From the commentary:
“Productive science relies upon Aristotle’s method of four-cause analysis, in which an artifact is defined by its shape (the formal cause), its composition (the material cause), its manner of construction (the efficient cause), and its end or purpose (the final cause).”
The key difference between Plato and Aristotle’s views on art and poetry is that Aristotle views poetics as a creative act, not merely a mimetic one. Aristotle treats language as the poet-craftsmen’s material of choice.
“For Plato, that artists were not always faithful to the truth counted against the; for Aristotle, artists must disregard incidental facts to search for deeper universal truths.”
From the text:
“the capacity to produce an imitation is the essential characteristic of the poet” (60).
Comedy “takes as its goal the representation of men as worse,” tragedy, “as better” (60).
“imitations are to be distinguished under these three headings: means, objects, and manner” (61).
Invectives and epics gave way to comedies and tragedies, respectively (62).
“For whatever parts epic poetry has, these are also found in tragedy; but, as we have said, not all of the parts of tragedy are found in epic poetry” (63).
“the two natural causes of human action are thought and character” (63).
“tragedy is not an imitation of men, per se, but of human action and life and happiness and misery” (63).
“The first principle, then, and to speak figuratively, the soul of tragedy, is the plot; and second in importance is character […] Thought is the third part of tragedy and is the ability to say whatever is pertinent and fitting to the occasion […] The fourth literary part is diction […] the expression of thoughts through language […] Of the remaining parts, melody is the greatest of the linguistic adornments; and spectacle, to be sure, attracts our attention but is the least essential part of the art of poetry” (64).
“The historian narrates events that have actually happened, whereas the poet writes about things as they might possibly occur. Poetry, therefore, is more philosophical and more significant than history, for poetry is more concerned with the universal, and history more with the individual” (65).
peripeteia: reversal, “the change of fortune in the wction of the play to the opposite state of affairs” (66).
anagnorisis: recognition, “a change from ignorance to knowledge, bringing about either a state of friendship or one of hostility on the part of those who have been marked out for good fortune or bad” (66-67).
pathos: suffering, “destructive or painful action such as death on the stage, scenes of very great pain, the infliction of wounds, and the like” (67).
The tragedy is divided into quantitative parts: prologue, episode, exode, chorus (which divides further into parode and stasimon) (67).
“the plots of the best tragedies must be complex, not simple, and the plot of a tragedy must be an imitation of pitiable and fearful incidents […] pity is aroused by someone who undeservedly falls into misfortune, and fear is evoked by recognizing that it is someone like ourselves who encounters this misfortune” (67).
The ideal subject of a tragedy, then, “is neither perfect in virtue and justice, nor one who falls into misfortune through vice and depravity; but rather, one who succumbs through some miscalculation. He must also be a person who enjoys great reputation and good fortune” (67).
“In regard to character, there are four points to be aimed at”—good (i.e. moral), appropriate (masculine men, feminine women, etc.), realistic, and consistent (69).
There are orders of recognition: the lowest, external signs; the next, declaration; then emotional reactions; then, reasoning; the last, and best, is by the incidents themselves, “striking us, as they do, with astonishment through the very probability of their occurrence” (70-71).
Four kinds of tragedy: complex (peripeteia and anagnorisis), suffering, character, and spectacle (72).
Aristotle distinguishes thought (proof, refutation, emotion, etc.) and diction (letter, syllable, connective, noun, verb, inflection, sentence) as, simply, content and form, with content taking precedence over form (73).
“Diction achieves its characteristic virtue in being clear but not mean” (75).
And then he gets real specific, etc., etc.