4. Rhetoric as Part of Poetic


Implicit in Aristotle and throughout classical literary criticism there is
a clear-cut distinction between poetic and rhetoric. Aside from the
metrical form of poetic, accepted by all but Aristotle as a distinguishing
characteristic, and the non-metrical form of rhetoric, the essentially
practical nature of rhetoric marked it off to the Greeks and Romans as
something quite different from poetic and infinitely more important in
education and public life. But however clear-cut this distinction may be
in principle, in practical application there is rarely to be found such
ideal isolation.

Aristotle, for instance, carries rhetoric bodily over into poetic by
including Thought, διάνοιᾰ, as the third in importance of the constituent
elements of tragedy.[75] This Thought is the intellectual element in
conduct, and in drama is embodied not in action, but in speech.[76]
Aristotle says,

It is the faculty of saying what is possible and pertinent in given
circumstances. In the case of oratory, this is the function of the
political art and of the art of rhetoric. Concerning thought, we may
assume what is said in the _Rhetoric_, to which inquiry the subject more
properly belongs. Under thought is included every effect which has to be
produced by speech, the subdivisions being--proof and refutation; the
excitation of the feelings, such as pity, fear, anger and the like; the
suggestion of importance or its opposite.[77]