SEMINARS 5-6 Taratushka Oleksiy

Activity 1
1) What rules does the craft of writing involve?

The craft of writing involves more than mere rules of prosody. The work’s
structure must be manipulated to attract the reader. First, the literary
situation has to be established. The reader must be directly related to the
work, placed in it — given enough information on who, what, when, or why
— so that his attention is caught and held (or, on the other hand, he must
be deliberately mystified, to the same end).

2) How did Aristotle define dramatic structure?

Aristotle gave a formula for dramatic structure that can be generalized to

apply to most literature: presentation, development, complication, crisis,
and resolution.

3) Are all literary works structured according to this pattern?

Nevertheless, the scheme does provide a norm from which there is infinite
variation. Neoclassical dramatists and critics, especially in seventeenth-
century France, derived from Aristotle what they called the unities of time,
action, and place. This meant that the action of a play should not spread
beyond the events of one day and, best of all, should be confined within the
actual time of performance.

4) How did the understanding of dramatic structure develop in the

period of Renaissance?

These three unities — of time, place, and action — do not occur in Aristotle
and are certainly not observed in Classical Greek tragedy. They are an
invention of Renaissance critics, some of whom went even further, insisting
also on what might be called a unity of mood.

5) What was the 19th century for literature?

The nineteenth century was the golden age of the novel, and most of the
more famous examples of the form were systematically plotted, even where
the plot structure simply traced the growth in personality of an individual
hero or heroine.
 6) How did the structure of the novel develop?

usually develop organically rather than according to geometrical formulas,

one incident or image spinning off another. Probably the most tightly
structured work, in the Neoclassicists’ sense, is the Icelandic Njal's Saga.

7) What do the novels by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Balzac owe their power

to?

Novels such as Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1865-1869), Dostoyevsky’s

Brothers Karamazov (1880), and the works of Balzac owe much of their
power to their ability to overwhelm the reader with a massive sense of
reality.

8) What structure of a novel was involved by the 20th century writers?

The latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed an attack on

old forms, but what the new writers evolved was simply a new architecture.
A novel like James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), which takes place in a day and
an evening, is one of the most highly structured ever written. Novelists such
as Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Woolf, and, to a lesser
extent, Henry James developed a multiple-aspect narrative, sometimes by
using time shifts and flashbacks and by writing from different points of view,
sometimes by using the device (dating back to Classical Greek romances)
of having one or more narrators as characters within the story.

9) What characterizes drama as a form of literature?

Like lyric poetry, drama has been an exceptionally stable literary form.
Given a little leeway, most plays written by the beginning of the twentieth
century could be adjusted to the rules of Aristotle’s Poetics.

10) What kind of modern art does drama compete with? Why?

From that day to this, drama (forced to compete with the cinema) has
become ever more experimental, constantly striving for new methods,
materials, and, especially, ways to establish a close relationship with the
audience.

Activity 2
1) What is the origin of the term drama?
The word "drama" has its roots in Greek words meaning "to act" and "to
do."
2) What differs drama from other literary forms (in terms of text, action,
language)?

Drama shows people going through some eventful period in their lives,
seriously or humorously. The dramatic text presents the drama as a range
of verbal imagery. The language of drama can range between great
extremes: on the one hand, an intensely theatrical and ritualistic manner;
and on the other, an almost exact reproduction of real life. A dramatic
monologue is a type of lyrical poem or narrative piece that has a person
speaking to a select listener and revealing his character in a dramatic
situation.

3) How is drama traditionally classified? What does the difference lie in?

Drama is often represented by masks of tragedy and comedy. Tragedy and

comedy share many qualities. Both involve conflict, but the way that conflict
is resolved is different. Traditionally, tragedy ends in the death of the main
character or characters, while comedy ends with celebration or marriage.

4) What term did Aristotle introduce to speak about the purging effect of
a tragedy on the reader/spectator?

The tragedy acts as a purge. It arouses our pity for the stricken one and our
terror that we ourselves may be struck down. As the play closes we are
washed clean of these emotions and we feel better for the experience
(Aristotle called this experience catharsis).

5) What other dramatic genres can you name. Give their short
characteristic features.

A classical tragedy tells of a high and noble person who falls because of a
"tragic flaw," a weakness in his own character. A domestic tragedy
concerns the lives of ordinary people brought low by circumstances beyond
their control. A romantic comedy is a love story. The main characters are
lovers; the secondary characters are comic. In the end the lovers are
always united.

6) What types of modern drama can you name?

Modern drama can be divided into two main categories – realism and
expressionism. Realism concentrates on the details of daily life.
Expressionism is more concerned with feelings and uses innovative
techniques to express the interior lives of characters.

7) What elements of drama were defined by Aristotle?

Aristotle broke drama down into six elements: character, ideas, language,
action (plot), music, and spectacle.

8) What does successful drama need? Characterize the elements.

Conflict, characters, setting, dramatic structure and good dialogue.

Conflict- The clashes of opposite forces. These forces can be other people,
nature, society, our own selves or fate or God.

Character: you need at least one character (dramatic monologue) . A

dramatist should start with characters.

The plot should be able to tell what happens and why.

Activity 3
1) How did Aristotle define tragedy, poetry, peripety, plot?
A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious...in a dramatic, not in a
narrative form.
poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history: for
poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular.
A peripety is the change of the kind described from one state of things within the
plot to its opposite, and that too in the way we are saying, in accordance with
probability or necessity
Plots are either simple or complex, since the actions they represent naturally are
characterized by a similar difference.
2) What types of plot did he recommend to avoid?
there are three forms of plot to be avoided. A good man must not be seen
passing from happiness to misery, or a bad man from misery to happiness. Nor
should an extremely bad man be seen falling from happiness into misery.