ENGL 230 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Hamartia, Mimesis
Document Summary
Born 384 bce in macedonian region of northeastern greece. Sent to athens at 17 to study under plato. 31 treaties survive, and his writing deals with much more than just philosophy (biology, political theory, ethics. ) He wrote the poetics (which is incomplete,) a century after the peak of. He had a removed perspective on the subject. Less is written on comedy; we assume the writings on this have been lost. Comedy is based on ugliness, but is not necessarily painful. Additionally, comedy uses characters of a lower type. This can mean characters of a lower class, but also characters of less moral goodness. Comedy has no history, and was taken literally less seriously than. "the same distinction marks o tragedy from comedy; for. Comedy aims at representing men as worse, tragedy as better than in actual life. "it consists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive.