Aristotle’s elements of tragedy: plot, character and thought “Aristotle was the first accurate critic and truest judge – nay, the greatest philosopher the world ever had.” So wrote Ben Jonson, whose assessment is still defensible today. Aristotle was a scholar whose scientific explorations were as wide ranging as his philosophical speculations were profound; a teacher, who enchanted and inspired the brightest youth of Greece; a public figure who lived a turbulent life in a turbulent world. He bestrode antiquity like an intellectual colossus. No man before him had contributed so much to learning. No man after him might aspire to rival his achievements. Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory. This brief treatise does not deserve attention only for its pioneering qualities or its incisive comments about ancient epic and drama; it has also had a profound effect on the way we read and analyse literature today. In Poetics, Aristotle offers an account of what he calls “poetry.” Once the Poetics was rediscovered and published in about A.D. 1500, its concepts, methods of analysis and conclusions acquired fundamental importance among Renaissance and seventeenth- century dramatists and literary critics in Italy, France and England. Aristotle in Poetics 6 gives us the best explanation we have for our experiences of tragedy.  He considers tragedy as the most refined version of poetry that deals with the imitation of lofty matters.  The tragedy is one of the poetics arts.  According to Aristotle, tragedy came from the efforts of poets to present men as 'nobler,' or 'better' than they are in real life.  It is, he says, an imitative representation (mimesis) of a serious (spoudaios) action, dramatically presented in a plot that is self-contained, completed and unified. The protagonists of tragic drama are admirable, not technically speaking heroes or demigods, but larger and better versions of ourselves. In the finest tragedies, the characters of the protagonist make him susceptible to a deflection – to an erring waywardness- that brings disaster, producing a reversal in the projected arc of his life. The story of his undeserved misfortune arouses our pity and fear, clarifying and purifying those reactions in such a way as to bring us both pleasure and understanding. The story contains rhythm and harmony, which occur in different combinations in different parts of the tragedy. It is performed rather than narrated.