ARISTOTLES FAVORITE TRAGEDY

The Poetics is considered to be the foundation of Western dramatic and literary theory, and readers generally interpret Aristotle on the basis of Chapter 13 to claim that Oedipus, with its pity, fear and horrible ending, is the finest type of tragedy. Some specialists, however, discuss Aristotle also stating in Chapter 14 that the happily-ending plays like Cresphontes and Iphigenia (in Tauris) are the finest, with the type of plays that involve an agent killing or committing great suffering to a family member, and only recognizing the family connection afterwards, being second-best. This passage obviously creates a dilemma, because the second-best type must include Oedipus. No commentator has ever been able to resolve the dilemma to the satisfaction of the profession, and as a result Oedipus maintains its stature. Indeed, the specialist Elizabeth Belfiore recently published (&ldquo,The Elements of Tragedy,&rdquo, in A Companion to Aristotle, ed. Georgios Anagnostopoulos, 2009) a defense of the view that Oedipus is the best play for Aristotle in spite of the explicit ranking of Chapter 14.Gregory Scott here demonstrates instead that Aristotle actually means what he says in Chapter 14