some experience in these matters:

It will be asked, how the drama moves, if it is not credited. It is credited with all the credit due to a drama. It is credited, whenever it moves, as a just picture of a real original; as a representing to the auditor what he himself would feel, if he were to do or suffer what is there feigned to be suffered or to be done [this is poetic belief]. The reflection that strikes the heart [e.g. one’s “fancy” or conjecture] is not, that the evils before us are real evils [they are only imitations], but that they are evils to which we ourselves may be exposed. If there be any fallacy [sc. in our reasoning], it is not that we fancy the players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a moment; but we rather lament the possibility than suppose the presence of misery [e.g. we grasp “what is possible to be” in such a case], as a mother weeps over her babe, when she remembers that death may take it from her [ this is to form an existimatio resulting from a “fancy”]. The delight of tragedy [which is its proper effect] proceeds from our consciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real, they would please no more. Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind. (Preface to Shakespeare)

This text of Dr. Johnson’s brings out marvelously well the essential points in the doctrine of poetics we have set out to explain. Note his perfect grasp of the drama as a re-presentation of human life that delights precisely because it brings such “realities” before the mind, thereby causing us to form a “fancy” issuing in a judgement about their meaning.

The Ultimate End

We said earlier that, over and above one’s immediate emotional response to a poem, a process of reasoning might follow, inasmuch as one seeks to better understand the poem’s meaning, which interpretation is founded on what might be called the poem’s “argument”. Now because such a process also stands in need of the direction, before proceeding further we must explain in what way a poem is the principle of such an argument, and thus how one’s reasoning is led to knowledge of something unknown from what was previously known. We shall begin with a text from St. Thomas on the principal meanings of the word “argument”:

Argument properly means a process of reason from things known to the manifest-tation of things unknown, according to what Boethius says (Lib. I, Differentiis Topicis, L. 64, 1174), that it is “reason making belief about a doubtful thing”. And because the whole force of an argument consists in the middle term from which one proceeds to the proof of things unknown, therefore the middle term itself is called an argument, whether it be a sign or a cause or an effect. And because in the middle term, or in the principle from which one proceeds in arguing, is contained in power the whole process of argumentation, therefore the name of argument has been drawn to this: any brief foretaste (or announcement) of a narrative to come…. And because the middle or principle is called an argument insofar as it has a power of manifesting the conclusion, and this is more truly in it from the light of the agent intellect, of which it is the instrument, since “all things which are argued are manifested by light”, as is said in Ephesians v. 13 [incorrect ref.], therefore, that very light by which the principles are manifested, just as by principles the conclusions are made

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manifest, can be called an argument of those very principles. (In III Sent., d. 23, q. 2, art. 1, ad 4, tr. unknown)

To these several meanings, we can add that the word “argument” is also used to signify any speech bringing together statements from which we reason, e.g. speech which signifies an “argument” in the first sense given above.

Taking up our question then, we ask, in what sense is a poem the principle of an “argument”, and so able to lead to new knowledge? Now, since a representation inclines reason to one side of a contradiction and so expresses a “conclusion” of some kind, when one interprets its meaning, a poem’s “argument” must derive from something belonging to it having “premises” with persuasive power. What, then, are the parts of a poem which are analogous to the premises (and middle terms) of arguments?

According to Aristotle, a poem will be well-constructed insofar as it is a whole having size, with a beginning, a middle, and en end, and a unity founded on a single action as the object imitated, a unity resulting when the action imitated has a necessary or likely connection between its composing parts (ch. 7, 1450b ff.).16 In speaking of the principal form of imitation, he states that “the most important of these parts is the makeup of the incidents, since tragedy is an imitation not of men but of action, and a way of life, and happiness and unhappiness, since men are happy or unhappy as a result of their actions” (ibid., ch. 6, 1450a 15-18). Looking to the movement of this action inasmuch as it bears upon a change in fortune (metabasis), Aristotle divides every plot or story into the tying of a knot and its untying, the limit between these parts being the aforementioned change in fortune (from good to bad in tragedy; the reverse in comedy, etc.). He adds that its greatest power of moving the soul comes about when the change is accompanied by recognition (anagnorisis), or reversal (peripeteia), or both.

Now any story first exists in a simple form corresponding to its briefest outline, which outline includes only the essential parts of the action. To these parts are added the episodes fleshing out the story to its appropriate magnitude or length (cf. Chapter 17). For the story to have unity these parts must be ordered to one another according to a certain principle, that is, as noted above, they must be made to follow on one another with necessity or likelihood. These parts are the things done, said, or suffered by the agents in the story (e.g., its praxis, logos, and pathe, comprising the principal incidents of the action), which, as Aristotle points out at Chapter 9, take the form of “what might be” with respect to such natures, rather than “what is”, unless “what is” happens to coincide with “what might be”, etc. As such, they are credible likenesses of things and not the things themselves; e.g. they represent such things as known in imaginative experience. Note, too, that these parts must derive from and express their agents’ thought (dianoia) and character (ethos) as the means by which their moral choice (proairesis) is manifested, and through which they tend toward their good (on the supposition, of course, that they commit no error in judgement (hamartia) having irreversible consequences defeating their purpose, etc.), without which causes the story will fail to represent “a way of life, of happiness and un-happiness”, and so lack compelling human interest.

These things being understood, we must say that it is from parts such as these, –parts e.g. whose composition makes for likenesses appealing to the passions, and hence able to change a man’s disposition with regard to them–, when grasped in their persuasive interconnectedness, that reason takes the “premises” from which it draws its conclusions

16 “But in order to define it simply, one may say, ‘in whatever extent, in successive incidents in accordance with likelihood or necessity, a change from bad fortune to good fortune or from good fortune to bad fortune takes place, is a [15] sufficient limit of the size’.” (Poet., ch. 7, 1451a 12-15)

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interpreting the full meaning of poems, inasmuch as these things are the causes of the outcome of the action. To take an instance, one might say that the “conclusion” to which Sophocles in his Oedipus wishes to gain our assent lies in the last words of the play: “Count no mortal happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain” (ll. 1529-30, Grene trans.). Now for reason to assent to these words it must see that they have been persuasively represented or exemplified in Oedipus’ story; e.g. reason must see that such and such a man in such and such circumstances is likely to do, say, and suffer such and such things. But Oedipus Rex is such and such a man, in such and such circumstances, etc. Therefore, etc.

Note that the first “such and such” here expresses the what it is of its subject, and hence does the job of a middle term in the process of reasoning, albeit after the manner of a likeness having a constructed or fictive universality (e.g. one expressing “what is possible to be” to the nature of the thing) and thus by appealing to the passions and the imagination, rather than as something proper to its subject as such, and thus able to move the reason through itself. The universal form of the process by which such a nature arises, e.g. poiesis as mimesis or imitative ‘making’, may be expressed thus: as something feigned, “x”, (the subject of imitation), is represented as or likened to “y”, (making “x” as “y” the object of imitation), solely on the basis of some common, fictively universal “z”. Hence, since “x” is only like “y”, “y” is not predicable of “x” as of a subject in virtue of what “z” is in itself, i.e. in definition.

Note here as well that, following on the argument we have made above, this “fictive universal”, in eliciting one’s response to a poem, performs two offices. On the one hand, insofar as it bestows on the representation an intelligibility grasped by the particular reason in the form of an “intention”, it brings about one’s immediate inference or conjecture as to it’s meaning. In this way it moves the passions of the sense desire and thereby affects one’s judgement about the thing. But on the other hand, this kind of “universal” also serves as the “middle term” in one’s reasoning to a full interpretation of a poem.

For an instance where reasoning of this latter kind has taken place, consider the following remarks of C.S. Lewis on the Oedipus:

In most [such stories] the very steps taken to prevent the fulfillment of the prophecy actually bring it about. It is foretold that Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother. In order to prevent this…he is exposed on the mountain and that exposure, by leading to his rescue and thus to his life among strangers in ignorance of his real parentage, renders possible both disasters. Such stories produce (at least in me) a feeling of awe, coupled with a certain sort of bewilderment such as one often feels in looking at a complex pattern of lines that pass over and under one another. One sees, yet does not quite see, the regularity. And is there not good occasion for both awe and bewilderment? We have just had set before our imagination something that has always baffled the intellect; we have seen how destiny and free will can be combined, even how free will is the modus operandi of destiny. The story does what no theorem can quite do. It may not be ‘like real life’ in the superficial sense: but it sets before us an image of what reality may well be like at some more central region.17

Note that Lewis’ experience of the play has led him to form several judgments about the work. First, he states a specific thesis (or ‘theme’) exemplified by the story: “In [such stories] the very steps taken to prevent the fulfillment of the prophecy actually bring 17 “On Stories”, in On Stories, and Other Essays in Literature (New York and London: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1966), pp. 14-15.

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it about”. He then gives a summary of its action in terms of the order between its parts as this gives rise to some unavoidable outcome to a course of action or “way of life”: “It is foretold that Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother…”, etc. Implicit in his analysis is a grasp of the role played by thought and character as the manifestation, through speech, of moral choice and hence as the causes of the play’s action. He also has grasped well the nature of the story as an imitation–, persuading us to grant to the dramatic poet some truth about the course of human life, which truth cannot be grasped by scientific reasoning: “We have just had set before our imagination something which has baffled the intellect… The story does what no theorem can quite do….” Now to reason thus is to know not what life is in itself, but rather what it is like when we are brought to see—that is, to recognize—what we only guessed at or knew imperfectly before. To this text one should compare the remarks of Dr. Johnson quoted above, insofar as both passages bring out the nature of poetic or literary “belief”, which we are concerned here to understand.

It is evident, then, that the order put into incidents of a certain kind (e.g., the combination of incidents comprising the plot), insofar as this gives rise to a necessary or likely consequence, especially with regard to the metabasis in the protagonist’s fate, is a kind of “argument” whereby that outcome is made manifest. Note, however, that this manifestation does not exceed the order of the conjectural or fanciful as such, inasmuch as it regards fictive likenesses whose ultimate origin lies in the irreducibly contingent order of human affairs, which order Providence alone comprehends. Note also that the action imitated by work of the poetic art, inasmuch as it either can be or not be, both as a whole and in the order of its parts, cannot have in its consequence the necessity of a syllogism, or of any other instrument of speculation, properly so called.

Now from what we have said, it follows that the word “argument” may be said of a poem for at least four reasons. First, because the poetic art itself, in fashioning delightful imitations of the course of human life, is a kind of light manifesting the principles from which issues a necessary or likely outcome of the action. Second, because the aforemen-tioned parts are themselves “a principle from which one proceeds in arguing, or middle term” insofar as they have the nature of a “fictive” or “constructed” universal. And third, because these parts can be signified by speech bringing together statements from which we reason to, or in support of, the conclusions of poems; that is to say, from them are formed the premises of the interpretation one makes regarding the outcome of the poem’s action, or its full meaning. A fourth reason may be taken from those cases where the poem itself states its principal subject, the sense of “argument” here being “any brief foretaste of a narrative to come”. As support for this usage consider, for instance, Hamlet, iii, 2, ll. 139-40: “Belike this show imports the argument of the play”; as well as the opening lines of Milton’s Paradise Lost, a well-known instance of the “argument” in this sense of the word as belonging to an epic poem.

That poems have an argument in these several senses, and that the statements to which they seek to gain assent are rightly called conclusions (inasmuch as they are “some part of a contradiction” and are seen to follow from something having been laid down) is a fact known from the experience of poems themselves, the place of poetry as infima doctrina among the several forms of discourse, and the distance of its judgments as poetica scientia from the certitude of science in the strict sense of the word (e.g. episteme) to the contrary notwithstanding.18

18 As a further help to understanding the fully formed assent in which one’s judgement about a poem’s mean-ing consists consider the following texts of St. Thomas: “…[P]robabilities incline us to assent to our opin-

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This conclusion may also be understood from the argument Aristotle makes at Poetics, Chapter 4, (cf. 1448b 15-17) regarding the pleasure men get from looking on images, namely, that in doing so they are delighted “because it happens that in considering them they learn and syllogize what (each portrayed thing) is, for instance, that the thing there is so and so”.19 Now the image, inasmuch as it has a greater intelligibility than its original, (for the reason that it portrays its essential or most universal aspects),20 when compared to that original, can be a principle of manifestation with respect to it. And note here that Aristotle looks precisely to the delight arising from this intelligibility, which consists in the “fictive universality” of the “such and such”, etc. Such intelligibility, giving rise to a comparison of “intentions”, or conjecture, causes one to know by a kind of recog-

ions” (In Lib. I Boetii de Trin., q. 3, art. 1, ad 4), that is to say, “…the probability of the premises from which one proceeds” (In I Post. Anal., lect. 1, n. 6). From these remarks one can argue by analogy that, with respect to one’s interpretation of a poem, the assent to its “conclusion” comes about through the reason’s grasp of the conjectural or fanciful (and hence persuasive) nature of the premises it has derived from the poet’s representation (which itself is not an ‘argument’, properly speaking), premises from which it then proceeds to draw its conclusion. The outcome of this assent is poetic or literary belief, e.g. poetica scientia. Now as the principle of an argument, such a representation, inasmuch as it is fitting or decent (conveniens, decentem), will be worthy of one’s assent; otherwise it ought to be denied. But since one’s assent to any conclusion is perfected only by resolution to first principles, to understand fully the perfection of poetic know-ledge or belief, one must also consider the following texts of St. Thomas. As he teaches in his commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius (q. 6, art. 1, reply to the first question): “the ultimate term to which inquiry by way of reason ought to lead is the understanding of principles, into which we resolve our judgments”, a resolution that is necessary since, “in every inquiry having principles, or causes, or elements understanding and science come about through knowing these” (Aristotle, Phys. I. 1, 184a 10-12). He goes on to add that “…sometimes [when this resolution] takes place it is not called a rational process or proof but a demonstrative one”. At other times, however, “…rational inquiry cannot arrive at the aforesaid ultimate term, but stops in the course of the investigation itself; that is to say, when to the one inquiring there remains besides a road to whichever way one pleases [utrumlibet]. This happens when we proceed by means of probable reasons, which are naturally apt to produce opinion or belief, but not science”. Now the former process, issuing in a certain judgement, is said to belong to the judicative part of logic (Proem, In I Post. Anal., lect. 1, n. 6). But the latter process belongs to the inventive or discovering part, since “discovery is not always with the certitude of science”. Likewise, when one proceeds sola existimatio, an indetermination of reason necessarily results, since neither can this way of proceeding be reduced to the understanding of principles. The kinds of procedure in question here are further clarified by the following text:

There are some truths that are known through themselves (per se), such as the first indemonstrable principles; these the intellect assents to of necessity. There are others, however, which are not known through themselves, but through other truths. The condition of these is twofold. Some follow neces-sarily from the principles, i.e., so that they cannot be false when the principles are true. This is the case with all conclusions of demonstrations, and the intellect assents necessarily to truths of this kind after it has perceived their order to the principles, but not before. There are others that do not follow necessarily from the principles, and these can be false even though the principles be true. This is the case with things about which there can be opinion. To these the intellect does not assent necessarily, although it may be inclined by some motive more to one side than another.” (In I Peri Herm., lect. 14, n. 24)

One must note in this regard that, since a poem is essentially formed by a poet within his imagination, and is therefore necessarily grasped within that power by the lover of poetry, it follows that one must resolve to his imagination in order to understand and judge a poem. Nevertheless, since poems are principally imitations of human action, passion, and character, which as such exist first in rerum natura, the lover of poetry must also take into account the way these things are in themselves; e.g. he must ultimately resolve to his knowledge and experience of these things in order to make an informed assent. (In this respect, the science about the poetic art will resemble moral philosophy.) It follows from the foregoing considerations that the lover of poetry must have recourse to ethics, as well as to the principles taught in the Poetics (e.g. to what poems are or ought to be, etc.), in order to reach the firmness of judgement characteristic of poetica scientia. In this way

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nition, as we have stated above. The image, then, is not itself an “argument”, yet insofar as one can “syllogize” from it to the knowledge of its original, (on the supposition, of course, that one has first known that original), it rightly can be called the principle of an argument. One should note here that in virtue of its constructed intelligibility, the artistic image has the notion of a “concrete” or embodied universal, for which reason it falls between the sen-sible singular and the scientific universal properly so called, a fact wherein lies the secret of its appeal to the understanding; it having addressed the particular reason with the imme-diacy of the sensible and imaginable. Now as the exact nature of this universality is poorly understood, a detailed investigation of it is in order.

The Universal in the Art of Imitating

The word “universal” is commonly used to name some one thing that can be predi-cated of many other things. For example, the word “man” is said to be universal since it can be predicated of many individuals differing in number, such as Socrates and Plato. Likewise, the essence or nature of a thing signified by the name is said to be universal, in-asmuch as the intellect understands it to be one thing which is like to many, and therefore representative of many. This conclusion may be gathered from the De Ente et Essentia, Chapter 3 where, taking human nature as an example, St. Thomas argues that in its ab-stracted state, such a nature “has a uniform notion [with respect] to all individual things which are outside the soul, according as it is equally the likeness of all and leading to the knowledge of all inasmuch as they are men”. Hence, he goes on to remark, “this nature [as] understood would have the notion of a universal according as it is compared to things out-side the soul, since it is one likeness of all” (ibid.). In explaining the mode of existence be-longing to a nature having this kind of universality, St. Thomas gives an example taken from imitative art:

...[I]f there were one bodily statue representing many men, it is true to say [constat] that that image or species of the statue would have a singular and proper being according as it were in this matter; but it would have the notion of community [ratio communitatis] according as it were the common representative of many.

The inescapable conclusion to be drawn from this example is that in works of imitative art one discovers a universality analogous to that belonging to a nature existing in a state of abstraction in the intellect. Consequently, generalizing from this instance, we may say that any such nature portrayed by this kind of art—that is to say, any “image or species” of something as it is found in a statue, a painting, or even a poem—inasmuch as that image or species commonly represents many by being their likeness (and so having the power to lead the mind back to them), has the “notion of community” proper to a universal, and therefore may be named accordingly.

Note in this regard Poetics, Chapter 9. When Aristotle says that the statements of

one will be led into new knowledge from what he already knows, which is the ultimate end of the Poetics.19 On this point, cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, S.Th., Ia-IIae, q. 32, art. 8, c.: “Also, representations of things, even those which are not pleasant in themselves, give rise to pleasure; for the soul rejoices in comparing one thing with another, because the comparison of one thing with another is the proper and connatural act of reason, as the Philosopher says in his Poetria”; this comparison, as it imports a kind of knowing by recognition, being our concern here. (N.B. By Aristotle’s Poetria St. Thomas means Averroes’ Determinatio in Poetria Aristotelis, a work which he occasionally cites.)20 Note that these aspects are often hidden rather than revealed by its subject’s accidents, as that original is known in everyday experience, for which reason the image is so delightful a way of knowing.

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poetry are “universal” in comparison with the singular statements characteristic of history, he means that they represent “the kinds of things a certain kind of man happens to say or do in accordance with likelihood or necessity” (1451b 8-10). Now the key word he uses here, namely “kind”, signifies a type or species of something, and hence denotes some-thing universal in a sense proportional to the second meaning we have noted above. For we call something a kind of thing when the mind recognizes that it is some one thing bearing a likeness to many, and so, upon reflection, attributes to it the “notion of community”. But it must be observed that, although, following the example given by St. Thomas, we have accounted for this “universality” by comparing it to the predicable universal, nevertheless, as is clear from Aristotle’s account, this “notion of community” also belongs to a poetic “statement”, making it resemble the universal predicate, and not just the universale in praedicando. For a helpful account of these respective kinds of universal, let us look at the following text:

Let us note, first of all, that a predicate is called universal in two ways: (a) Something is called universal as predicable when it bespeaks a relation to inferiors, i.e., subjected parts, of which it is said with identity though without adequation, such as “animal” is said of both man and beast, or “man” of both Socrates and Plato... This universal is the dici de omni, or universale in praedicando, sometimes called universale inessendo, i.e., “by being in the many of which it is said”.…

(b) Then there is the universal predicate which refers adequately to a subject. This universal is not at all the “predicable universal”; it is the universal predicate of a demonstration made from “what” a thing is, such as when we show from “what the triangle is” that “the three angles of any triangle are equal to two right angles”. This universal predicate [e.g. “having its three angles equal to two right angles”—B.A.M.] does not belong primarily and immediately to the subjected parts as parts, for while it is true of every kind of triangle, it is not proper to any one kind.21

In light of these definitions, one might therefore speak of the universal in imitando as proper to poems and other forms of imitative art.22 As a “nature”, such a universal would be defined as some one thing which is the likeness of many as many, through one fictive

21 Charles De Koninck, Philosophy of Nature, Part II, ch. 16, pp. 48-9 (unpublished manuscript, Charles De Koninck Papers).22 Having met with much resistance to the propriety of speaking of a poetic universal, I must insist here that by recognizing a true universality as belonging to a work of the poetic art, one is most definitely not attributing to an imitation the kind of universality proper to demonstrative science. In my experience such squeamishness seems to be due in part to a mistaken understanding of Aristotle’s remarks on poetic universality in Poetics, Chapter 9 (1451 36—1451b 11). Let us look at the passage in its entirety:

But it is also apparent from what has been said that the task of the poet is to relate, not what has happened, but the sort of thing that might happen [hoia an genoito]—that is, what is possible in accordance with likelihood or necessity [kai ta dunata kata to eikos ê to anankaion]. For the historian and the poet differ not by [the one] speaking in verse [and the other] not, [1451b] (for Herodotus put in verse would be no less a historian in verse than not in verse), but they differ in this, namely, that the one relates what has happened [5], but the other the sort of thing that might happen [tôi ton men ta genomena legein, ton de hoia an genoito]. For this reason, poetry is more philosophical and more serious than history; for poetry relates rather the universal [poiêsis mallon ta katholou], whereas history, the particular [hê d' historia ta kath' hekaston legei]. But ‘universal’, in fact, is the sort of thing a certain sort of man happens to say or do according to what is likely or necessary [estin de katholou men, tôi poiôi ta poia atta sumbainei legein ê prattein kata to eikos ê to anankaion], and [10] poetry aims at this sort of thing when it assigns names; but ‘particular’ [to de kath' hekaston] is what Alcibiades did or suffered.

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“image” or “species” representing the many as one, doing so with respect, i.e., to what they have in common, rather than in their specific and individual determinations. As a universal “predicate”, on the other hand, it is that which is said of all its subject in virtue of belonging to it through a universal “middle term” (universal, e.g. in the first sense) as this founds a “possibility” measured by necessity or likelihood.

As a further help to understanding the middle nature of this universality, compare, for instance, the poet’s metaphor (e.g. “Achilles was a lion in battle”) to the geometer’s demonstrated conclusion (e.g. “A triangle as such has its three interior angles equal to two right angles, inasmuch as its exterior angle is equal to its two opposite and interior angles,” etc., as in Dr. De Koninck’s example). The former predicates a figurative word of its subject on the basis of a likeness grasped in the imagination and having an appeal to the senses and the passions. Its “truth” therefore is merely “conjectural” or “estimative”. The latter predicates a commensurately universal property of its subject on the basis of its sub-ject’s definition. As we noted above, the first has the form, “x” is likened to “y” on the basis of “z”, where “z” is some form common to the two and grasped in the imagination (e.g. the fictive universal in imitando). But the form of the second is “x” is subject univers-ally to “y” through “z”; e.g. “y” is predicated universally of “x” inasmuch as “z”, being a true middle term (in the case of demonstration propter quid) is the proper cause of the property’s inherence in its subject (and as such is the “universal” predicate). The truth of the latter therefore, being demonstrated through premises that are true, primary, better known, etc., is certain (cf. Post. An. I, ch. 2, 71b 20 ff.). In demonstration, then, the order of the known to the unknown is a necessary order; whereas in the argument of a made-up story, because its “middle terms” are only the fictive likenesses of things, the order of its parts manifesting its conclusion has only a qualified necessity: As we noted above, it can either be or not be; Oedipus can either act in such and such a way or not; can either suffer such-and-such consequences or not, etc., just as the poet pleases (ad placitum).

Note here that the metaphor we have taken as an example manifests the nature of the “likening” proper to every statement belonging to a poem, whatever be the basis of its “figuration”, inasmuch as this “likening” provides the “such and such”, or fictive universal, which supposes for the middle term in the conjectures or “arguments” one draws out of poems, and which therefore founds the universal “predicate” comprising poetic “state-ments”, as we have argued above. (Of course, the full meaning of “likening” here has to do with the forming of the parts of the action into a whole of the kind we have, following Aristotle, outlined above; e.g. the forming of the incidents into a plot, and not just the making of metaphor, or any other figure belonging to the means of imitation in speech.) 23

Some people seem to think that in the foregoing passage Aristotle is saying that poetry is “rather universal”, as if to say, “having something in the nature of the universal”, as opposed to being itself truly universal, which is what, in fact, he does say.23 For another example of this kind of “likening”, cf. the following from St. Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on St. Paul's Letter to the Galatians, ch. 4, lect. 7: “He says therefore: These things which are written about the two sons are said by an allegory, i.e. the understanding of one thing under the image of another. For an allegory is a figure of speech or a manner of narrating, in which one thing is said and something else is understood. Hence “allegory” is derived from “alos”, [alien] and “goge” [a leading], leading, as it were, to a different understanding”. On the nature of metaphor according to Aristotle, cf. Rhet. III. 11, 1412a 9 ff.: “As was said earlier, metaphors should be carried over from things that are related but not obviously so, as in philosophy, too, it is characteristic of a well-directed mind to observe the likeness even in things very different”. Also, cf. Poetics, ch. 22, 1459a 5-9: “To use fittingly each of the aforesaid devices as well as double names and idioms is of great importance, but by far the greatest importance lies in the use of metaphors. Indeed this alone cannot be acquired from others but is a sign of a natural gift, for to make metaphors well is to perceive similarities”. Also cf. idem, ch. 21, 1457b 7- 25:

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Also note that this “likening” is most pleasing when the terms of the comparison are set widely apart, yet have an element in common upon which to base the comparison. Now when reason having made the comparison sees this common element, it is both surprised and delighted, and thus persuaded that the thing is “so”. It says to itself (as it were), “I merely suspected, but never quite grasped this likeness before, yet, now that the com-parison has been made, I clearly see that it is apt and am delighted by it”. 24 That is to say, one learns or gains new knowledge by a kind of recognition, inasmuch as the imitation is reached precisely as an imitation (a process, one should note, whose swiftness and ease make it similar to intuitive knowing, and hence most delightful to the knower). Hence, this “recognition” properly completes the “comparison of intentions” by which one grasps the goodness or badness, fittingness or lack of fittingness, of the object presented to him, which process we have described above.

As a consequence to what we have said, we may observe that the lover of poetry must have a strong understanding of the method that leads one into new knowledge (poetica scientia) by directing the reason in judging its assent to a poem’s representation, as well as its movement toward an interpretation of the poem’s full meaning, so that one may not be led by inferior poetry into mistaken judgments, and hence into vicious dispose-tions, an outcome which led Plato in the Republic to criticize poetic imitations with some severity. But such an understanding presupposes a grasp of what is good and bad in poems, which knowledge, in turn, presupposes a grasp of what poems are in themselves, a know-ledge which is possessed only when one distinctly understands the quid est of the poetic art itself.

Having seen, then, the two ways in which a poem induces assent to its “argument” (one “immediate”; the other not), we are now well placed to understand the moral end assigned to poetry by St. Thomas in the passage quoted above, a discussion of which will bring this paper to a fitting close.

A metaphor is the transport of a name belonging to one thing to another thing, either from the genus to the species, or from the species to the genus, or from species to species, or according to the analogous.... But I call it analogous when the relation of the second term to the first is similar to that of the fourth to the third, for then one might put the fourth for the second, or the third for the first; but sometimes they [e.g. metaphorical names] are applied to that for which they are said. I mean, for instance, a cup has a similar relation to Bacchus that a shield has to Mars. Hence a shield may be called ‘the cup of Mars’ and a cup ‘the shield of Bacchus’. Again, evening has the same relation to day that old age has to life. One may therefore say that evening is ‘the old age of day’, and that old age is ‘the evening of life’; or as Empedocles calls it, ‘the setting of life’.

24 A good example of this process can be seen in the imitations of fantasy and romance, inasmuch as in this kind of fiction impossibilities or marvels are made credible when elements never found together in the real world—e.g. the head of a man and the body of a horse, making a centaur—are joined according to an imaginatively satisfying, or conveniens, rationale, making for a pleasing representation. The likening of the unlike will thus be found to lie at the origin of every imitation.

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The Moral End of Poetic Art

As one may infer from the foregoing account, because of its delightful intelli-gibility the poet’s work, when it portrays a morally good action as good but a morally bad action as bad, is able to induce in the lover of poetry the proximate dispositions for vir-tuous acts, but can have the contrary effect when it misrepresents its object.25 This power is seen most clearly in a good poem’s ability to purge the passions of excess and defect—that is to say, to accomplish their katharsis (for an account of which, see Politics, Bk. VIII, and the pertinent remarks below)—in which a poem’s proper pleasure consists, and hence being able to introduce a right ordering in the lower appetite of the soul. (This, by the way, is an additional reason for the Poetics’ proximate end.) Now the manner in which the character of the one experiencing a story, poem, or play is affected for good or ill by its imaginative engagement with the action, agents, and circumstances feigned by the repre-sentation, may be understood by taking a close look at certain relevant texts of Aristotle:

25 Cf. St. Thomas’ remarks on the manner of proceeding proper to poetic, quoted above. With respect to his remarks, it should be understood that, in the case of poetic ‘doctrine’, to say that reason inclines wholly to some part of a contradiction—that is, to this side or that—because of some representation, is to say that it does so from a sensible likeness in which there is a lack of truth, but which is capable of seducing reason because such a thing is naturally delightful to man. In such a case the representation gains reason’s assent, not because of the way the subject conveying it is in itself, but because of the appealing way in which it has been made to appear to the imagination, with a consequent effect on the passions, resulting, on the part of the intellect, in poetic knowledge, but, on the part of the appetite, in something virtuous, namely, an inclination to act in accordance with reason, inasmuch as the object is grasped by the apprehensive power under an “intention” of its goodness or suitability or its badness or unsuitability so that, when the good is represented as good, and the bad as bad (the principal object of the representation being human action, whose first property is to be good or bad), the appetitive power is rightly disposed to pursue the one (i.e. the reality, when met with) and avoid the other, an experience which, when repeated, conduces to virtue. On these matters, cf. also St. Thomas Aquinas’ exposition of St. Paul's First Letter to Timothy, cap. 4, lect. 2:

For a story [fabula], according to the Philosopher, is composed of wonders [composita ex miris, cf. Meta. I. 2, 982b 19], and they were invented in the beginning (as the Philosopher says on Poetry) because it was the intention of men that they would lead to the acquiring of virtues and the avoiding of vices. Simple men, however, are better led by representations than by arguments. And so in a won-der well-represented pleasure appears, because reason is pleased in comparison. And just as a repre-sentation in deeds is pleasing, so is a representation in words: and this is a story, namely, something called ‘representing’, and by representing moving to something. For the ancients used to have certain stories accommodated to certain true things, which truth they used to disguise in stories. So there are two things in a story, namely, that it contain a true sense, and that it represent some-thing useful. Again, that it be suitable to that truth. If, then, a story be proposed which cannot represent a truth, it is pointless [or ‘inane’, inanis]; but what does not properly represent is foolish [or ‘silly’, ineptae], like the fables of the Talmud.

Cf. also St. Albert the Great, In Epistolis B. Dionysii Areopagitae, Epist. VII, s. 2:

For poets are not philosophers except in a certain respect: for the end of the poet is to per-suade or dissuade someone from those things which come before the judgement of reason, by inducing terror or even a certain amount of abomination from something fabled, by which they are inspired either with terror or abomination and afterward returned to reason; just as if someone persuaded one not to eat honey as if he were to call honey choler that someone vomited. And from the fact that before one might discern through reason that what is said is false, so much abomination is generated suddenly that even after the judgement of reason he would abominate it.

In this way, then, “fitting representations” are able to “induce to something virtuous”.

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If it is thus, then, that every art does its work well—by looking to the intermediate and judging its works by this standard (so that we often say of good works of art that it is not possible either to take away or to add anything, implying that excess and defect destroy the goodness of works of art, while the mean preserves it; and good artists, as we say, look to this in their work), and if, further, virtue is more exact and better than any art, as nature also is, then virtue must have the quality of aiming at the intermediate. I mean moral virtue; for it is this that is concerned with passions and actions, and in these there is excess, defect, and the intermediate. For instance, both fear and confidence and appetite and anger and pity and in general pleasure and pain may be felt both too much and too little, and in both cases not well; but to feel them at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way, is what is both intermediate and best, and this is characteristic of virtue. Now virtue is concerned with passions and actions, in which excess is a form of failure, and so is defect, while the intermediate is praised and is a form of success; and being praised and being successful are both characteristics of virtue. Therefore virtue is a kind of mean, since, as we have seen, it aims at what is intermediate. (Nic. Eth. II. 6, 1106b 9-14, tr. W. D. Ross)

With regard to the political philosopher’s concern with music, Aristotle says the following:

In addition to this common pleasure, felt and shared in by all (for the pleasure given by music is natural, and therefore adapted to all ages and characters), may it not have also some influence over the character and the soul? It must have such an influence if characters are affected by it. And that they are so affected is proved in many ways, and not least by the power which the songs of Olympus exercise; for beyond question they inspire enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is an emotion of the ethical part of the soul. Besides, when men hear imitations, even apart from the rhythms and tunes themselves, their feelings move in sym-pathy. Since then music is a pleasure, and virtue consists in rejoicing and loving and hating aright, there is clearly nothing which we are so much concerned to acquire and to cultivate as the power of forming right judgments, and of taking delight in good dispositions and noble actions. (Pol. VIII. 5, 1340a 1-12, tr. Benjamin Jowett)

From the first of these texts one learns the proportion that exists between moral virtue and art: as both do their work well by looking to the mean and judging by it as by a standard, their excellence lies in that very mean. But moral virtue and a work of imitative art are about the very same mean, inasmuch as both are “concerned with passions and ac-tions” in which “there is excess, defect, and the intermediate”, the poetic art furnishing pleasurable likenesses of such things and so engaging (for good or ill) the passions naturally aroused by them.26

Now since, as Aristotle says, “there is clearly nothing which we are so much con-cerned to acquire and to cultivate as the power of forming right judgments, and of taking delight in good dispositions and noble actions”, and this because “virtue consists in loving and hating aright”, it follows that a poetic imitation, when it observes the aforesaid mean in its representation (that is, in its portrayal “of passions and actions”—the stuff of human experience, comprising “a way of life, and happiness and unhappiness”—will possess the power to move those passions in accordance with reason, so that one will be inclined to “feel them at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way, (which) is what is both intermediate and best, and...is characteristic of virtue”. That is to say, it will, in those persons subject to feeling them too strongly, so act as to take away their tendency to undergo them at the wrong

26 I intend to treat the question of katharsis in detail in a separate paper.

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times, with reference to the wrong objects, towards the wrong people, with the wrong motive, and in the wrong way; in which case katharsis, inasmuch as it means the taking away of just such an evil when it is excessive,27 will stand revealed as the end intended by a work of the poetic art, and hence of the artist producing it. In this way a fitting representation will dispose one to attain the ends of the art, a bad work of imitation having the opposite effect.

Now all these matters are taught in the Poetics: in detail with respect to tragedy and epic; but in their principles with respect to the forms of comedy and lyric, and such as are not are readily deducible from things Aristotle does say, as is clear from the relevant works of St. Thomas Aquinas excerpted above. Hence, the skopos of Aristotle’s book About the Poetic Art, both in general and in particular, as well as its threefold end and the ratio of their ordering, are clear.

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27 In sum, it is my contention that katharsis as the effect intended by the poetic art consists in the taking away of what is excessive in the passions by moving them in a way that is in accord with reason, thereby producing the pleasure proper to the art. On the side of the body, this effect takes the form of the expulsion of a super-abundance of a humour disposing one to feel the passion wrongly or in an unreasonable manner—that is, with respect to the wrong things, at the wrong time, or in the wrong way—whereas on the side of the soul, it is the taking away of this tendency itself, such that one is (after repeated experiences and with no contrary causes interfering) disposed to feel the passion rightly—that is, with respect to the right things, at the right time, and in the right way.

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