It is now generally agreed that in Aristotle's Poetics, ch. 13 means ‘mistake of fact’. The moralizing interpretation favoured by our Victorian forebears and their continental counterparts was one of the many misunderstandings fostered by their moralistic society, and in our own enlightened erais revealed as an aberration. In challenging this orthodoxy I am not moved by any particular enthusiasm for Victoriana, nor do I want to revive the view that means simply ‘moral flaw’ or ‘morally wrong action’. I shall (...) try to show that the word has a range of applications, from ‘ignorance of fact’ at one end to ‘moral defect’, ‘moral error’, at the other, and that the modern orthodoxy, though not as clearly wrong as the moralizing interpretation it displaced, restricts Aristotle's meaning in a way he did not intend, and does lessthan justice to his analysis of classical drama. (shrink)

One of the ways in which a poet may show his quality is by discrimination and originality in his choice of adjectives. Poetry likes to adorn the bare noun; a noun such as ‘the sky’ calls out for an attribute. But in practice the poet has to take care to avoid the cliche. He can seldom write ‘the blue sky’; even ‘the azure sky’ has become trite. He has to search for the epithet which will be both apt and original.

Until 1923 most critics were content to interpret as ‘a reversal o fortune’. Then, in ‘The Reverse of Aristotle’ , Mr. F. L. Lucas argued persuasively for Vahlen's interpretation of the term as ‘a reversa of intention’, ‘any event where the agent's intention is over-ruled to produce an effect the exact opposite of his intention’. The result has been wide acceptanct for Vahlen's theory. This may be a case of truth prevailing after two thousanc years of error, but it looks (...) to me more like an instance of quid facundia posset I suggest that we simple-minded Ajaxes have fallen victims to the wit of Odysseus. (shrink)

THE object of this note is to draw attention to a suggestion made by the late Professor F. M. Cornford, in the course of a paper read to the Oxford Philological Society some years ago.

In an article based on an unpublished paper by Professor Cornford, Mr. I. M. Glanville returned to the suggestion that the words S0009838800011605_inline1 at the beginning of Chapter 11 of the Poetics , which are part of the definition of peripeteia, refer back to the phrase S0009838800011605_inline2 S0009838800011605_inline3 , thereby raising the question whose expectation it is to which events turn out contrary, that of the audience or of the characters in the play.

In an article based on an unpublished paper by Professor Cornford, Mr. I. M. Glanville returned to the suggestion that the words S0009838800011605_inline1 at the beginning of Chapter 11 of the Poetics, which are part of the definition of peripeteia, refer back to the phrase S0009838800011605_inline2 S0009838800011605_inline3, thereby raising the question whose expectation it is to which events turn out contrary, that of the audience or of the characters in the play.