The character of tragedy of poetics by Aristotle, chapter-16

Chapter-16

The character of tragedy

In characterization there are four things..

1.      It should be good(moral).

2.      It should be appropriate (warlike).

3.      It should be life like (realistic).

4.      It should be consistence.

Women and slave may be good though they are inferior. “ it is not appropriate that female character should be given manliness or cleverness”

 in-consistence character is shown in Iphiginia as a suppliant is a quit but not like later. As with plot it should appear that character’s word, action, are the both necessary and probable. Thus denouement of the plot also should come from character, because tragedy should be interested better than comedy.

According to Aristotle,  It should not be brought about deus ex machinawhich used Medea and Iliad . The deus ex machina should be used only for matter outside the play proper because that can not be known by the human characters. It should be kept outside the tragedy, as is done in Sophocles Odipus.

Since tragedy is representation of people who are better than average, so tragic poet follow the good portrait- painters who paint them better looking than they are besides minimize the defect and bring out decent quality at the same time show them decent people, as Agathon and Homer have portrayed Achilles .