The Poetics of Aristotle

Reversal of the Situation is a change by which the action veers round to its opposite, subject always to our rule of probability or necessity.  Thus in the Oedipus, the messenger comes to cheer Oedipus and free him from his alarms about his mother, but by revealing who he is, he produces the opposite effect.  Again in the Lynceus, Lynceus is being led away to his death, and Danaus goes with him, meaning, to slay him; but the outcome of the preceding incidents is that Danaus is killed and Lynceus saved.  Recognition, as the name indicates, is a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined by the poet for good or bad fortune.  The best form of recognition is coincident with a Reversal of the Situation, as in the Oedipus.  There are indeed other forms.  Even inanimate things of the most trivial kind may in a sense be objects of recognition.  Again, we may recognise or discover whether a person has done a thing or not.  But the recognition which is most intimately connected with the plot and action is, as we have said, the recognition of persons.  This recognition, combined, with Reversal, will produce either pity or fear; and actions producing these effects are those which, by our definition, Tragedy represents.  Moreover, it is upon such situations that the issues of good or bad fortune will depend.  Recognition, then, being between persons, it may happen that one person only is recognised by the other-when the latter is already known—­or it may be necessary that the recognition should be on both sides.  Thus Iphigenia is revealed to Orestes by the sending of the letter; but another act of recognition is required to make Orestes known to Iphigenia.

Two parts, then, of the Plot—­Reversal of the Situation and Recognition—­ turn upon surprises.  A third part is the Scene of Suffering.  The Scene of Suffering is a destructive or painful action, such as death on the stage, bodily agony, wounds and the like.