Vice and virtue (An essai on Aristotle’s Poetics, chapter 2)

[superversive]

The objects the imitator represents are actions, with agents who are necessarily either good men or bad - the diversities of human character being nearly always derivative from this primary distinction, since the line between virtue and vice is one dividing the whole of mankind. It follows, therefore, that the agents represented must be either

Comments

[houseboatonstyx]

"The essential thing about representation (as St. Augustine would remind us) is that the representation is not the thing represented; or as Magritte put it, ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe.’ "

Reading at this hour, I almost went looking for the Simenon novel.