Aristotle goes to Hollywood

Fernando Kaskais

Jun 1

Fatal flaws. Al Pacino as Don Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's *The Godfather: Part III* (1990). *Photo by Fabian Cevallos/Sygma/Getty Images*

Today, the ancient Greek storyteller would be winning Oscars. To learn how, turn to the Poetics, his masterwork on writing

Philip Freeman is professor of humanities and Fletcher Jones Chair of Western Culture at Seaver College, Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. He is the author of 21 books, most recently Hannibal: Rome's Greatest Enemy (2022) and How to Tell a Story (2022).

If you wanted to write a screenplay for a blockbuster film, Aristotle is the last person you might ask for advice. He lived more than 2,000 years ago, spent his days lecturing on ethics and earthworms, and never saw a movie in his life. But some of the best contemporary writers of stage and screen, such as Aaron Sorkin and David Mamet, think that this ancient Greek philosopher knew exactly how to tell a gripping story for any age. 'The rulebook is the Poetics of Aristotle,' Sorkin says. 'All the rules are there.'

Aristotle seems like an unlikely guide for storytellers. He was born in the wild land of Macedonia in northern Greece where his father was serving as court physician to the local king, the grandfather of Alexander the Great. After his parents died while he was still a teenager, Aristotle travelled to Athens to study with Plato, the student of Socrates and most famous philosopher of the day. Plato was a brilliant theorist but had little interest in the practical and experimental work that Aristotle loved. The younger man dissected oysters and waded through swamps collecting tadpoles, basically inventing the science of biology, while Plato was busy discoursing on the invisible reality underpinning the cosmos. After Plato died, Aristotle returned to Macedonia for a time to become the tutor of young Alexander, then founded his own school in Athens called the Lyceum, devoted to research and teaching.

In the following years, Aristotle wrote and lectured on every subject imaginable, from astronomy and metaphysics to politics and zoology. Sadly, none of his complete and polished writings survive, only lecture notes. But these notes, sometimes miscopied by later scribes, became the sourcebook of Aristotle's teaching that would change the world and become the foundation of almost every discipline studied in universities today.

One short work of Aristotle's that managed to survive the centuries is called the Poetics. In spite of the title, it is about much more than poetry in the modern sense of the word. In ancient Greece, all kinds of literature were written in verse, from epic tales and tragic drama to obscene comedies. Thus the Poetics is really a guide for storytelling of every sort. But the book suffers from an even more mangled manuscript history than most of Aristotle's writings, with missing and rearranged sections, logical gaps, and the loss of its whole second half on comedy. The fact that so many people through the ages have struggled to study this short work and learn from it is a testimony to its power, even in its jumbled form.

I've taught the Poetics to college students many times over the years and been amazed at how often they find it a transformative experience for their own writing and reading. There is simply nothing like this remarkable book for making us think carefully about what makes a story work well, whether we're composing our own or trying to appreciate Shakespeare or The Shawshank Redemption (1994). But I've been so saddened over the years by those bright students who gave up on the Poetics out of sheer frustration that I decided to translate it anew from the ancient Greek, and try to organise it in a way that is understandable for a modern audience. The result – entitled How to Tell a Story (2022) – is a new approach to Aristotle's Poetics that strives to be a faithful and accurate translation but also a useful handbook for writers and readers. Some scholars might scoff at the idea of presenting the Poetics as a guidebook for non-specialists, but Aristotle's ideas are so powerful that they beg to be available to a wider audience. You may not agree with everything Aristotle says, but consider his ideas, and see if you don't think they're as fresh and brilliant today as they were 2,000 years ago...

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https://aeon.co/essays/how-to-write-a-hollywood-blockbuster-with-aristotles-poetics