Aristotle - The Poetics - Style

 

Aristotle - The Poetics

Style 

Aristotle’s remarks on the language of poetry in Poetics anticipated his comments on style in Rhetoric. In both he lays down two essentials of good writing-clearness and prosperity. The object of writing being to communicate the writer’s meaning, it has, first, to be clear or intelligent, but as the meanings to be conveyed are different at different times, the same mode of writing may not be proper for them all. What is therefore needed, next, is the propriety or suitability of each mode of writing to the meaning it is intended to convey. For intelligibility current words are the best, for they are familiar to all, but writing being an art, it should aim at dignity and charm also. These are best attained by the use of unfamiliar words-archaic words, foreign words, dialect words, newly-coined words- that have an element of surprise and novelty in them. For the same reason the metaphysical use of words, conveying a hidden resemblance between things apparently dissimilar, is to be preferred to the plain. It partakes both of the familiar and the unfamiliar. It looks like familiar because ‘all men in their ordinary speech make use of metaphors’ and unfamiliar because it often discerns resemblances of surprising nature. A perfect poetic style uses words of all kinds in a judicious combination. All the same, compound words are best suited to the lyric which strives after ornament, rare or unfamiliar words to the epic which needs to be stately in expression, and metaphorical language to the drama which keeps as close as possible to everyday speech.

The Use of Metaphor

So far Poetics and Rhetoric follow more or less the same line, but Rhetoric is further remarkable for its comments on composition in prose and style in general. ‘The style of prose’, it says, ‘is distant from that of poetry’, for whereas poetry largely draws upon unfamiliar words to attain dignity and charm, prose, dealing with everyday subjects, can use only familiar or current words. However, one source of charm is common to both-the use of metaphor. By employing it judiciously prose can also introduce an element of novelty and surprise in its otherwise plain statements. In the arrangements of words into sentence, it should avoid multiplicity of clauses, parenthesis and ambiguous punctuation. Words can be arranged into two kinds of style –loose or periodic. The loose style is made up of a series of sentences, held together by connective words. In the periodic style each sentence is a complete whole with a beginning, an end and a length (or magnitude) that can be comprehended at a glance. Each such sentence may form part of a bigger whole if the sense so requires it. While the loose style is formless, being just a chain of sentences that may be increased or reduced at will, the periodic style has a form that cannot be so easily tampered with. The loose style therefore is less intelligent than the periodic and also less graceful. The one just runs on, and the other follows a measured course that imparts to it the charm of poetry.