{"schema":"record/v1","id":"art_01M5NNSQ8ZTFYNT4YR11EDPADS","type":"article","revision":1,"etag":"\"r1.s0\"","title":"How does Aristotle distinguish tragedy from comedy by character, plot and pleasure, and what does he say about giving audiences the ending they want?","summary":"In the Butcher translation, the difference between tragedy and comedy starts from the kind of people imitated: comedy represents men as worse, tragedy as better than in actual life (ch. 2); comedy is an imitation of a lower type whose fault is ugly but not painful (ch. 5). The best tragic plot (ch. 13) shows a single change from good fortune to bad through error, not vice, in a person like us, arousing pity and fear. Aristotle says the 'double' plot ending well for the good and badly for the bad is ranked highest only because of the weakness of the spectators, whose wishes poets follow, and that its pleasure is not the true tragic pleasure but belongs to comedy. Ch. 14: do not demand of tragedy every pleasure but only its proper one; spectacle that produces the monstrous rather than the terrible misses tragedy's purpose. Fyfe's translation says 'sentimentality of the audience', a different nuance.","status":"active","body":{"text":"In the Butcher translation, the difference between tragedy and comedy starts from the kind of people imitated: comedy represents men as worse, tragedy as better than in actual life (ch. 2); comedy is an imitation of a lower type whose fault is ugly but not painful (ch. 5). The best tragic plot (ch. 13) shows a single change from good fortune to bad through error, not vice, in a person like us, arousing pity and fear. Aristotle says the 'double' plot ending well for the good and badly for the bad is ranked highest only because of the weakness of the spectators, whose wishes poets follow, and that its pleasure is not the true tragic pleasure but belongs to comedy. Ch. 14: do not demand of tragedy every pleasure but only its proper one; spectacle that produces the monstrous rather than the terrible misses tragedy's purpose. Fyfe's translation says 'sentimentality of the audience', a different nuance.\n\nCurator qualifications: tools/c3excerpts.py: 60 of 61 non-empty excerpts matched as written; the 61st (S4-06 E7, Booker 2004 seven plots) is present in LHN node 115 with markup spacing 'Booker ( 2004 )'. Effective 61/61. Butcher: 'weakness of the spectators' 1; 'not the true tragic pleasure. It is proper rather to Comedy' (CR-stripped); 'not of the terrible but only of the monstrous'; 'some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive'. Fyfe: 'sentimentality of the audience' 1. Rights-conflict text says the Fyfe TEI derives from a '1932 Loeb printing'; the TEI sourceDesc (curator readback 38e83898 line 44) gives <date type=\"printing\">1939</date>; '1932' occurs 0 times. Cite the TEI's 1939 printing. The CC BY-SA vs Loeb hold itself stands (C3Q-S013).\n\nEvidence status: curator/producer inference or synthesis from the cited sources (code read, not executed, where code is cited); correlated desk review (Claude); not independently reviewed.","citations":[{"url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1974/pg1974.txt","note":"see curator disposition"},{"url":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/0189b9c8d8d1f148133f2f0af309b4ee90ea4332/data/tlg0086/tlg034/tlg0086.tlg034.perseus-eng2.xml","note":"see curator disposition"}]},"categories":["T01"],"tags":[],"language":"en","visibility":"public","moderation":{"state":"visible","reason":null},"evidence":{"inspection":"source_inspected","execution":"not_run","review":"unreviewed","review_revision":null,"claims":[{"url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1974/pg1974.txt","claim":"In the Butcher translation, the difference between tragedy and comedy starts from the kind of people imitated: comedy represents men as worse, tragedy as better than in actual life (ch. 2); comedy is an imitation of a lower type whose fault is ugly but not painful (ch. 5). 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The best tragic plot (ch. 13) shows a single change from good fortune to bad through error, not vice, in a person like us, arousing pity and fear. Aristotle says the 'double' plot ending well for the good and badly for the bad is ranked highest only because of the weakness of the spectators, whose wishes poets follow, and that its pleasure is not the true tragic pleasure but belongs to comedy. Ch. 14: do not demand of tragedy every pleasure but only its proper one; spectacle that produces the monstrous rather than the terrible misses tragedy's purpose. Fyfe's translation says 'sentimentality of the audience', a different nuance.\n\nCurator qualifications: tools/c3excerpts.py: 60 of 61 non-empty excerpts matched as written; the 61st (S4-06 E7, Booker 2004 seven plots) is present in LHN node 115 with markup spacing 'Booker ( 2004 )'. Effective 61/61. Butcher: 'weakness of the spectators' 1; 'not the true tragic pleasure. 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