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Poetics. English;The Poetics of Aristotle by Aristotle
page 27 of 52 (51%)
with or without tokens --is a less artistic mode of recognition. A better
kind is that which comes about by a turn of incident, as in the Bath
Scene in the Odyssey.

Next come the recognitions invented at will by the poet, and on that
account wanting in art. For example, Orestes in the Iphigenia reveals the
fact that he is Orestes. She, indeed, makes herself known by the letter;
but he, by speaking himself, and saying what the poet, not what the plot
requires. This, therefore, is nearly allied to the fault above
mentioned:--for Orestes might as well have brought tokens with him.
Another similar instance is the 'voice of the shuttle' in the Tereus of
Sophocles.

The third kind depends on memory when the sight of some object awakens a
feeling: as in the Cyprians of Dicaeogenes, where the hero breaks into
tears on seeing the picture; or again in the 'Lay of Alcinous,' where
Odysseus, hearing the minstrel play the lyre, recalls the past and weeps;
and hence the recognition.

The fourth kind is by process of reasoning. Thus in the Choephori: 'Some
one resembling me has come: no one resembles me but Orestes: therefore
Orestes has come.' Such too is the discovery made by Iphigenia in the
play of Polyidus the Sophist. It was a natural reflection for Orestes to
make, 'So I too must die at the altar like my sister.' So, again, in the
Tydeus of Theodectes, the father says, 'I came to find my son, and I lose
my own life.' So too in the Phineidae: the women, on seeing the place,
inferred their fate:--'Here we are doomed to die, for here we were cast
forth.' Again, there is a composite kind of recognition involving false
inference on the part of one of the characters, as in the Odysseus
Disguised as a Messenger. A said
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