The Daily Stoic - Aristotle on How to Tell Story

Episode Date: August 7, 2022

Today’s episode features an excerpt from How to Tell a Story: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Storytelling for Writers and Readers translated by Philip Freeman as part of Princeton University Press’s Anient Wisdom For Modern Readers series.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, from the Stoic texts, audio books that you like here recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly that you're able to apply it to actual life. Thank you for listening. of life. Thank you. For listening. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion-forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

Bringing you today, a chunk from Princeton University presses ancient wisdom for modern readers series, which I have loved and raved about. I carry a bunch of them here at the painted ports. They're all these beautiful, colorful little additions, collections, the best stoic thinking is on a bunch of different topics. And then there's some other wonderful ones from Plutarch and Salist and Soutonius

and all the different ancient Roman typically Latin writers. But there's also some others. I love it. And in today's, this is a translation not from a Latin thinker, but from Aristotle. This is a chunk from Aristotle's poetics. The first and best introduction to the art of writing and understanding stories, everything we know about how to craft and tell a story.

In some ways, Trace is back to Aristotle. Even my decision, for instance, to break up the obstacle ego, stillness, and now courage, and discipline, to break up the obstacle ego, stillness, and now courage, and discipline, these books into these three parts. I got that advice from Stephen Pressfield, and where does Stephen Pressfield get it? He gets it from Aristotle. And in today's episode, translated by Philip Freeman from this audiobook, How to Tell a Story, you're going to get some ancient wisdom on how storytelling is an act of imitation

using different media and different ways of telling story. You're going to talk about the origins of tragedy, how it developed, and how these different types of storytelling can shape what we do and how we think and how we communicate ideas. I love the Princeton University Press Ancient Wisdom for Modern Reader Series. Very grateful to them to let us excerpt this. You can listen to a bunch of the additions, including how to tell a story anywhere you get your audiobooks. And like I was saying, we carry the physical ones here at the Painted Porch, but you can

pick them up anywhere, books, or salt. And of course, we will link in today's episode. Enjoy. Introduction Storytelling is imitation. One In this book we are going to discuss the craft of poetry, that is, of storytelling, of all kinds, along with the power each kind of poetry can have. We will also examine how to put together plots of high quality, the number and nature of the parts that make up a story, and other topics of this sort. Let us begin as his natural with basic principles. Epic and tragic poetry, as well as comedy, Ditherembek poetry,

and most music played on the pipes and lyre, these are all a kind of imitation. But these arts differ from one another in their imitation in three ways. Namely, they use different media, different objects, or different manners. Media. How do you tell your story? Some people, either by artistic training or by natural ability, use colors and shapes to imitate various things while others imitate with their voices. In the same way, the poetic arts I have mentioned

produce imitations by means of rhythm, language, and melody, whether using them separately or in combinations. For example, music for the pipes or lyre or similar instruments like pan pipes uses only melody and rhythm. The art of dancing uses rhythm alone, without melody, but its rhythmic movements also imitate character, emotion and action. The craft that uses only words for imitation, either in prose or in verse,

where they're using a single meter or a mixture of meters, has no name even today. We have no common terms for the mimes of Sofron and Zienicus, and the Socratic dialogues, nor for imitation that one might make using iambic trinitres, elijic couplets or other kinds of meters. Of course, people attach the term poetry to different types of meter, and so call some writers elijic poets or epic poets, but they call them all a certain type of poet because they use the same poetic meter,

not because they are similar in the nature of their imitation. Even if someone writes about medicine or physics in verse, they are still called poets. But Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common, except that they both use the same type of poetic meter. We should certainly call Homer a poet, but Empedocles is clearly a scientist. And if someone mixes many different meters, not just a single form, like Sharamon did in his metric melody centaur, we should include him among the poets too.

We should pay attention to distinctions like this. There are also some types of poetic works, such as Ditharam, Nome, Tragedy and Comedy, that use all the different media mentioned earlier, rhythm, melody and meter. They differ in that some use them all together, while others use them at different times. This then is what I mean by the differences between the arts and how they use different media to create imitation. Objects. What are your characters like?

2. Everyone who uses imitation in their art represents people engaged in actions. The people represented must be either good or bad in their character. Almost everyone is marked by either a good or a bad character, since it is by virtue or vice that the character of a person is known. People imitated by artists can be better than us, worse than us or much the same as us. Painters illustrate this in their subjects. Polygnotists depicted superior people, porcelain the inferior sort, while Dionysius painted ordinary people. It is clear that each of the different kinds of artistic imitation we mentioned earlier follows this same pattern, better worse or the same as us, and they are distinguished from each other in how they represent their objects in different ways.

These differences are also seen in dance, along with music for the pipe and lyre. This also holds true for prose, and for verse not accompanied by music. Homer, for example, imitates superior people, while Clevon's characters are similar to us. On the other hand, Hedjimon Othasos, who invented parody, and Niko Chairs author of the Deliad, imitated inferior people. The same is through the diathrames and nooms, for a writer could imitate Cyclopses, as did Timotheus and Philoxenus. But most importantly, tragedy and comedy differ from each other in the same way. Tragedy imitates a better sort of person than us.

Comedy imitates people worse than we are. Manor. Who is telling your story? 3. A third way in which the arts differ from one another in imitation is manner or mode. In the same type of media you can imitate the same objects in different ways. In telling a story you can use multiple narrators with different personalities, as Homer does, or single person narration.

You can also have the characters performing actions directly. Differences and overlap in storytelling. So these then are the three differences in types of artistic imitation. As we said at the beginning, media, how the story is told, object, characters, and manner, narration. In one respect, Sofakles is the same type of imitator as Homer, since both portray superior characters. On the other hand, Sofaklis is like the comic writer Aristophanes, since both of them present their characters performing actions directly. This is where some say

drama gets its name, since it represents people in action. A brief Dorian digression. Because of this, the Dorians claimed to have invented both tragedy and comedy. The Magarians specifically say they invented comedy. Both those from Megara, on the mainland, who say it was invented during their democracy. And those Magarian colonists in Sicily, because it was the birthplace of Epikarmus, who lived long before Chionides and Magnes. Certain Peloponnesians claimed they themselves invented tragedy. The Dorians say the words they use prove they were the inventors of both tragedy and comedy. Since they called their country villages,

comma, while the Athenians called theirs demo. From this, the Dorians claim that comic performers didn't get their name, Commodoy, from the word, Commazine, to revel make merry, but from the villages they wandered through after they were expelled from the cities. They furthermore say the Dorian word for acting or doing is, Dran, not Pratine as it is among the Athenians. So much then for the discussion of the number and nature of the distinctions in imitation. Hey there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the

world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduka Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together, they discussed their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty.

So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondaria. Where does storytelling come from? 4. In general, it seems that there are two causes for the beginnings of poetry, both of them arising from human nature. Imitation. First, imitation comes naturally to people from childhood. Indeed, this is one thing that distinguishes us from other animals, since we have a powerful and natural inclination

to imitating. This is how we learn our earliest lessons in life. We all take great pleasure in imitation. The experience of our lives is proof enough of this, since we naturally delight in seeing the most accurate imitations possible, even when they cause us distress, such as representations of vile creatures or corpses. The reason for this is that we all enjoy understanding things, especially philosophers, but others too, even though they aren't able to do it as well. This is why people enjoy viewing images, because when we see them we begin to understand and work out what each image represents.

Oh, this is a picture of so and so. But if it isn't something or someone you've seen before, it won't give you pleasure as an imitation. Though you can still appreciate the skill in creating it, or its colour, or for some similar reason. Rhythm The second cause for the beginnings of poetry is that melody and rhythm are also natural to us, and poetic meter is certainly

a type of rhythm. From the start, those who had a special talent for these things created poetry gradually through improvisation. The early history of Greek poetry. Poetry developed into two genres, according to the character of those who composed it. Serious authors imitated in their works, serious people and their noble actions. Less serious authors composed stories about common and less admirable people, creating satires in verse. The serious authors, however, composed hymns and poems of praise. We don't know of any satiric works before Homer, though

there were probably many. But we can begin with his marguites and other stories of the same kind. The Ayambic verse formed developed because it worked very well in these types of poems. Such poems are called Ayambic now, because in those days poets used this meter to satirize each other. And so some ancient poets wrote heroic epics, while others wrote satires. Homer was certainly the greatest of the serious poets, since he not only wrote very well, but also was able to dramatize his imitations. In addition, he was the first author to define the forms of comedy by adding drama to what we laugh about, though he didn't engage in personal satire. His marguiti

spares the same relation to comedy as the Iliad and Odyssey do to tragedy. The history of tragedy. When tragedy and comedy first appeared, many poets were led by their own nature to produce one or the other. Some turned to composing comic plays instead of long lampoons, while others produced tragic dramas instead of lengthy epic poems. These new, shorter forms of storytelling were seen as more important and esteemed than the earlier types. This isn't the place to examine whether or not tragedy is sufficiently developed in its various parts, whether we should judge it just in relation to itself, or how it relates to audiences in theatrical performances.

All of that is a separate matter. In a sense, tragedy first arose accidentally, as did comedy. Cragidee came about from the leaders of a Dithorambic chorus, comedy from the leaders of group singing phallic songs, as they still do in some cities. Cragidee gradually evolved as writers developed new aspects and potential in its performance. After these changes were introduced, it eventually became fixed in how it was presented on stage, since it had achieved its true nature. Eskulus was the first playwright to increase the number of speaking actors from one to

two, making the actors the focus of the drama and reducing the importance of the chorus. Sofakles then introduced a third actor and painted scenery. It was only at a later stage that tragedy developed longer plots and more dignified diction as it evolved the wave from its roots in satire plays, along with a shift in meter from trocheic tetrometer to iambic trimeter. They used trocheic tetrometer at first, because it better fit the style of a satir play, and was more like the rhythm of a dance. But when actors began to step out from the chorus and speak, the writers found that it was natural to switch

to Iambic tramiters, because they are closer to the way we normally speak. We often use trimeters in everyday conversation, but not other meters such as hexameters, except when we're departing from our normal style of speech. As for the number of episodes in tragedy and other such features, we will pass over these as it would take too long to give a full history of each development. The History of Comedy 5. Comedy, as we have said, is an imitation of inferior people. Comic characters are not cruel or vicious, but laughable. Laughability being one category of what is shameful or disgraceful.

Being laughable is a shortcoming or disgrace that does not involve any serious pain or destruction. For example, a comic mask is ugly and twisted, but it isn't painful to look at. The history of tragedy and the people responsible for these changes are known well enough, but we have no record of the origins and development of comedy, since no one paid much attention to it. It was only later that the Archon even granted a chorus at public expense to comic writers, before that the chorus of a comedy was all of volunteers. It's only after comedy had already developed some of its characteristic features

that the names of the earliest comic writers are known. We don't know who first introduced comic masks, prologues, multiple actors, and other such things, but we do know that comic plots originated in Sicily, and that the Athenian poet, Cratees, was the first to abandon crude lampoons of individuals to give comedies plots and stories with a more universal appeal. How is epic different from tragedy? Epic is like tragedy in the sense that it is an imitation in poetic meter of noble people, unlike comedy, but epic is different because it uses a single meter and is narrated. Epic and tragedy also differ in length, with tragedy when possible having

its action take place within a single day, or perhaps a little longer. But epic is not bound within a certain time period, though the earliest tragedies were unrestricted in time like epic. Some parts of tragedy are common with epic, others are used only in tragedy. Whoever knows what makes a tragedy good or bad knows the same about epic, since the basic qualities of epic are common with tragedy, but do not all the qualities of tragedy are shared with Epic. The crucial elements of tragedy 6. I will discuss imitation in Epic and Comedy Later. For now, let's take up where we left off and examine what tragedy is based on what we've already said. Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is elevated,

complete and of sufficient length. Each part of a tragic drama uses language that is embellished. Tragedy is acted, not narrated. Tragedy evokes pity and fear, by doing so it brings about a catharsis or purging of emotions. When I say the language of tragedy is embellished, I mean that it uses melody and rhythm. Some parts of the play are performed by speech in a metrical rhythm, while other parts are done through song. The parts of tragedy. Spectacle. Since tragedy is an imitation performed by actors,

it follows that a part of telling the story is arranging and managing what the audience sees on the stage. Music and speech Add to this music and speech, for these are the media through which the actors perform the imitation. By speech I mean the diction or composition of metrical speech in the play. Hopefully everyone already knows what music is. Character plot and reasoning. Since tragedy is an imitation of action performed by certain agents, the agent should have qualities in respect to character and reasoning. For the character and reasoning of a person are what defines his

or her actions and thus success or failure. Plot is the imitation of action, and by plots I mean how the events and incidents in the tragedy are organised. Character is what makes an agent behave in a certain way. Reasoning is what actors say in a tragedy to argue a case or put forward their views. And so tragedy has six parts that determine its quality. Plot, character, speech, reasoning, spectacle and music. or object, plot, character, reasoning. Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in the Daily Stoke Store. You can get them personalized, you can get them sent to a friend.

The app goes the way. You go as the enemy still still in this is the key. The leather bound addition of the daily stoke. We have them all in the daily stoke store, which you can check out at store.dailystoke.com. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to the Daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.