Peripeteia (Greek, περιπετεῖα) is a reversal of circumstances, or turning point. Primarily used with reference to works of literature. The English form of peripeteia is Peripety. Peripety is a sudden reversal dependant on intellect and logic.

Aristotle defines it as "a change by which the action veers round to its opposite, subject always to our rule of probability or necessity."

Peripeteia includes changes of character, but also more external changes. A character who becomes rich and famous from poverty and obscurity has undergone peripeteia, even if his character remains the same. A character arc is the status of the character as it unfolds throughout the story, the storyline or series of episodes. ...

When a character learns something he had been previously ignorant of, this could be described as peripeteia; the character has been turned from a state of ignorance to that of knowledge, or from doubt to certainty. However, this is normally distinguished from peripetia as discovery, a distinction derived from Aristotle's work. Discovery, in literature, is a characters learning information that he had previously been ignorant of, when the learning is crucial to the plot. ...

See Aristotle's Poetics. Aristotles Poetics aims to give an account of poetry. ...

Aristotle identified Sophocles' play, Oedipus Tyrannus, more commonly known as Oedipus Rex, as the principal work demonstrating peripety. Alfred Hitchcock is a modern master of peripety, as seen in his Rear Window and North by Northwest.