Ancient narrative theory before Aristotle—Plato

This chapter argues that we should be wary of assigning any theory of narrative voiced in the dramatic dialogue that is the Republic directly to Plato himself. We will not find a ‘Platonic’ theory of narrative either in Plato’s Ion or the Republic, and will not find an uncomplicated ‘Platonic’ relationship between diegesis and mimesis, or narrative showing and telling, there either. It suggests that, taken as an embryonic phase in the history of narrative theory, Plato’s ‘Socratic dialogues’ offer something of a false start—an evolutionary prequel rather than an introduction proper to narratology’s story.

Introduction

This chapter argues that a more joined-up appreciation of the genealogical relationships so widely argued to exist between ancient and modern theories of narrative helps us to better understand both. It explores the ways in which literary theory both shapes and is shaped by its canon. Aristotle’s decision to take tragedy as his touchstone and to extend its poetics to explain all other kinds of (mimetic) poetry will have produced a very different model than if he had chosen Aristophanes’ absurdist comedy or Sappho’s lyric poetry instead. Twentieth-century narratology would have produced a very different set of theories if it had chosen Roman rhetoric or Hellenistic poetics as its starting point. In choosing Plato and Aristotle as its foundational touchstones, modern narratology is similarly moulded by these parts of its canon, its own structures patterned by those exhibited in its objects of study.

Neo-Aristotelianism

This chapter argues that the rhetorically conceived poetics of narrative developed by the Chicago school neo-Aristotelians helps to demonstrate that Aristotle’s Poetics was, in several respects, always already a rhetorically oriented theory. Its concern with purposively shaping plots in order to realize a particular audience experience and affect shows an interest not only in ‘making form’ but in ‘making readers’, and an awareness of narratives not only as structures but as communicative acts. Ultimately, however, it is not Aristotle’s theory—either of poetics or rhetoric—that marks this neo-Aristotelian reception as such. It is, instead, Aristotle’s inductive, a posteriori methodology that stands out as the most valuable thing bequeathed and inherited across successive generations of Neo-Aristotelians.

Ancient narrative theory in practice

This chapter views the critics of the ancient Greek scholia and later Latin commentaries as practising proto-narratologists. It demonstrates that their work is clearly informed by the prevailing narratological theories of the day—the scholia by Plato and Peripatetic ‘Aristotelianism’ if not directly by the Poetics, and the Servius commentators by Horace too. They and their readers have recourse to a complex lexicon of specialized narratological terms and concepts (as knotty as anything dreamed up by the Russian formalists or French structuralists) often freely adapted from ancient theories of rhetoric. In this rhetorical-narratological context, they show a keen interest in matters of affect and cognition, in the ways that stories are formed so as to produce particular affects within and effects upon an audience, presenting a fascinating glimpse into ‘the business of narrating’ as understood by ancient theorists and critics.

Aristotle

Aristotle is frequently posited as the founder of modern narratology, and the Poetics is widely cited as narratology’s first, foundational work of narrative theory and criticism. This chapter examines Aristotle’s precepts on a range of key narratological features, ranging from actants and audiences, katharsis and character, ethics and episodes—and, above all, his identification of the primacy of plot or muthos as the organizing principle that configures the stuff of story into narrative discourse. It sees the Poetics as developing a broadly rhetorical model of narrative, concerned principally with the communication and cognition processes associated with storytelling. It also explores the extent to which Aristotle’s theory of narrative needs to be understood as responding to Plato’s Republic and considers the potential of Aristotle’s major exoteric works, On Poets and Homeric Problems, as aids to negotiating some of the vagaries of the Poetics.

Prestructuralism

This chapter demonstrates that prestructuralist ideas about the form and function of key narratological phenomena such as plot, action, and character, mimesis and diegesis, showing and telling, not only make a significant contribution to the early twentieth-century (re)naissance of narrative theory in Europe and the US but also play a decisive role in the modern reception of ancient narrative theory. It argues that although James and Lubbock evince only broad Aristotelian affinities, their precepts help to establish an environment in which Aristotelian and Platonic (Socratic) theories find a ready and receptive audience. In similar ways, Forster, Friedman, and Stanzel open up a channel of communication between the ancient and modern worlds of narratology. What is more, their allusions to and appropriations of the classics help to shed new light on to some of the more controversial and complex aspects of both the Republic and Poetics.

Russian formalism

This chapter examines the reception of Aristotle’s Poetics by the Russian formalists (with case studies focusing on Shklovsky, Petrovsky, Tomashevsky, and Propp). It demonstrates that these Russian ‘neo-Aristotelians’ adopt and adapt their key narratological priorities and principles from the Poetics, especially their theories concerning fabula and syuzhet, the primacy of plot, of form synthesizing raw story content, and the importance of the experience and affect of narrative as it is cognitively processed by an audience. Aristotle’s Poetics is made strange in each new iteration of its reading and reception by the Russian ‘neo-Aristotelians’, with each (r)evolution itself configuring a self-conscious reaction of some kind to a contemporary theorist, no less than to Aristotle himself.

Ancient narrative theory after Aristotle—Horace

This chapter argues that there is little evidence to show that Aristotle’s Poetics was influential to any significant degree in antiquity. Modern theorists and critics who insist upon seeing an Aristotelian influence on the proto-narratological precepts found in Horace’s Ars poetica have therefore produced somewhat skewed readings of the Ars poetica. This chapter focuses instead upon the distinctively Roman and rhetorical character of Horace’s ideas on narrative, and examines the marked affinities between Plato’s Socrates and Horace’s own narratological persona on the subjects of poetry and storytelling. It argues that Horace may even be the first literary critic formally to condense Plato’s (Socrates’) proto-narratological precepts into a narrower distinction between showing and telling.

Postclassicism

This chapter argues that in the postclassical cognitive turn and the latest developments in natural and unnatural narratology pioneered by Fludernik, Herman, Richardson, Alber, and others, we are witnessing an important re-interrogation of the basic terms and frames of narratology’s earliest discussions. Developing the poststructuralists’ concerns with context, postclassical narratology is keenly interested in the part that readers and real-world experiences have to play in the co-poetic functioning of narrative and its narrativity—reconsidering the psychological and emotional iteractions between stories and audiences, and returning to the ancient debate between Plato’s Socrates and Aristotle regarding the status of narrative as mimesis.

Poststructuralism

This chapter argues that the willingness of the poststructuralist narratologists (particularly Chatman, Lanser, Brooks, and de Lauretis) to look beyond the confines of twentieth-century linguistics and semiotics for their critical concepts and models re-energizes narratology’s relationship with ancient poetics. At the same time, the poststructuralist drive to push beyond the established boundaries of narratology and into a much wider domain of narrative ‘texts’—looking outside the narrow field of literary narrative into media such as film, music, and visual culture—rediscovers Aristotle’s Poetics and the anticipation of cross-medial narrative theory found there.