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    Poetics: With linked Table of Contents
    Poetics: With linked Table of Contents
    Poetics: With linked Table of Contents
    Ebook67 pages52 minutes

    Poetics: With linked Table of Contents

    By Aristotle

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    About this ebook

    Aristotle's 'Poetics' is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilder Publications, Inc.
    Release dateNov 27, 2015
    ISBN9781515402756
    Poetics: With linked Table of Contents
    Author

    Aristotle

    Aristotle (384–322 BC) was a philosopher and writer from the Classical period in Ancient Greece. His work provides the intellectual methodology of most European-centred civilization, influencing the fundamental forms of all knowledge. Taught by Plato, he wrote on many subjects including physics, biology, zoology, philosophy, politics and the arts.

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    Reviews for Poetics

    4/5

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    • 3/5
      I actually read an online version of this text provided by my teacher as part of my Introduction to Drama course, so this is not the same translation I'm writing about, but is the same work. I found the language to be difficult to follow at times, but there is certainly a lot of "meat" here. I could also recognize the importance of what was being said when it comes to analyzing drama and following its early evolution of form. I probably won't be reading it just for fun anytime soon, but I do feel it's an essential part of one's library if they wish to seriously study drama at all.
    • 4/5
      I was surprised at how readable this was. Artistotle's world was very different that ours is today. He talks of poetry and drama, which we think of as separate, as being the same thing. And of the addition of a second player in that drama as being an innovation. But his talk of the use of spectacle in poetry/drama made me think of the sometimes tiresome CGI spectacles in our modern movie dramas. His observations applied equally to his time and to our most current entertainment. He was the first to write down many of the principles of plot and character that sometimes seem so obvious as to not need mentioning. And then he'll use that obvious observation to provide an insight that might not otherwise be quite so clear. Some parts are just as relevant now as they ever were. Some parts are fascinating from an historical perspective, and made me wish I were more familiar with his chosen exemplars, like Aeschylus, Homer, and Euripides. Some parts are just cool, like his dissertation on metaphors, and how to construct them. And Some parts are more wholely of his time than ours. Readable, for the most part, and anyone who professes a love of writing should read this.
    • 4/5
      In 50 pages, the ultimate explanation of what makes for classic writing and the one ideal introduction to all of the Greek tragedies. The whole is defined as that which is necessary to the plot, and no more. The tragedy must invoke feelings of fear or pity. Tragedy can be complex or simple, depending on whether the character's position changes once or several times. Recognition and reversal are key elements which can be done well or poorly. Aristotle judged Euripides to be the best tragedian of everyone. He comments on how each of the most famous group altered or expanded the style with staging, use of chorus, etc. Recognition is done poorly with "contrived tokens and necklaces." Poetic style involves good diction (lengthening words, sometimes inventing new, ornamental words. Between tragedy and epic, tragedy is superior because it is more compact and more enjoyable.
    • 3/5
      Every piece has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Sounds so simple. We teach students that every essay has an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. But here it is being written for the first time. Art imitates life. Much of this work sounds cliched, but it is the original!
    • 4/5
      What makes a good story, analysis of various ways of constructing story, it would help if we all grasped language of story construction in terms of literary terms used. A good book from a very versatile Philosopher.
    • 4/5
      A logical, methodical and utterly necessary guide for those who wish to create drama. It also aids those who analyze, read, and/or view drama. Aristotle's Poetics is something that is taught in high schools and then reiterated again in universities, and rightly so--it's timeless.
    • 4/5
      I need to read this more than once to digest. A friend mentioned that it helped for learning to write; especially plot. It did have some good insights into imitation and character and plot.
    • 5/5
      LOVE IT. LOVE IT. LOVE IT. Explains the art of storytelling so well. So profound. Why couldn't even the primary school teachers have told us to read this?! I did not even stumble across this until university. For shame, I felt! For the logic and the blatant obviousness of it all after you read it! Like a lightbulb that went, AHAH~!
    • 2/5
      Forces the formulaic but a foundation text for tragedy.
    • 4/5
      I put this off for weeks and I regret it.
    • 3/5
      While the normative layout of tragedy/comedy/epic seems silly today in its specificity, the descriptive analysis of plot and genre is excellent, if harder to get at. The fragments and additions in this text were also v helpful.
    • 5/5
      What is poetry, how many kinds of it are there, and what are their specific effects? These are questions that Aristotle’s Poetics, one of his most influential books, attempts to answer. While it has been an important aspect outside philosophical circles it is doubtful that it can be fully appreciated outside Aristotle’s philosophical system as a whole.A theme common to all Aristotle’s philosophy is the claim that nothing can be understood apart from its end or purpose (telos). This is certainly true for the Poetics which seeks to discover the end or purpose of all the poetic arts, and especially of tragic drama. Aristotle argues that generally, the goal of poetry is to provide pleasure of a particular kind. For comparison the Metaphysics begins, “All men desire to know by nature,” and the Nicomachean Ethics repeatedly says that the satisfaction of natural desires is the greatest source of lasting pleasure. The Poetics combines these two approaches with the idea of imitation. All people by nature enjoy a good imitation (that is, a picture or drama) because they enjoy learning, and imitations help them to learn.Of particular interest to Aristotle is the pleasure derived from tragic drama, namely, the kind of pleasure that comes from the purging or cleansing (catharsis) of the emotions of fear and pity. Though the emotions of fear and pity are not to be completely eliminated, excessive amounts of these emotions are not characteristic of a flourishing individual. Vicariously experiencing fear and pity in a good tragedy cleanses the soul of ill humors.Though there are many elements of a good tragedy, the most important, according to Aristotle, is the plot. The centrality of plot once again follows from central doctrines of the Metaphysics and the Nichomachean Ethics. In the former, Aristotle argues that all knowledge is knowledge of universals; in the latter, he states that it is through their own proper activity that humans discover fulfillment.For a plot to work, it must be both complete and coherent. That means that it must constitute a whole with a beginning, middle, and end, and that the sequence of events must exhibit some sort of necessity. A good dramatic plot is unlike history. History has no beginning, middle, and end, and thus it lacks completeness. Furthermore, it lacks coherence because many events in history happen by accident. In a good dramatic plot, however, everything happens for a reason. This difference makes tragedy philosophically more interesting than history. Tragedy focuses on universal causes and effects and thus provides a kind of knowledge that history, which largely comprises accidental happenings, cannot.While literary styles have changed over the centuries, the observations of Aristotle still contain value both for writers and readers today.
    • 5/5
      Specifically the Penguin Classics edition, with an excellent introductory essay by Malcolm Heath which outlines the themes, differing interpretations and problems of the text. With the caveat that Aristotle’s conception of tragedy is drama as performed in Ancient Greece, the actual text itself is thought provoking on the nature of drama itself, with many of the basics still applicable today.
    • 4/5
      Indispensable as both a guide to writing as well as a matrix of interpretation and critique. Waiting for him to finish the section on comedy…

    Book preview

    Poetics - Aristotle

    Poetics

    by Aristotle

    Translated by S. H. Butcher

    ©2007 Wilder Publications

    This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.

    All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes only.

    A & D Publishing

    PO Box 3005

    Radford VA 24143-3005

    www.wilderpublications.com

    ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-0275-6

    Table of Contents

    ‘Imitation’ the common principle of the Arts of Poetry.

    The Objects of Imitation.

    The Manner of Imitation.

    The Origin and Development of Poetry.

    Definition of the Ludicrous, and a brief sketch of the rise of Comedy.

    Definition of Tragedy.

    The Plot must be a Whole.

    The Plot must be a Unity.

    Dramatic Unity.

    Definitions of Simple and Complex Plots.

    Reversal of the Situation, Recognition, and Tragic or disastrous Incident defined and explained.

    The ‘quantitative parts’ of Tragedy defined.

    What constitutes Tragic Action.

    The tragic emotions of pity and fear should spring out of the Plot itself.

    The element of Character in Tragedy.

    Recognition: its various kinds, with examples.

    Practical rules for the Tragic Poet.

    Further rules for the Tragic Poet.

    Thought, or the Intellectual element, and Diction in Tragedy.

    Diction, or Language in general.

    Poetic Diction.

    How Poetry combines elevation of language with perspicuity.

    Epic Poetry.

    Further points of agreement with Tragedy.

    Critical Objections brought against Poetry, and the principles on which they are to be answered.

    A general estimate of the comparative worth of Epic Poetry and Tragedy.

    ‘Imitation’ the common principle of the Arts of Poetry.

    I propose to treat of Poetry in itself and of its various kinds, noting the essential quality of each; to inquire into the structure of the plot as requisite to a good poem; into the number and nature of the parts of which a poem is composed; and similarly into whatever else falls within the same inquiry. Following, then, the order of nature, let us begin with the principles which come first.

    Epic poetry and Tragedy, Comedy also and Dithyrambic: poetry, and the music of the flute and of the lyre in most of their forms, are all in their general conception modes of imitation. They differ, however, from one: another in three respects,—the medium, the objects, the manner or mode of imitation, being in each case distinct.

    For as there are persons who, by conscious art or mere habit, imitate and represent various objects through the medium of colour and form, or again by the voice; so in the arts above mentioned, taken as a whole, the imitation is produced by rhythm, language, or ‘harmony,’ either singly or combined.

    Thus in the music of the flute and of the lyre, ‘harmony’ and rhythm alone are employed; also in other arts, such as that of the shepherd’s pipe, which are essentially similar to these. In dancing, rhythm alone is used without ‘harmony’; for even dancing imitates character, emotion, and action, by rhythmical movement.

    There is another art which imitates by means of language alone, and that either in prose or verse—which, verse, again, may either combine different metres or consist of but one kind—but this has hitherto been without a name. For there is no common term we could apply to the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogues on the one hand; and, on the other, to poetic imitations in iambic, elegiac, or any similar metre. People do, indeed, add the word ‘maker’ or ‘poet’ to the name of the metre, and speak of elegiac poets, or epic (that is, hexameter) poets, as if it were not the imitation that makes the poet, but the verse that entitles them all indiscriminately to the name. Even when a treatise on medicine or natural science is brought out in verse, the name of poet is by custom given to the author; and yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common but the metre, so that it would be right to call the one poet, the other physicist rather

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