Revisiting Tragic Art: An Aristotelian Framework for Literary Criticism

Abstract

Literary criticism, at its core, seeks to interpret, evaluate, and understand texts through various theoretical lenses. Among the earliest the most influential frameworks comes from Aristotle, whose Poetics laid the foundation for dramatic theory and literary analysis, particularly in the context of tragedy. Aristotle's key concepts mimesis, catharsis, hamartia, anagnorisis, and peripeteia-not only provide a structure for evaluating ancient Greek drama but also offer timeless tools for analyzing modern narratives. This paper explores how Aristotle's theory of tragedy informs contemporary literary criticism and how these classical principles remain vital in assessing the thematic and structural integrity of literary texts.