Muthos: Aristotle’s Concept of Narrative and the Fragments of Old Comedy

This book presents a new analysis of Aristotles concept of narrative in the Poetics. Arguing that the term muthos in the Poetics cannot be understood as equivalent to plot, Marsh shows that the muthos concept is instead a useful tool for grouping larger sets of narratives based on specific criteria. The results of this muthos analysis indicate that in the classical period, neither formal structure nor the structure of events was determined by theatrical genre, but by the specific combination of tone and plot type. Marsh concludes that the category of genre itself may be less helpful for classifying these plays than is typically assumed.