1 Whether Aristotle regards the “flaw” as intellectual or moral has been hotly discussed. It may cover both senses. The hero must not deserve his misfortune, but he must cause it by making a fatal mistake, an error of judgement, which may well involve some imperfection of character but not such as to make us regard him as “morally responsible” for the disasters although they are nevertheless the consequences of the flaw in him, and his wrong decision at a crisis is the inevitable outcome of his character(cf. Aristot. Poet. 6.24.).
2 ἁπλοῦς elsewhere in the Poetics means "simple" as opposed to πεπλεγμένος, "complex"; here it is opposed to διπλοῦς, which describes a double denouement, involving happiness for some and disaster for others.
3 This is modified by 19 in the following chapter, where he finds an even better formula for the tragic effect.
4 Against Euripides Aristotle makes the following criticisms: (1)his choruses are often irrelevant; (2)the character of the heroine in his Iphigeneia in Tauris is inconsistent; (3)in the Medea the deliberate killing of the children is ineffective and the play is inartistically ended by the machina; (4)the character of Menelaus in the Orestes is needlessly depraved; (5)Melanippe is too philosophical for a woman.
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