The book presents a novel reading of Aristotle's concept of muthos. It has four main chapters, sandwiched by an introduction and conclusion, a bibliography and indexes. M. starts by discussing the notion of muthos in the Poetics (Chapter 1), before proceeding to use this concept to interpret the plays of Aristophanes and fragments of other Old Comedies (Chapters 2–3) and to discuss the differences between the dramatic genres more generally (Chapter 4). The core idea of the book is that muthos should be understood as a much narrower term than what is usually assumed: it should not be compared to what we normally understand as the ‘plot’ of a story. Instead, it should be interpreted as ‘a small number of core events, all contained within the narrative work’ (p. 11). One upshot of this reading is that there is a significant difference between how a play begins and ends, and how a muthos begins and ends. The interpretation has far-reaching consequences for our understanding of the Poetics and Greek drama more generally. In what follows, I give an outline of the main chapters of the book and pay special attention to M.'s interpretation of the Poetics, which so much of this project rests on.
Chapter 1, ‘Muthos: the Plot Within’, deals with several related problems about size in the Poetics. It approaches the topic by examining Aristotle's use of two related words for size, megethos (‘magnitude’) and mēkos (‘length’), which are at times difficult to understand if these words can be used interchangeably. M.'s solution consists in arguing that the two terms carry different meanings: megethos refers to the size of the muthos in relation to the size of the larger whole, while mēkos refers to absolute size unrelated to any larger whole. The upshot of this reading is that Aristotle needs to consider muthos as a small number of events that are entirely contained in the narrative work. In other words, the Aristotelian notion of muthos is understood as something very different from a ‘plot’ in the traditional sense, which would typically include all the events in a narrative. By turning to his remarks on Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris (IT) and Homer's Odyssey (Od.), M. attempts to show that this indeed is Aristotle's understanding of the concept.
M.'s reflections on how Aristotle describes the IT and the Od. succeed in demonstrating that this idea is worth taking seriously. However, I have some reservations about this overall interpretation of muthos. First, a few noteworthy passages in the Poetics are left unexplored. M. opens the chapter by analysing Aristotle's statements about size (i.e. megethos and mēkos) and then comments upon how these passages inform our understanding of muthos. While the chapter also discusses the size, composition and parts of the muthos, it does not investigate all of Aristotle's statements about the concept. For example, the opening paragraph of the book in part mentions the well-known claim that the muthos is ‘the first principle (archē) and, as it were, soul (psuchē) of tragedy’ (1450a38–9) when establishing the importance of the topic. But M. never returns to an explanation of how we are to understand this claim given the interpretation, or considers whether it might pose a challenge to it. Since both archē and psuchē are key concepts in Aristotle's philosophy, it seems clear that this statement carries greater weight than one might think at first glance.
Another passage that passes unnoticed is 1450a22–3, which is a clear reminder of the teleological framework of Aristotle's philosophy. This brings me to a second worry about M.'s interpretation: that it seems to fit less well with Aristotle's teleology. The passage referred to above claims that ‘ta pragmata kai ho muthos is the end of tragedy, and the end is the most important thing of all’ (1450a22–3; cf. 1450a18). What are we to make of this statement? As D.W. Lucas notes (Aristotle: Poetics [1968], p. 103), kai is explanatory of pragmata, as Aristotle otherwise defines muthos as ‘the organization of the events’ (tēn sunthesin tōn pragmatōn, 1450a4–5). Alternatively, the pragmata in 1450a22 stand for the materials and the muthos for their form when embodied in structure. On both readings, the events are identical with or closely intertwined with the muthos. M. does not mention the passage, but claims that Aristotle ‘consistently describes what appear to be the smallest units of the muthos as πράγματα’ (p. 39). Thus, we seem to agree that the pragmata are somehow included in the muthos. But Aristotle's thought that the muthos is linked with the teleological end of tragedy creates a puzzle for M.'s interpretation: If muthos is indeed a small set of events within a tragedy, as M. maintains, then why should there be any point of including further events in a tragedy that are outside the muthos? From a teleological point of view that seems completely redundant. It would be timely to explain how this narrow interpretation of muthos is able to fit into the teleological framework of Aristotle's philosophy.
Chapter 2, ‘The Aristophanic Muthos’, proceeds by applying the interpretation of muthos to Aristophanes’ plays and offers an outline of the muthos in his surviving comedies. M. argues that these comedies all use the same muthos, which starts with a complaint, proceeds with a plan and ends with its implementation, and that it is located mostly in the first half of the comedies. In addition, he speculates that other Old Comedies may have used the same muthos and interprets the fragments of six plays (by Aristophanes, Crates I, Archippus and Eupolis) based on this assumption. While these interpretations are not meant to be reconstructions of the entire plot, they are intended to be outlines of the core events in the muthoi of these plays. Given that so few fragments of these plays survive, this reading is sometimes highly speculative, as M. admits.
Chapter 3, ‘The Muthos in Mythological Old Comedy’, examines the fragments of Old Comedies that were based on mythological stories. It argues that these comedies as a rule did not include a parabasis or an agon. This makes them structurally different from comedies of Aristophanes, which had an invented plot. One of the upshots of this chapter is that the muthos of mythological comedies resembles the muthos of tragic poetry rather than resembling the structure of Aristophanes’ plays. To test this hypothesis, Chapter 4, ‘Muthos and the Definition of Genre’, is devoted to an outline of the muthoi in all the surviving tragedies and satyr plays. Following this outline, the book ends with a broader discussion of how we should systematise the surviving dramas.
In sum, I have some reservations about M.'s interpretation of the Poetics, which builds the ground for the remaining chapters of the book, and I am not sure if it will convince all its readers. Some reflections on translation could also be helpful, given how strongly M. advises against explaining muthos as ‘plot’ in the traditional sense. Nevertheless, I hope that this book will contribute to a continued scholarly debate on Aristotle's concept of narrative and its relation to Greek drama, which is a topic well worthy of attention.
