Aristotelian Negotiations: Intertwining of the Theory of Tragedy and the History of Knowledge (Renewal Proposal)

• Applicant: Dr. Arata Takeda
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: from 2015 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 276860685

In the course of investigating the trajectory and outcomes of the Aristotelian negotiations, i.e. the controversies over the apparent contradiction between chapters 13 and 14 of Aristotle’s “Poetics” within the theory of tragedy between Renaissance and Enlightenment, it has become clear that the favoring of the poetics of hard pathos (chapter 13) and the marginalization of the poetics of soft pathos (chapter 14) result from causes that are, besides being specifically related to the history of theory, also generally rooted in the history of knowledge. The difficulty with the argument of chapter 14 lay not only in its ‘contradiction’ with that of chapter 13 but also, on a much more fundamental level, in its conspicuous discrepancy with a traditional authoritative knowledge that can be identified as the stereotype of the unhappy ending in tragedy. This stereotype, which runs blatantly counter to the philological facts, has its roots in a knowledge tradition reaching far back into the antiquity, a tradition that shaped systematically the mediaeval idea of tragedy (and comedy) without any connection to drama and theater and continues to have a powerful effect on the popular notion of tragedy to this day. The argument of chapter 14 had to become a problem already in view of this stereotype, for it clearly seemed to prioritize the happy ending. These observations lead to the formulation of a problem that was not envisaged in the framework of the initial proposal but appears to be decisive for the final quality of the project. The visibly close entanglement of the Aristotelian negotiations with the history of the impact of the stereotype of the unhappy ending in tragedy requires a complementary investigation of the changing relation between fact-based philological knowledge, special poetological knowledge, and popular stereotypical knowledge within the history of the theory of tragedy. The Aristotelian negotiations can only be comprehensively and meaningfully described if this relation and its important points of interaction are fully integrated into the concluding considerations. The project is therefore faced with the additional task of investigating, in a broader context of the history of knowledge, how significantly the stereotype of the unhappy ending in tragedy has affected the trajectory of the Aristotelian negotiations and to what extent the single arguments that are put forward for or against the poetics of soft pathos take profit from the philological questioning of the stereotype or continue to be dictated by the regime of the stereotype. With this renewal proposal the project intends, in conjunction with the previous work, to make a pioneering contribution to an understanding of tragedy that is aware of the problems posed by the history of poetology as well as the history of knowledge.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants