13 April, 2013
Aristotle's Poetics VII
Aristotle focusses primarily on the action in a Tragedy. The action of a Tragedy should be "complete, whole, and of a certain magnitude". This may be done by ensuring the use of a beginning, middle, and end to a story. The beginning is where there are no preceding events of pertinent importance to the Plot, and from which all events of the story follow from. The middle leads and follows other events of the story. And the end must have no following events pertinent to the Plot, and it is what all other events lead to. Also the length of the Tragedy must be set between two standards, as a Tragedy that is too long gathers much detail yet will lose the attention of the audience; a Tragedy that is too short may stick in the audience's mind, it is not able to contain many details. Therefore the Tragedy should be in a midpoint between those two points.
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There is a real skill involved in translating a story into a dramatic script or a cinematic screenplay (which I hope you will discover as we do some of the ground work for writing a screenplay). When creating a script for stage or screen you have to think very carefully about what to include and what not to include in the story, and then, of course, how to make it work in dialogue and action. It will be very interesting to see if you find Aristotle's comments about the action of Tragedy helpful as you create your Aeneid screenplay.
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