No Single Word for Unity in the Poetics

There is no one consistent Greek word that means “Unity” in Aristotle’s Poetics, but you wouldn't know it from the translations! Although he uses words derived from ἕνωσις (oneness) and idioms like συμβαίνω “standing with feet together” Ari only defines Unity negatively: “each part must stand together so that if any part is moved or displaced the whole is dislocated and “put out of joint.” (Poetics 51a32-34). Aristotle thought like a biologist. The word that gets translated as “part” (meros) is very problematic. It can also mean “moment” or “aspect”…the “parts” that Epic lacks, for example, are music and visuals, melos and opsis. The problem of “whole and parts” gets even more complex when you try to decode what Ari meant by it in his Philosophical texts! In criticism, emphasis seems to be the first source of trouble with “Unity.” When one or another aspect of a work is brought into sharp focus for the purpose of establishing it as the unifying factor of the whole , other parts seem correspondingly to go out of focus.