“So what book should we use for A6?”
“How about the Poetics?”
“You’re kidding right?”
Weird as it may be, our idea to use Aristotle’s Poetics originated as joke, partially because it seemed less interesting (in terms of a creative adaptation) than other works such as Frankenstein or Pygmalion. But as we continued to contemplate the idea, Christine and I realized that we would not necessarily have to use it as a guide to writing good literature, but that we could follow in the steps of our in-class debate. We thought this would be a great backdrop for our adaptation since Aristotle explicitly contrasts epics and tragedies in the Poetics. After that revelation, our focused shifted to what kind of adaptation we would create.
We began with the idea of doing a one of those cheesy 80s workout videos based on the conventions of epics and tragedies (plus who can resist the opportunity to wear neon tights and sport super-high side ponytails?). However, after watching a few videos on Youtube, we were inspired to change our concept to incorporate a more modern, competitive aspect. Thus ArisBattle (yay for cheesy titles!) was born.
We then went throughout the book to find passages we could use - either as workout mantras or just phrases we could yell at our students - or, as I’d like to call them, our “victims.” Even though the idea of using exercises to symbolize tragedies and epics seemed unorthodox, we still wanted to include the main concepts in our execution. For example, in his description of a good tragedy, Aristotle emphasizes the importance of plot and actions over characters: “There could not be a tragedy without action, but there could be one without character” (12). Therefore we decided to have the Tragic Workout focus on technique and skill - it wouldn’t be about the person doing the workout as much as practice and “substance.”
Continuing off our class debate as inspiration, we had Epic win over Tragedy (sucks for me, but whatever... you win some, you lose some). Because the Tragic Workout student kept thinking about every aspect of her technique while running - proper breathing, pumping her arms, measuring the length of her strides, and other random stuff like that - she lost awareness and ended up stumbling right before reaching the finish line. Our rationale was that, in order to succeed, one does not necessarily have to over-think his or her actions. It’s definitely debatable, but we believed that practice does not always render perfection. Sometimes it’s about losing oneself to passion, and that’s what we decided to stress overall within the competition.
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