Recognition Scenes in Greek Literature

Bernadotte Perrin was professor of Greek at Yale University and best known for his translation of Plutarch's Lives. In this essay he addresses the recognition scene in Greek literature, an element of plot discussed by Aristotle in the Poetics as having five classes. Perrin catalogs and classifies such scenes by their Aristotelian type and discuses the ways in which this ancient lens for examining a plot is and is not useful and appropriate to a given work. This is a particularly relevant work to readings of epic and tragedy, but will be an interesting application of Aristotle for any student of literary criticism.