The “six parts of tragedy” in Aristotle's poetics: Compositional Process and Processive Chronology

Abstract

All students of the Poetics can see that Aristotle's theory of tragedy sometimes resembles a handbook on dramatic composition. The scope of this ‘resemblance’, however, is rarely acknowledged in modern times. ‘Aristotle's approach to tragedy’, writes Stephen Halliwell, is ‘au fond, a system of theoretical premises and reasoning.’ This, from the author of the most comprehensive, and most significant, discussion of the Poetics in recent years, sounds authoritative. It is none the less misleading.