Bookworm Meme

I was tagged by Nessa in this and am already fascinated to see what happens. Here's how this thing works. Open the closest book to you, not your favorite or something you have to go searching for but whatever's closest to you right now, and go to page 56. Starting with the fifth sentence on the page, transcribe three to six lines directly from the text. Once you've typed those lines, tag five more bloggers to do the same on their blogs.

Okay. Grab whatever book is physically closest to me. Well...alright.

Page 56 of Theater Theory Theater, which is one of two texts used in Theatrical Theory & Criticism. Fifth sentence.

The Plot in fact should be so framed that, even without seeing the things that take place, he who simply hears the account of them shall be filled with horror and pity at the incidents, which is just the effect that the mere recital of the story in Oedipus would have on one.

Following sentences.

To produce this same effect by means of Spectacle is less artistic, and requires extraneous aid. Those, however, who make use of the Spectacle to put before us that which is merely monstrous and not productive of fear, are wholly out of touch with Tragedy; not every kind of pleasure should be required of a tragedy, but only its own proper pleasure. The tragic pleasure is that of pity and fear, and the poet has to produce it by a work of imitation; it is clear, therefore, that the causes should be included in the incidents of his story.

This excerpt is from Aristotle's Poetics, a work I found interesting for what it said, but dull in the way the material was presented. What Aristotle is doing for his fifth-century BC audience is disecting the structure of a play and presenting it in a scientific manner. In my opinion, this is dull. In most people's opinions, generally speaking, this would be dull merely because it's academia.

Rather than get on my soap box and proceed to wax eloquent, I'll finish up and do the tagging.

Rhea
Jewel
Lezlie over at Books 'N Border Collies (Two of my favorite things ever!)
The Biblio Brat (Well written book reviews)
The Redneck Mommy