ABSTRACT
Aristotle's Poetics and Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy theorize tragedy from opposite ends of the period in which literacy has been a dominant mode of cultural organization. Aristotle, in the recasting of epic orality and transitional Socratic dialogue in systemic philosophy, posited the development of tragedy as a progression to fulfilment of its form in the dominance of plot. Nietzsche lamented this same development as the descent of mythic function towards individuation and the life of everyday. While observing tragedy's “dismemberment” of the holism of mythic and oral narrative into standardized repeatable units, neither identified the dynamic effects of this change, the role of plot in it, or the inevitability of tragedy's own progression towards supersession. The theory presented here is explicated in the detailed investigations that follow.
