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The Purpose of Aristotle’s Poetics

Article  in  Classical Philology · January 2015

DOI: 10.1086/678678

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 THE PURPOSE OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS

andrew ford

T
O ASK WHAT IS the purpose of Aristotle’s Poetics may seem naive or
temerarious, as if the teacher of those who know had not made himself
plain and as if five centuries of intense scholarly focus on the text had
failed to settle such a fundamental question. Yet I find that interpreters do
not always address the question squarely and that the two answers most often
given—that it was intended to provide practical advice for poets or to rebut
Plato’s condemnation of poetry in the Republic—are unsatisfactory. After
explaining why, I will argue, drawing attention to the neglected twenty-fifth
chapter of the work, that the purpose of the Poetics is to set out the basis for a
properly literary criticism. What this meant for Aristotle and why he thought it
worth doing will need further discussion. In concluding I will ask what use the
testimony of an old Greek philosopher may have in our times, when a strictly
literary approach to literature is widely regarded, if it is thought of at all as a
thing one might do, as an activity somewhere between moribund dilettantism
and counterrevolutionary dilettantism.
To ask about the purpose of a text is a perfectly legitimate, indeed necessary
question in Aristotelian terms, since for him understanding something means
understanding why it is what it is. 1 We will only comprehend the Poetics
fully when we have grasped its final cause, its “why.” Because my interest is
historical and interpretative rather than metaphysical, I frame the question as:
if, as appears to be the case, our Poetics represents notes the philosopher drew
up for a series of lectures on poetry, what did he hope his audience to get out
of them? What would they learn that they did not know before?
Well, an obvious answer is given in the obvious place, the first sentence of
the work (1447a8–13): 2
Περὶ ποιητικῆς αὐτῆς τε καὶ τῶν εἰδῶν αὐτῆς, ἥν τινα δύναμιν ἕκαστον ἔχει, καὶ πῶς δεῖ
συνίστασθαι τοὺς μύθους εἰ μέλλει καλῶς ἕξειν ἡ ποίησις, ἔτι δὲ ἐκ πόσων καὶ ποίων ἐστὶ
μορίων, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὅσα τῆς αὐτῆς ἐστι μεθόδου, λέγωμεν ἀρξάμενοι
κατὰ φύσιν πρῶτον ἀπὸ τῶν πρώτων.

I thank the Department of Classics at the University of Chicago for the invitation to give the 2013 George
B. Walsh Memorial Lecture and Mark Payne, Sarah Nooter, and Yueh Chi for their hospitality. A version
of this talk was given as the Raoul Bertrand Lecture at San Francisco State University, for which I thank
particularly David Leitao and Alexandra Pappas.
1. Ph. 194b17–20; An. Post. 71b9–11; cf. 94a20.
2. The Poetics is cited from the edition of Tarán and Gutas (2012), except where noted. I prefix chapter
numbers when my argument moves back and forth in Aristotle’s text.

Classical Philology 110 (2015): 1–21

[© 2015 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved] 0009-837X/15/11001-0001$10.00

1
2 ANDREW FORD

Let us speak about the art of poetry, both the art itself and its distinct kinds, specifying the
function of each kind and how plots should be constructed if the composition is to turn out
well [kalôs]; and further let us specify the number and nature of the parts constituting each
kind, as well as such other matters as belong to this field of inquiry; let us begin, taking up
the subject, as is natural, through first principles.

Aristotle begins by declaring poetics a distinct field of inquiry (methodos)

that encompasses questions about the nature of poetry, its “kinds” or genres,
the effects each genre can produce, the essentials of a well-constructed plot,
the constitutive parts of each genre, as well as unspecified related topics. The
sentence raises two questions we will have to come back to—what does it
mean for a composition to turn out well (kalôs) and what other topics belong
to poetics—but at present it is clear that Aristotle’s purpose is to expound the
fundamental principles of the poetic art as exemplified in its kinds.
This much is incontrovertible, but Gerald Else points out how much Aris-
totle leaves unanswered: “The preliminaries are over in ten lines. . . . Nothing
is said about the purpose of the discussion, what Aristotle hopes to accomplish
by it; next to nothing about method, or the views of others on poetry”; “above
all we miss something that stands as preface to every major work of Aristotle’s
maturity . . . , namely some general statement by way of orientation, showing
how this field of study is related to the other kinds and levels of knowledge,
at least those closely connected with the matter at hand.” 3 One might try to
close off such questions by citing the famous opening of the Metaphysics and
say that the Poetics satisfies our human desire to understand (980a21): after
all, if “it falls within the competence of the philosopher to theorize about
everything” (1004a34–b1), why not study poetry? This too is true enough,
but not really helpful. It could be said of any of Aristotle’s works that it aims
to satisfy our instinct to pursue knowledge, but this leaves us with no sense
of why it might be good to understand poetry in particular. What difference
would having such knowledge make? How would Aristotle’s students put it to
use? In what contexts? With what benefits? These are literary-historical ques-
tions, but I hope to show that they bear directly on how we interpret the work.

A Manual for Poets?

A different approach to specifying the purpose of the Poetics would be to
step back from its laconic opening and consider how the treatise might fit
into the tripartite division Aristotle sometimes suggests for his works, distin-
guishing between theoretical knowing for its own sake (as in metaphysics),
practical knowing for doing (as in politics or ethics), and productive knowing
for making (as in rhetoric). 4 Prima facie, the ποιητικὴ τέχνη would seem to
belong, like rhetoric, to the productive arts, the ποιητικαὶ τέχναι, and so would
appear to be a practical guide to writing poems and plays. After all, Aristotle
makes numerous recommendations of what poets should do and avoid.

3. Else 1957, 2.
4. E.g., Metaph. 1025b22–25 and other passages discussed by Shields 2013. Else (1957, 2 n. 3) is skepti-
cal: “it is notorious that [Aristotle] never achieves a thoroughly consistent use of these terms” in the “scattered
passages from which they are drawn.”
 THE PURPOSE OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS 3

Stephen Halliwell counted more than two dozen instances in the Poetics
of expressions like “it is necessary” or “one must aim at,” and yet argued
that it would be an error to characterize the work as “prescriptive” in nature. 5
As the Chicago school luminary Bernard Weinberg showed, this one-sided
understanding of the text can be traced to Renaissance scholars who were
determined to make the newly rediscovered Poetics harmonize with Horace’s
Ars Poetica, a work that is thoroughly prescriptive in tone, even if in a tongue-
in-cheek way that is not always appreciated. 6 As a result, commentators like
Castelvetro discovered in Aristotle “rules” beyond his conceiving, generating
such phantoms as the unity of place or the five-act rule. Phantoms though
they were, they had great sway in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
when the idea of rationalizing every aspect of poetic composition appealed to
neoclassical critics, as did its orderly view of literature as naturally divided
into well-defined genres that, like social roles, were not to be mixed: tragedy
had its kings, comedy its soldiers and farmers. Romanticism rebelled at the
idea of poetic laws and so rejected poetics: “Poetry,” said Shelley, “and the art
that professes to regulate and limit its powers, cannot subsist together.” 7 The
Romantic rebellion echoes today in caricatures of the Poetics as the attempt of
a Mr. Spock-like pedant to straitjacket artistic creation in rules with no room
for individual talent and creativity.
The text of the Poetics itself suffices to show that viewing it as a poetry
manual is misguided. Aristotle’s practical recommendations are always given
as corollaries of principles of the art and, as his first sentence makes clear,
expounding these principles is his primary aim. Several times in the work he
distinguishes between deciding a question in terms of what “the art itself”
dictates and what audiences may demand in the theater (αὐτό τε καθ’ αὑτὸ
κρῖναι καὶ πρὸς τὰ θέατρα, 1449a8–9) and he leaves no doubt that the former
is more important. In discussing how long plays should be, for example,
Aristotle allows that poets may be constrained by external contingencies, such
as how much time is allotted to drama at a given festival (1451a6–15), but
he regards such factors as outside the compass of the art (οὐ τῆς τέχνης,
1451a7); he prefers to define proper length “in accordance with the nature of
the thing” (ὁ δὲ κατ’ αὐτὴν τὴν φύσιν τοῦ πράγματος ὅρος, 1451a9–10). It is
for conforming to “the nature of the thing” that poems are pronounced “well
done.” For example, the definition of tragedy arrived at in chapter 6 entails
that tragic plots should go from good fortune to bad so as to stimulate the
genre’s characteristic emotions of pity and fear; accordingly, a tragedy with
this sort of plot is said to be “the finest in respect to the art” (ἡ κατὰ τὴν
τέχνην καλλίστη τραγῳδία, 1453a22–23). Aristotle is quite aware that poets
may cater to the “weakness” of audiences (1453a34) and compose tragedies

5. Halliwell 1986, 37–39. Burnyeat (1999, 272 n. 30; cf. 274 n. 33) suggests in passing that Aristotle wrote
the Poetics for what would seem to have been a very small audience—cultivated Athenians like Sophocles or
Critias who wrote plays in the intervals of other duties and occupations. Outside the academy, the Poetics is
still often appealed to as providing rules for good screenplays, of which an exceptionally penetrating example
is McKee 1997.
6. Weinberg 1957; cf. idem 1961, 1: 111–55. On Horace’s “rules” and the prescriptivism of the rhetorical
handbook tradition, see Brink 1963, 15–40, 234–38.
7. Preface to Laon and Cyntha, quoted by Frye 1957, 26.
4 ANDREW FORD

in which the good end up happy and the villains suffer; but he regards this
as a fundamental mistake, for “this sort of pleasure is not the pleasure that
comes from tragedy but is rather proper to comedy” (ἔστιν δὲ οὐχ αὕτη ἀπὸ
τραγῳδίας ἡδονὴ ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον τῆς κωμῳδίας οἰκεία, 1453a35–36). Hence even
a prize-winning melodrama would not be kalôs in respect to the art if it were
tragic in form but comic in the pleasure it gave. 8
In this light we can go back to the opening sentence and see that kalôs
must mean “if the poem is to turn out well” (trans. Janko) in the sense of
being made so as to be likely to do the job a poem of that sort is meant to
do. Aristotle reuses the expression when he calls “the plot that is kalôs”
(τὸν καλῶς ἔχοντα μῦθον) the one with his preferred single outcome tending
toward misfortune (1453a12–16). 9 We can accept such translations as “if
the poetic composition is to be successful” (e.g., Hutton, Halliwell) provided
“success” be defined as meeting the requirements of the art, whatever may
happen in the theater. Aristotle’s recommendations for good composition may
help a play avoid being shouted off the stage (cf. 1455a22–29), but the Poetics
is primarily interested in what the art requires rather than in what audiences
want. If one wishes to place the treatise within the tripartite scheme, it must be
classified as a hybrid—a theoretical exposition of the principles that operate
in this particular productive art. 10
The opening of the Poetics, therefore, promises to set out the principles of
the art of poetry and to show why conforming to these principles gives the
best chance of a poem’s turning out “well done.” Halliwell rightly observes
that the underlying idea here of technical correctness is owed to the sophists.
Their rationalizing and methodical approach to the verbal arts enabled them
to critique poems not in the usual moral or social terms but according to the
dictates of a specifically linguistic expertise. 11 Protagoras, for example, called
his art orthoepeia, “correct expression,” and he expected poets to observe
the pioneering distinctions he made among verbal moods and grammatical
genders. Hence he charged Homer with two errors (ἡμαρτῆσθαι, a word
we will see again) in the first line of the Iliad alone: the imperative verb
“sing” commanded the goddess when he meant to pray to her, and making
a masculine thing like “wrath” (μῆνις) feminine was a solecism. 12 Although
a technical assessment of poetic language was not the only way to evaluate
poetry, its advocates placed it on a very high level: “The most important part

8. Similarly, Aristotle remarks that some poets compose “episodic” plots to show off star actors and win
competitions (ἀγωνίσματα, 9.1451b37), even though the definition of tragedy as a complete (6.1449b24–25)
and unified (8.1451a16–17) story entails that the events of a plot should be connected by probability or neces-
sity (9.1451b33–52a11).
9. Forms of kalos in the Poetics most often express what is poetically correct without reference to moral
or other values: in addition to the passages cited, see 1453b26 (bis), 1459b12, and 1451a24. Pace Carroll 1911,
89, kalôs appears to have a moral sense (“commendable”) at 1461a4 (bis), quoted below; see Lucas 1968, 240.
10. Pace Shields 2013; cf. Hutton 1982, 9: “it is an art or technê (how to compose successful poems), but
an art that is founded on a scientific understanding of the subject.”
11. Halliwell 1986, 7–8 and 335, rightly contrasting Plato’s tendency to define “fineness” in the mimetic
arts in terms of the artist’s knowledge of the original. (Plato’s language at Resp. 598e3–5 is very close to that
opening the Poetics: ἀνάγκη γὰρ τὸν ἀγαθὸν ποιητήν, εἰ μέλλει περὶ ὧν ἂν ποιῇ καλῶς ποιήσειν, εἰδότα ἄρα
ποιεῖν, ἢ μὴ οἷόν τε εἶναι ποιεῖν.) See Ford 2002, 284–86 for Plato’s views on judging musical correctness
(ὀρθότητα, Leg. 667d5) and fineness (τὴν καλλίστην ᾠδήν τε καὶ μοῦσαν, 668b3–7).
12. Poet. 1456b15–19 (on “sing”) and Soph. El. 173b17–22; cf. Rh. 1407b6–8 and Fehling 1965, 212–17.
 THE PURPOSE OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS 5

of education,” Protagoras asserts in Plato’s dialogue of that name, is “being

sophisticated about poetic language” (περὶ ἐπῶν δεινὸν εἶναι); that is, being
able to distinguish “what is correctly said in poetry and what is not” (ἅ τε
ὀρθῶς πεποίηται καὶ ἃ μή) and being able to give an account of oneself when
questioned (Prt. 339a). Aristotle dismisses Protagoras’ criticism of Homer as
a quibble, but he agrees with the sophist that assessing poetry may require
specialized, technical standards. Aristotle’s standards, however, will turn out
to be his own, as will his conception of art.

A Retort to Plato?
The kalôs in the opening of the Poetics, then, means “fine” in a technical
sense and signals that Aristotle’s interest is more theoretical than practical.
The implication that poetry can be evaluated from a strictly technical perspec-
tive, bracketing its moral and social utility, goes against the second popular
interpretation of the Poetics, that it was written to counter Plato’s banishment
of poets in the Republic. Reading a defense of poetry into the Poetics also has
a long history behind it 13 and reemerged as the dominant scholarly approach
in the 1980s when the work ceased to be read in close connection with the
Rhetoric (as it had been among the Chicago neo-Aristotelians) and became
integrated instead with Aristotle’s ethical treatises. In different ways, scholars
like Halliwell, Richard Janko, Malcolm Heath, and Martha Nussbaum, build-
ing on work by Leon Golden and Elizabeth Belfiore, argued that the Poetics
is meant to show that poetry, far from damaging the soul (Resp. 595a–b),
improves its moral character. This consensus tended to identify the pleasure
of poetry of which Aristotle often speaks with our innate pleasure in learning,
and the endlessly debated “catharsis” of tragedy was conceived of as a process
of moral edification. 14 Often cited was the famous statement that “poetry is a
more philosophical thing than history” because it speaks of “universals,” what
a certain sort of person is likely to say or do (1451b5–11). On these bases the
Poetics was held to defend the imitative arts because they invite us to place
ourselves in complex and nuanced moral situations and to discern behind
them the moral laws and patterns at work. 15
The attractions of this view go beyond the flattering importance with which
it invests teachers of literature. Its rise to prominence coincided with “the
political turn” in literary studies in the 1980s and seemed to sanction that
movement’s focus on the civic effects of art. 16 A further attraction is that

13. Epitomized in Bywater 1909a, 160–61 and 1909b. According to Proclus, Aristotle argued against Plato
on this point in his On Poets (In Plat. Remp. i.49.13–19 Kroll = On Poets F 56 Janko): see Janko 2011, 458,
520.
14. Recent interpretations with bibliography of catharsis as leading to moral improvement: Halliwell 2011,
236–60; cf. 2002: 172–76; Heath 2009. Janko (2011, 372–77, 446–59, 512–21) seeks support in later texts
such as Philodemus (esp. P. Herc. 1581) and the Tractatus Coislinianus (Janko 1984, 136–51), but these
provisional reconstructions can show at best that such views may have been mooted in the complex and not
fully understood debates among Hellenistic and Neoplatonic writers; they cannot override Aristotle’s explicit
testimony to the contrary in his extant works, on which see Heath 2013, 12–20 and n. 19 below.
15. For representative essays, see Rorty 1992a with bibliography. Golden 1992 and Belfiore 1992 reprise
their earlier studies. Goldman 2013 is a recent philosophical defense of literature on these lines.
16. Jameson 1981 was a central text, now critically reassessed in Best and Marcus 2009.
6 ANDREW FORD

reading the Poetics as an answer to the Republic makes the history of Greek
criticism a dramatic affair, a clash between titans with Aristotle rescuing fair
Poesy from the heartless Plato, even though this, like the quarrel between
poetry and philosophy, may be largely Plato’s own myth. 17 Now I personally
think that it is possible to expand one’s moral horizons by reading literature,
but serious difficulties with ascribing this theory to Aristotle were already
pointed out by Jonathan Lear in a lonely dissent among the watershed 1992
collection, Essays on Aristotle’s “Poetics.” We will encounter below a sen-
tence from chapter 25 that blocks such a view, but rather than re-litigating the
issue I content myself with two points: first, nothing in the Poetics explicitly
says that poetry improves us as moral or civic actors (tendentious interpreta-
tions of catharsis aside); secondly, its proponents seem not to realize that such
an argument would not be an answer to Plato but would capitulate to his de-
mand that poetry be composed in accordance with the needs of the state. 18 If
one seeks Aristotle’s reaction to Plato’s political strictures on poets, the place
to go is not the Poetics, which does not mention Plato, but the last book of
the Politics, which criticizes the musical doctrines of Republic 3 specifically.
There Aristotle takes the view not that tragedy somehow improves people’s
characters but simply that the pleasures of poetry are, politically speaking,
harmless (1339b25–26). 19
To sum up the argument so far: the purpose of the Poetics does not ap-
pear to be to guide the production of new plays; if it does so, it does so only
incidentally. Nor is it a reply to Plato arguing that poetry improves us morally
and socially. What then is it for?
I believe the answer can be found in the second most obvious place to look,
the end of the treatise, or at least the end of its first book (1462b16–19): 20

17. For “the quarrel” as Plato’s invention, see Most 2011; Ford 2002, 46–47. Plato is curiously specific
when he invites defenses of poetry from her champions, “all those who are not poets but lovers of poetry to
speak in her behalf—in prose” (ὅσοι μὴ ποιητικοί, φιλοποιηταὶ δέ, ἄνευ μέτρου λόγον ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς εἰπεῖν, 607d).
If one is willing to entertain Else’s suggestion (1972, 41–57) that the composition of Resp. 10 overlapped with
that of the Poetics, one may see here a glance at the Poetics in progress with the aim of establishing, preemp-
tively, that any successful defense of poetry must argue it is not only pleasant but beneficial (ὠφελίμη, loc. cit.,
bis) to ourselves and the state.
18. As noted by Hutton 1982, 19–20; Burnyeat 1999, 255. Such critics are Platonic in refusing to counte-
nance the use of music for pleasure instead of for ethical training: Leg. 655c–d, 658e–659c, 667a–c, 798d–800b.
19. Ford 2004. Pace Janko 2011, 375 n. 1, I stand by my rendering (p. 315) of Aristotle’s definition of
μουσική at Pol. 1341b23–24 as the art “consisting of the composition of tunes and rhythms” (μουσικὴν ὁρῶμεν
διὰ μελοποιίας καὶ ῥυθμῶν οὖσαν), where “tunes” means the product of melodic composition in a given ἁρμονία
exclusive of any words; cf. the definitions of λέξις and μελοποιία in Poet. 1450b13–16 and Pl. Symp. 187d.
Aristotle uses μελοποιία in this sense when he calls it “the sweetest of tragedy’s embellishments” (1450b16)
and when he names it, along with spectacle, among the parts of tragedy that epic does not have (1459b10).
Because his argument depends on foisting λόγος into the definition in Politics, Janko renders μελοποιία “song-
composition,” exploiting the ambiguity of μέλος as “tune” or “song” (the latter implying tune plus words); but
the context in which Aristotle gives his definition of μουσική is exclusively concerned with musical matters
stricto sensu (e.g., whether it is more important that music have good melos or rhythm: τὴν εὐμελῆ μουσικὴν
ἢ τὴν εὔρυθμον, Pol. 1341b26). Moreover, the pairing in Janko’s “via song-composition and rhythms” does
not make sense in Aristotelian terms, since “songs” (μέλη) have rhythm already, i.e., they consist of ἁρμονία,
ῥυθμός, and λόγος: Poet. 1447b24–29. The closest Aristotle comes in Poetics to expressing the dyad Janko has
in mind is μελοποιία and λέξις for sung and un-sung poetry: see 1449b33–35 and 1449b28–31, where καὶ μέλος
is either to be deleted as a gloss or taken as epexegetic: Tarán and Gutas 2012, 247 and Heath 2013, 20 n. 54.
20. I set aside speculation about Poetics Book 2: what may have followed here is less important for our
purposes than what Aristotle thinks has come before.
 THE PURPOSE OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS 7

περὶ μὲν οὖν τραγῳδίας καὶ ἐποποιίας, καὶ αὐτῶν καὶ τῶν εἰδῶν καὶ τῶν μερῶν, καὶ πόσα
καὶ τί διαφέρει, καὶ τοῦ εὖ ἢ μὴ τίνες αἰτίαι, καὶ περὶ ἐπιτιμήσεων καὶ λύσεων, εἰρήσθω
τοσαῦτα.

Let this then be our account of Tragedy and Epic Poetry—their general nature; the number
and variety of their kinds and constituent parts; the causes of good or bad in poetry; and
critical problems with their solutions. (Trans. Hutton, adapted)

Aristotle’s summary recapitulates the promises made in the work’s opening,

with two noteworthy clarifications. First, we see now that knowing how a
poetic composition is likely to turn out kalôs depends on knowing “the causes
of good and bad in poetry.” Secondly, the reference to “critical problems and
their solutions” makes clear that the “other matters that belong to this field of
inquiry” mentioned at the opening saliently include its penultimate chapter on
“problems and solutions.” Poetics 25, then, the longest chapter in the work, is
an essential part of the methodos of poetics; the activity of posing challenges
(προβάλλεσθαι) to poems and meeting them is where Aristotle’s auditors will
put to use the knowledge of “the causes of good and bad in poetry” that the
treatise has expounded. Before we analyze Aristotle’s argument in this chap-
ter, it will be helpful to notice some of its recurrent turns of phrase, for they
suggest the social and historical contexts from which it emerged.

Poetics 25
The phrase “problems and solutions” refers to a popular poetry game that typ-
ically began with one player citing a piece of poetry and criticizing the poet
(as in ἐπιτιμήσεων at 1462b18 above) 21 for making a mistake (ἁμαρτία). 22
This was in effect an invitation to another player to respond with an argument
showing the cited passage was composed “correctly” (ὀρθῶς). 23 Rudolph
Pfeiffer, the great historian of classical scholarship, traced the custom to the
symposia of archaic elites, but it had already been popularized by the time
of Aristophanes’ Frogs. 24 There Aeschylus and Euripides attack each other’s
poetry in terms of “error” (1131, 1135, 1137, 1147) and “correctness” (894,
1181), and Euripides sounds a good deal like Protagoras when he charges
that the first three verses of Aeschylus’ Choephoroi contain twenty errors
(ἁμαρτίας, 1131) each. 25
As Protagoras’ quibbles against Homer show, the problem game could
certainly descend to pettiness, and in a passing remark Aristotle expresses
annoyance at people “these days” who subject poetry to “unfair criticism”
(Bywater’s translation of συκοφαντοῦσιν, 1456a5). He has no regard for Zoi-
lus of Amphipolis, a notorious problem-poser whose nine books “Against

21. Vocabulary of “criticizing” (ἐπιτιμήματα, etc.) in chap. 25: 1460b21, 33; 1461b3, 19, 22; earlier in the
work: 22.1458b6 and 19.1456b14, 16 (both in reference to Protagoras).
22. For ἁμαρτία (ἁμάρτημα, etc.) in chap. 25: 1460b15, 17, 19, 23, 29, 30; earlier instances: 7.1451a20;
15.1454b17, 35.
23. For ὀρθότης (ὀρθῶς, etc.) in chap. 25: 1460b14, 18, 24, 28; 1461b19, 24 (παρὰ τὴν ὀρθότητα τὴν κατὰ
τέχνην); in earlier chapters: 13.1453a26; 22.1458b5.
24. Pfeiffer 1968, 69–71; Gudeman 1927.
25. Cf. Segal 1970. In Ford forthcoming I argue that this passage anticipates Aristotle’s views in Poetics 25.
8 ANDREW FORD

Homer’s Poetry” earned him the epithet “scourge of Homer.” 26 But for all
that, the cultural importance of the activity was great. It generated an abundant
critical literature, including Aristotle’s six books of Problems in Homer, 27
and exhibited impressive staying power: it made its way into the Alexandrian
Museum and “amused Ptolemaic kings and Roman emperors,” in Pfeiffer’s
words; although the great grammarians tended to look down on it, the game
was continued in philosophical schools and many of its verdicts show up in
Porphyry’s Homeric Problems and in the scholia. 28 What our sources have
culled from the problem game may make it seem inbred, academic pettifog-
gery; but we should recognize this activity as a significant format for ancient
literary criticism, a highly stylized, even ritualized framework in which to
meet the need we often feel to react to and discuss poems we have heard or
read together.
Although the end of our Poetics underscores the importance of the problem
game, chapter 25 has been marginalized by scholars: Else justified leaving it
out of his 600-page book because it is “relatively independent and not likely
to have a major effect on the interpretation of the rest of Aristotle’s work”; 29
in his much used commentary, D. W. Lucas spoke of it as an “insertion in the
present context” more suited to an appendix. 30 Yet chapter 25 is conceptually
rooted in the rest of the work and fits well here, after the two main forms of
serious poetry, tragedy and epic, have been analyzed and before the conclud-
ing debate about which may be the superior art form. 31
Chapter 25 opens with a methodological prologue, which it is convenient
to analyze in two parts (1460b6–13):
Περὶ δὲ προβλημάτων καὶ λύσεων, ἐκ πόσων τε καὶ ποίων εἰδῶν ἐστιν, ὧδ’ ἂν θεωροῦσιν
γένοιτ’ ἂν φανερόν. ἐπεὶ γάρ ἐστι μιμητὴς ὁ ποιητὴς ὡσπερανεὶ ζωγράφος ἤ τις ἄλλος
εἰκονοποιός, ἀνάγκη μιμεῖσθαι τριῶν ὄντων τὸν ἀριθμὸν ἕν τι ἀεί, ἢ γὰρ οἷα ἦν ἢ ἔστιν,
ἢ οἷά φασιν καὶ δοκεῖ, ἢ οἷα εἶναι δεῖ. ταῦτα δ’ ἐξαγγέλλεται λέξει ἐν ᾗ καὶ γλῶτται καὶ
μεταφοραὶ καὶ πολλὰ πάθη τῆς λέξεώς ἐστι· δίδομεν γὰρ ταῦτα τοῖς ποιηταῖς.

On problems and the solutions of them, how many kinds there are, and the nature of each
kind, all will be clear if we examine them as follows. Since the poet is one who represents,
like a painter or any other maker of likenesses, he must always represent one of three
things—either things as they were or are; or things as they are said to be and seem to be; or
things as they should be. And these are expressed in diction in which there are rare words
and metaphors and numerous deviations of diction; for these things we grant to poets.

Aristotle “theorizes” the problem game by distinguishing the kinds of chal-

lenge that may be made to poems and suggesting a line of defense for each.
He begins by recalling principles from the opening of the work to distinguish
problems relating to content (the “objects of imitation” in terms of chapter
1) from those concerning language (its “medium,” 1447a17). As concerns
contents, chapter 2 had laid down the principle that poets can represent people

26. Gärtner 1978.

27. Diog. Laert. 5.26. Aristotle also discussed problems in his On Poets (cf. Poet. 1454b17–18).
28. Pfeiffer 1968, 71; Nünlist 2009, 11–12; Carroll 1895.
29. Else 1957, 632; Solmsen 1935 also omits the chapter from his analysis.
30. Lucas 1968, 232.
31. Halliwell 1989, 343–44; 1986, 265.
 THE PURPOSE OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS 9

who are better, worse, or like us (1448a1–6), and subsequent remarks made
clear that the “work of the poet” was not to say what happened, like an his-
torian (9.1451a36–38; 15.1454b8–15). Hence to objections that a piece of
poetry is untrue or unrealistic an Aristotelian can reply that, as an imitator,
the poet may portray the way things actually are or were, or ought to be, or
even as they seem or are said to be. Answering objections to diction requires
a different tack; to those who censure any deviations (πάθη) from literal,
common usage, the reply is, simply, to invoke poetic license: “we grant poets
these.” Justification for this can easily be extracted from Aristotle’s discussion
of poetic language in chapter 22: there he explains that a moderate use of
unusual expressions lifts language out of the ordinary and gives it distinction
(1458a31–34); such language is “sweet” (τὸ ἡδύ: Rh. 1404b11–12; 1405a8–9,
cross-referring to this discussion) and so is appropriate to poetry, whose lan-
guage may also be “sweetened” by the addition of rhythm and music in the
case of tragedy or by rhythm alone in epic (1449b25, 28–29).
After these considerations touching on poetry’s content and form, Aristotle
finishes his prologue with a third principle that has not been enunciated so far
in the work: this is to distinguish between errors that violate one of the prin-
ciples of the poetic art and errors in terms of some other field of knowledge
(1460b13–22):
πρὸς δὲ τούτοις οὐχ ἡ αὐτὴ ὀρθότης ἐστὶν τῆς πολιτικῆς καὶ τῆς ποιητικῆς οὐδὲ ἄλλης
τέχνης καὶ ποιητικῆς. αὐτῆς δὲ τῆς ποιητικῆς διττὴ ἁμαρτία, ἡ μὲν γὰρ καθ’ αὑτήν, ἡ δὲ
κατὰ συμβεβηκός. εἰ μὲν γὰρ προείλετο μιμήσασθαι <..> ἀδυναμίαν, αὐτῆς ἡ ἁμαρτία· εἰ δὲ
τῷ προελέσθαι μὴ ὀρθῶς, ἀλλὰ τὸν ἵππον ἄμφω τὰ δεξιὰ προβεβληκότα, ἢ τὸ καθ’ ἑκάστην
τέχνην ἁμάρτημα (οἷον τὸ κατ’ ἰατρικὴν ἢ ἄλλην τέχνην) ἢ ἀδύνατα πεποίηται ὁποῖ’ ἂν
οὖν, οὐ καθ’ ἑαυτήν. ὥστε δεῖ τὰ ἐπιτιμήματα ἐν τοῖς προβλήμασιν ἐκ τούτων ἐπισκοποῦντα
λύειν.

And further, correctness in politics is not the same as correctness in poetry, nor is correct-
ness in any other art the same as in poetry. In the art of poetry itself there are two kinds
of errors, those in terms of the art itself and incidental errors. If a poet meant to represent
something <correctly but failed through> incapacity, that is a mistake related to the art
itself. But if a poet chooses to represent something incorrectly—portraying, for example,
a horse with both right legs forward—then there is a technical error or impossibility of a
sort in respect to a particular art (medicine, say, or some other art), but it is not an error
in respect to the poetic art. These considerations must, then, be kept in view in meeting
criticisms raised as problems.

Aristotle rules that, in the game of problems, errors in respect to other arts
are only incidental, while an error with respect to the poetic art may be pro-
nounced “incorrect.” He illustrates with an example that has lost something
from the text but is reconstructible: if a painting or sculpture showed a running
horse with both right legs thrust forward, this would be a mistake (Aris-
totle assumed, wrongly, that this was impossible), but a mistake having to do
with the art that studied animal gaits and not the art of making convincing
representations. 32 If we confine our evaluation to how the poet practices his

32. So Vahlen 1914, 182–83, comparing the analogy below at 1460b30–32: a painter would err in biologi-
cal terms if he painted a female deer with horns; but this is less of an error than painting one that could not be
recognized (ἀμιμήτως).
10 ANDREW FORD

imitative art, as we might a painter or sculptor, it is only an incidental error. 33

Indeed, Aristotle will later suggest that errors of this sort could possibly be
useful in making an illusion more striking.
In the nineteenth century this passage was taken as Aristotle’s unquali-
fied endorsement of aesthetic autonomy. 34 A few modern commentators have
agreed that “the independence of poetic [correctness] suggests the existence
of purely aesthetic values,” but most recent Aristotelians would say this goes
much too far. 35 A main reason is that the statement is at odds with what seems
to be Aristotle’s ethical orientation in the rest of the Poetics: ethics is the
stuff from which tragic plots are made, with good or bad characters meeting
success or disaster according to their moral choices (1449b36–50a6), and
the very emotions that the tragic art is designed to arouse, pity and fear, are
conceived by Aristotle as depending on judgments that have ethical premises:
we find situations pathetic because we judge the suffering unmerited; we find
them fearful if we have reason to think that people no worse than ourselves
can fall into them. As a result, a poet will have to take ethical matters into
account to make a play that will engage his audience’s emotions.
It is true, for reasons given below, that this passage should not be used to
ascribe a full-fledged notion of aesthetic autonomy to Aristotle. On the other
hand, we should not soften its declaration that correctness in poetry is not
the same as in politics. Indeed, politics in Aristotle’s view subsumed ethics
and so to say that objections raised against poetry by experts in politikê may
be dismissed as incidental stands squarely in the way of attempts to read the
Poetics as a defense of poetry as ethical formation. For this reason interpreters
wishing to preserve a connection between poetics and ethics have tended
either to ignore the passage or to minimize its implications. Halliwell faces
up to chapter 25 but denies that Aristotle “sunders standards for correct poetry
from those in other arts”; he takes him to affirm only “the proposition of non-
identity of the values in question.” 36 For Heath, Aristotle “does not mean that
[poetry and politics] are unconnected, but that they are not co-extensive.” 37
It is not clear to me that these glosses adequately capture the key sentence,
and in any case they prove hard to sustain when Aristotle, having finished his
prologue, gets down to cases.
Aristotle’s first example concerns charges that what a poet has represented
is impossible (1460b22–26):

33. The principle was earlier applied to dismiss Protagoras’ carping at Homer’s use of the imperative
mood (1456b13–19, discussed above). Aristotle allows that distinguishing such forms (σχήματα) of speech
as prayer and command might be relevant to the art of the actor (1456b10–11), but “no criticism worth taking
seriously” can be brought against a poet on such grounds, for “the investigation belongs to another art, not
poetry” (διὸ παρείσθω ὡς ἄλλης καὶ οὐ τῆς ποιητικῆς ὂν θεώρημα, 1456b18–19, trans. Hutton).
34. Butcher 1895, 221: “Aristotle, as our inquiry has shown, was the first who attempted to separate the
theory of aesthetics from that of morals.” Carroll 1895, 18: “Aristotle asserts that poetry is to be measured not
by a moral but by a purely aesthetic standard.”
35. Lucas 1968, 235. Contra, Halliwell 1986, 265–66: “These principles do not amount to the aestheticism
which is sometimes ascribed to Aristotle on the basis of this chapter but they do sufficiently show an awareness
of the need to grant poetry aims and methods distinct from those of morality or of other human activities.”
36. Halliwell 1989, 339–41; cf. 2011, 210–22.
37. Heath 2009, 469.
 THE PURPOSE OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS 11

πρῶτον μὲν τὰ πρὸς αὐτὴν τὴν τέχνην· ἀδύνατα πεποίηται, ἡμάρτηται· ἀλλ’ ὀρθῶς ἔχει, εἰ
τυγχάνει τοῦ τέλους τοῦ αὑτῆς (τὸ γὰρ τέλος εἴρηται), εἰ οὕτως ἐκπληκτικώτερον ἢ αὐτὸ ἢ
ἄλλο ποιεῖ μέρος. παράδειγμα ἡ τοῦ Ἕκτορος δίωξις.

Let us first consider solutions referring to the art of poetry itself. “An impossibility has
been portrayed, the poet has erred” [someone may say]; 38 “But it is correct” [one can
reply] if the poet thus achieves the end [telos] of poetry itself (what that end is has been
already stated) and makes that part or some other part of the poem more striking, for ex-
ample, the pursuit of Hector.

For Aristotle, an impossibility can be defended as “correct” if it contributes

to the telos of the work, its “goal” or end effect. 39 As the Poetics has been
preaching since its beginning, the telos of a work is to be defined in relation
to the work’s genre, and the genre defined by its place among the mimetic arts
that use logos, which in turn are ultimately defined in relation to the mimetic
arts as a whole; no outside arts are consulted.
Yet Halliwell discerns a residual obligation on the poet’s part to remain
attached to the real world when Aristotle goes on to concede that, ideally,
one ought to make no mistakes and a poet can be justly blamed for import-
ing an impossibility if it was possible for the poetic end to be achieved no
less strongly without the mistake in the particular art (1460b26–30). 40 Note,
however, that this limitation on the poet’s freedom does not come from the
authority of any other art but from the requirements of the poetic art itself:
the art determines the telos of each genre and everything in the poem should
further that end, for “that whose presence or absence makes no difference does
not belong to the whole” (8.1451a34–35). The poet’s obligation to his own
art, which directs him to produce certain emotions in the audience, trumps
demands that he be realistic but imposes on him the obligation not to insert
gratuitous irrationalities—not because they are irrational but because they are
gratuitous, that is, they dilute the force of the work. 41
A second telling example is the way Aristotle defends poets against charges
that what they say is untrue (1460b32–61a1):
πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ἐὰν ἐπιτιμᾶται ὅτι οὐκ ἀληθῆ, ἀλλ’ ἴσως <ὡς> δεῖ, οἷον καὶ Σοφοκλῆς ἔφη
αὐτὸς μὲν οἵους δεῖ ποιεῖν, Εὐριπίδην δὲ οἷοι εἰσίν, ταύτῃ λυτέον. εἰ δὲ μηδετέρως, ὅτι οὕτω
φασίν, οἷον τὰ περὶ θεῶν· ἴσως γὰρ οὔτε βέλτιον οὕτω λέγειν οὔτ’ ἀληθῆ, ἀλλ’ εἰ ἔτυχεν
ὥσπερ Ξενοφάνει· ἀλλ’ οὖν φασι.

Next, supposing the charge is “That is not true”: one can meet it by saying “But perhaps it
is as it ought to be,” as Sophocles said that he portrayed people as they ought to be while

38. Here I prefer Kassel’s text and punctuation, which has Aristotle ventriloquize a player in the problem
game (see nn. 22–23 above). Tarán and Gutas 2012, 296–97 give: πρῶτον μὲν ⟨εἰ⟩ τὰ πρὸς αὐτὴν τὴν τέχνην
ἀδύνατα πεποίηται, ἡμάρτηται. But if the sense is to be, “if a poet has produced impossibilities in respect to the
art, he has erred,” this would seem to require κατ’ (as in 1460b16, 19, 30; 61b2) rather than πρός.
39. Achilles’ pursuit of Hector in Iliad 22 (esp. 205–7) was judged illogical in chap. 23; but as it is unob-
trusive in a nondramatic poem and adds a sense of “the marvelous” that is appropriate to epic (1460a14–17),
it is pronounced correct in chap. 25.
40. Halliwell 2011, 211.
41. Among the reasons that Aristotle prefers tragedy to epic in chap. 26 (1462a18–62b13) is that trag-
edy is less “watered down” (ὑδαρῆ) with unnecessary episodes and achieves its effects in a “more compact”
(ἀθροώτερον, 1462b1) time.
12 ANDREW FORD

Euripides portrayed them as they are. But if something is neither true nor idealized, then
say, “That’s what people say”; for instance, tales about gods. Very likely such tales are
neither ideal nor true but are as Xenophanes thought—all the same people do tell them.

Here the defense is to invoke the right poets have to depart from facts and por-
tray things the way people say they are (already insinuated at the beginning
of 25: 1460b10). Aristotle illustrates the principle quite revealingly for our
purposes by referring to matters dealing with the gods: if a poet be faulted for
following popular belief and portraying jealous and malicious gods, for ex-
ample, Aristotle’s reply would be simple: “Well, that’s what people say.” This
casual waving away of charges of moral impropriety must seem inadequate
to those who expect the Poetics to offer counterarguments to the Republic’s
dismissal of Homer’s and Hesiod’s gods; but Aristotle’s only concession to
the censorious tradition, which he appears to connect with Xenophanes, 42 is
to allow that perhaps the old stories are neither true nor ideal, but that’s what
people say. It is evidently more important that a poem engage the beliefs and
even prejudices of its audience than that it be philosophically or theologically
correct.
I take one final example of a passage in which ethics has been thought to
encroach on the art of poetry, the portrayal of wicked characters (1461a4–9).
When considering whether something said or done is morally good or bad
(περὶ δὲ τοῦ καλῶς ἢ μὴ καλῶς εἰ εἴρηταί τινι ἢ πέπρακται), Aristotle recom-
mends putting things in context: one must consider who is doing or saying
what to whom and whether the motive is to secure a greater good or avoid
a greater evil. Once again, he adds a qualification that leads some to argue
that ethical and poetic correctness are connected, even if they are not identi-
cal. Halliwell infers from Aristotle’s concession that “censuring irrationality
and depravity is correct when they are unnecessary and serve no purpose”
(ὀρθὴ δ’ ἐπιτίμησις καὶ ἀλογίᾳ καὶ μοχθηρίᾳ, ὅταν μὴ ἀνάγκης οὔσης μηθὲν
χρήσηται τῷ ἀλόγῳ, 1460b26–28), that “ethical judgments ought to inform
artistic ones.” 43 But again, the telos rules: in terms of the art of poetry, gra-
tuitous evil is objectionable not because it is evil but because it is gratuitous,
that is to say, the evil neither contributes to the end in itself nor makes another
part of the work more striking. The objection against gratuitous irrationality
or depravity is valid because it offends against the art of poetry, not ethics or
politics. Just as poets are not bound to confine representations of the gods to
the morally admirable, they need not limit representations of human action
to the ethically commendable. In short, the Poetics demands that poets be
poets, not sages. 44
Aristotle’s distinction between incidental and technical errors, then, maps
out a large area in which poetic principles override those of ethics, politics,

42. The (grammatically unclear) reference at 1461a1 seems to be to Xenophanes B 30 DK on humans’ lack
of accurate knowledge about the gods; critiques of the gods in Homer and Hesiod: Xenophanes B 11, 12 DK;
Pl. Resp. 379b–380c.
43. Halliwell 1989, 342; cf. Heath 2009, 469.
44. Burnyeat (1999, 308 n. 47) observes that Aristotle’s concession in chap. 25 that poetry’s “universals”
need not be true militates against the idea that his calling poetry “more philosophical” than history in chap. 9
“credits poetry with deep insights into the human condition” (citing Lear 1988b, 312–14).
 THE PURPOSE OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS 13

or metaphysics. One could characterize this as poetic autonomy to the extent

that the “end” of the mimetic arts is not to convey past or present facts, or to
provide models of ethical conduct, but to produce those emotional responses
that the art in question is naturally fit to elicit; but it is important not to over-
extend the idea into a manifesto for aesthetic autonomy. For one thing, the
integrity and authority of the poetic art are based not on a notion of a distinct
aesthetic realm but on the general recognition of distinct arts: any practitioner
of a skill worth being called an art, such as medicine or horsemanship, has the
right to freedom from interference by outside experts in the exercise of that
art. Secondly, the poet’s exemption from political and ethical critique is far
from absolute: to say that poetry has, like any art, its own telos is not to say
that poetry is autotelic in the sense that it is an end in itself. Aristotle is quite
clear in his Politics that the art of poetry should be ruled by that of politics
in some contexts, such as organizing school curricula or regulating public
entertainments. His reasoning is spelled out in the Nicomachean Ethics and its
notion of “architectonic arts” (Eth. Nic. 1094a14). Inside the theater, the poet
is the “architect” or master-builder who gives orders to all: by definition, the
poet is the one who makes the plot, the “soul of tragedy” (Poet. 1450a37–38)
for the sake of which the others involved exercise their arts, such as that
of scene-painting (ἡ τοῦ σκευοποιοῦ τέχνη, 1450b20) or acting (ὑποκριτική,
1456b10). In the city, however, the poet’s art may be controlled by the art
of politics, the architectonic art par excellence since it knows “the good for
man” (Eth. Nic 1.2). The principle that correctness in the art of poetry is not
the same as in the art of politics has a flip side—“correctness in other arts
is not the same as in poetry”—which means that political “correctness” may
prevail in public uses of poetry, even permitting censorship in some contexts:
in his Politics Aristotle proscribes orgiastic musical modes and instruments
from the schoolroom (1342b3, 1341a22) and says children should not go to
see comedies until old enough to drink among adults (1336b20–23).
Some, like Heath, would therefore conclude that the nature of politics as
Aristotle conceives it rules out a purely artistic approach to poetry, since
“there could not be a human activity that is not answerable to politics.” 45 Yet
the principle of poetic autonomy remains uncompromised in an essential way:
the poet is subject to the statesman because of the architectonic supremacy
of politics, not because the poetic art is fundamentally ethical or political in
nature. One must never confound the principles governing the poetic art with
those of its architectonic superior. Such authorities can in theory force the
poet to make bad poetry (e.g., by insisting that tragedies have happy endings),
but what they cannot do is make bad poetry good; expert though they be in
politics, they are powerless to change the rules of the poetic art.
Taken all together, the principles of chapter 25 converge in insisting that,
when pronouncing a bit of poetry good or bad, criticism should base itself on
the art of poetry and not on other arts. If the Poetics as a whole is, in James
Hutton’s words, “dedicated to the proposition that poetry is an art, which is
to say, a productive activity that follows intelligible laws,” chapter 25 teaches

45. Heath 2009, 470 with n. 3.

14 ANDREW FORD

us how to avoid confounding those laws with other requirements that, in other
situations, may legitimately be placed on poets and their works. 46
We can now see that the Poetics’ fundamental disagreement with Plato
is with the Plato of the Ion. There Socrates allows that “the art of poetry”
exists (ποιητικὴ γάρ πού ἐστιν τὸ ὅλον, 532c), though he sees it narrowly as
an unimportant skill, a not fully conscious ability to deck out imitations in
music and rhythm and a vivid style of presentation. 47 The Ion argues that
art or knowledge is less important for poets and rhapsodes to succeed than
a natural affinity for the genre, something the performer happens to have by
“divine dispensation” (θεία μοῖρα, 536c). 48 Aristotle by contrast puts all the
emphasis on the art, whose principles, rooted in nature, have remained valid
and unchanging through poetry’s various manifestations and mutations in
history. A paradoxical corollary is that, for Aristotle, poetics is not interested,
qua poetics, in individual artists, for the poet does not make poetry qua indi-
vidual but qua artist: “It is incidental,” says Aristotle, “to the sculptor that he
is Polyclitus” (Ph. 195a34–35). 49 This is not to deny artistic genius: it may be
that Sophocles or Homer can be relied upon to do certain things well, but it is
a matter of indifference to Aristotle whether they do so through a knowledge
of the principles of art or simply because they have been born with a knack
for making poems or picked up the skill through trial and error (cf. Poet.
1454a10–11). It is the art of poetry working in Homer that makes Homeric
epic excellent, regardless of whether he came by this excellence through con-
scious effort or naturally (ἤτοι διὰ τέχνην ἢ διὰ φύσιν, 1451a24). 50

Aristotle’s Literary Criticism

One benefit of my interpretation is to specify more clearly the place of the
Poetics in Greek literary history. Its theoretical point of departure owed less
to Plato’s Republic than to the sophists’ interest in codifying the language
arts. Developing this vein, Aristotle established—apparently for the first
time—that composing poetry is a self-sufficient enterprise with principles of
its own. 51 The second and inseparable claim the Poetics makes, in chapter
25, is that judging whether poems are good or bad should be rooted in these
principles. This was, in effect, to posit a notion of poetic autonomy in the
root sense of the word, one that insisted on poets’ respecting the laws (nomoi)

46. Hutton 1982, 9–10. At once strongly Aristotelian and powerfully original, Northrop Frye (1957, 14)
comments well: “A theory of criticism whose principles apply to the whole of literature and account for every
valid type of critical procedure is what I think Aristotle meant by Poetics. . . . picking out genera and species,
formulating broad laws of literary experience, and in short writing as though he believed that there is a totally
intelligible structure of knowledge attainable about poetry which is not poetry itself, or the experience of it,
but poetics.”
47. Cf. Resp. 601a (like a good painter, “the poet, understanding nothing except how to imitate, gives
colors to certain crafts with his words and phrases”) and Leg. 670e.
48. Cf. Janaway 1995, 14–35, esp. 16–17.
49. I have profited from Lear 1988a, 15–42, 60–74 on Aristotle’s notion of art.
50. Cf. 1.1447a 19–20. Some skills a poet needs, such as an eye for metaphor, in fact cannot be taught but
are “a sign of genius” (1459a6–7; cf. Rh. 1405a8 with 1394a5, 1412a10).
51. Cf. Hutton 1982, 7; Lucas 1968, xv. During the question period in Chicago, Jonathan Lear suggested
(if I understand him aright) that we may think of Aristotle not simply as outlining how the poetic art works but
in a sense as bringing it into being with his treatise; this seems to me a profound suggestion worth pondering
in a separate discussion.
 THE PURPOSE OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS 15

of their own (aut-) discipline and at the same time limited their exposure to
the demands of other crafts. This was not, I have said, an argument for the
absolute autonomy of poetry (which would have struck Greeks as presumptu-
ous). Although Aristotle rules ethical and political criticisms of poems out of
the court of criticism, the poet’s immunity to non-poetic criticism is limited
in the social contexts in which it can expect to prevail.
If understanding the purpose of the Poetics gives us a more precise view
of its place in the history of criticism, we may still ask what Aristotle’s con-
tribution is worth. One can only begin to answer such a question, but I will
consider two criticisms that may be laid against his conception of criticism
and mention two benefits it offers to those who teach or study literature today.
One might object that the picture of criticism I have attributed to Aristotle
is trivial or elitist. It would indeed be trivial if the purpose of chapter 25 were
merely to refine the techniques of criticism just to be able to one-up a Zoilus.
Is the end of all this theorizing a mere display of literary sophistication? Yet
one more way by which the educated can distance themselves from the vulgar
mob in the theater? If so, one could dismiss Aristotle’s views as a particularly
subtle but otherwise quite familiar attempt, as Pierre Bourdieu especially has
documented, to deploy theoretical distinctions about literature to reinforce
social distinctions.
But this would be an inadequate response to Aristotle’s project. For the pur-
pose of criticism as he conceives it is not simply to rule authoritatively on the
goodness or badness of particular passages but to understand the reasons that
make them good or bad, and this is to observe the causes of poetry in action.
Those who discuss poetry on the lines Aristotle recommends will do more
than score points off Zoilus: through a series of analyses of poems they will
actualize the knowledge of the principles of poetry that they took from the
lectures, and thereby the art of poetry in itself—ἡ ποιητικὴ αὐτή—will come
into view in the only way it can for Aristotle, through instantiations in indi-
vidual works. Perceiving poetry in this way is different from the experience
of poems in the theater, but presupposes it: one must have been susceptible,
at least in theory, to the emotional effects of the poem to recognize its telos
so as to decide on that basis whether it and its parts are well made.
Poetic criticism, therefore, follows on hearing or attending to poetry and
remains distinct from it, and this may raise the charge of elitism. For criticism
offers a pleasure of its own that appeals to certain kinds of people, those who
are “philosophers by nature,” as Aristotle puts it in the Parts of Animals, and
are able to understand the causes of things (cf. Poet. 4.1448b12–15). The
phrase comes from an inspiring protreptic passage early in that work that
compares the pleasures of studying biology with looking at works of plastic
art (645a4–15):
ἐπεὶ δὲ περὶ ἐκείνων διήλθομεν λέγοντες τὸ φαινόμενον ἡμῖν, λοιπὸν περὶ τῆς ζωϊκῆς
φύσεως εἰπεῖν, μηδὲν παραλιπόντας εἰς δύναμιν μήτε ἀτιμότερον μήτε τιμιώτερον.
καὶ γὰρ ἐν τοῖς μὴ κεχαρισμένοις αὐτῶν πρὸς τὴν αἴσθησιν κατὰ τὴν θεωρίαν ὅμως ἡ
δημιουργήσασα φύσις ἀμηχάνους ἡδονὰς παρέχει τοῖς δυναμένοις τὰς αἰτίας γνωρίζειν
καὶ φύσει φιλοσόφοις. καὶ γὰρ ἂν εἴη παράλογον καὶ ἄτοπον, εἰ τὰς μὲν εἰκόνας αὐτῶν
θεωροῦντες χαίρομεν ὅτι τὴν δημιουργήσασαν τέχνην συνθεωροῦμεν, οἷον τὴν γραφικὴν
16 ANDREW FORD

ἢ τὴν πλαστικήν, αὐτῶν δὲ τῶν φύσει συνεστώτων μὴ μᾶλλον ἀγαπῷμεν τὴν θεωρίαν,
δυνάμενοί γε τὰς αἰτίας καθορᾶν. διὸ δεῖ μὴ δυσχεραίνειν παιδικῶς τὴν περὶ τῶν
ἀτιμοτέρων ζῴων ἐπίσκεψιν.

Having treated [of the celestial  world] as far as our conjectures could reach, we pro-
ceed to treat of animals, without omitting, to the best of our ability, any member of the
kingdom, however ignoble. For if some animals have no graces to charm the sense, yet
even these, by disclosing to intellectual perception nature’s artistic designs in them, give
immense pleasure to all who can recognize causes and are by nature philosophers. Indeed,
it would be strange if we enjoyed contemplating representations of [such animals], because
at the same time we discern the art that fashioned them (whether it be the art of painting
or sculpting), and did not more delight in looking at the originals as they have been com-
posed by nature, provided at least that we can discern the causes. We therefore must not
recoil with childish aversion from the examination of the humbler animals. (Trans. Ogle,
revised)

Fleshing out Aristotle’s comparison between the pleasure philosophically in-

clined people take in contemplating animals and the pleasure to be had from
sculpted or painted ones will clarify the rewards of criticism. 52 As in the
Poetics, Aristotle takes it for granted that mimesis allows us to take pleasure
in representations of things whose sight would distress or repel us in real life
(Poet. 4.1448b9–19). 53 Here he develops a further aspect of the phenomenon
by noting that, as we decipher representations of unpleasant objects, we can
simultaneously enjoy observing the artistic skill with which they were fash-
ioned (τὴν δημιουργήσασαν τέχνην). Aristotle’s protreptic argument is that,
although we may feel revulsion at the sight of certain animals, the shaping
power of nature to be discerned in their interrelated parts is even more im-
pressive than the design exhibited by well-made products of the plastic arts.
If we transpose this analogy back onto studying poems in Poetics 25, we can
see that criticism makes possible a supervenient pleasure in our experience
of works of art, one that goes beyond our enthrallment by the work or our
admiration for the artist’s technique. Someone who has learned the causes of
good or bad poetry (τοῦ εὖ ἢ μὴ τίνες αἰτίαι, 1462b18) will be able to discern
in a poem or play the shaping power of the art itself, the true efficient cause.
By “disclosing to the intelligence” the activity of nature working through the
artist, criticism affords a special kind of insight that arouses admiration and
a special kind of pleasure.
Aristotle doubtless expected such pleasure to be realized by only a limited
number of souls. He would have regarded criticism, like poetry itself, as a

52. This analogy has, not unexpectedly, been misconstrued as implying that we have ethical lessons to
learn from poetry; e.g., Sifakis 1986; Gallop 1990.
53. Here again we should guard against extrapolating a full-fledged aesthetics of art from Aristotle’s ap-
preciation of “mimetic distance”: this can be seen if we read Poetics 6.1450b1–3 as a comparison between a
stick-figure, black-and-white drawing of a recognizable object with one of Jackson Pollock’s “drip paintings”:
whereas modern aesthetics would regard both as potential aesthetic objects, Aristotle holds that only the for-
mer pleases us qua imitation; the Pollock he would regard as a “profusion of colors poured out at random,”
in terms of chap. 4, that “pleases only on account of its workmanship or color or some other such cause”
(4.1448b15–19; cf. Pl. Phlb. 51b for the intrinsic beauty of certain colors, with Porter 2010, 87–89, 95). Aris-
totle makes a different, though compatible, point about two sorts of pleasure we may take in portraiture at Pol.
1340a25–28.
 THE PURPOSE OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS 17

“leisure” activity, or to put it in the terms of Plato and the sophists, as one
of the non-necessary arts that are practiced after the basic necessities of life
have been secured. 54 But in order to see what kind of elitist he may be, we
should set the Poetics in the context of Aristotle’s reflections on the civic uses
of poetry in the Politics.
Leisure is not a trivial thing for Aristotle, since he believes that a polity
should be organized so as to afford citizens occasions for leisure: as war is
for the sake of peace and not vice versa, we work in order to enjoy leisure
(Eth. Nic. 7.14, 15). Among the pleasures of leisure, in Aristotle’s eyes, is
the opportunity it gives for exercising the practical intelligence in a cultivated
form of leisure he calls διαγωγή (Pol. 1339a25–26, 1339b10–15). To enable
his future citizens to enjoy the best leisure pursuits of which they are capable,
Aristotle makes the revolutionary proposal that they all be given the tradi-
tional education in grammar and music at public expense (Eth. Nic. 8.1). Part
of his reason is that acquiring a familiarity with good music and learning to
judge it correctly will enable people to enjoy and reflect on the musical arts
in later leisure (1340a14–18). 55 Then as now, some teachers would say that
the reason to teach poetry in school is to use it for ethical formation. Aristotle
agrees that there is something in music that shapes the character of the young
(as there is in gymnastics); but the “noblest” reason for including poetry in
education is to prepare future citizens to occupy their leisure in a “fine” way
(σχολάζειν δύνασθαι καλῶς, 1337b31–32), that is, in a way worthy of free
people and not utilitarian (1333a35–36). Aristotle is an unabashed believer
in the liberal arts and views poetry as something that can be studied not for
other ends but as a worthy occupation of the mind in moments of respite from
work and duty (cf. 1333a35–36). Veterans of the lectures on Poetics will ap-
ply reason to poems not to extract morals from them but to judge how well
they do what things of their sort are supposed to. In the course of discussing
whether a poem is kalôs the principles of poetics will come into view and be
vindicated, which must give immense pleasure to those who care for causes.
Here Aristotle may expose himself to charges of snobbery or even puritan-
ism in ranking pleasures that depend on the exercise of reason above what
he calls the more “slavish” forms. 56 Snobbish he may be, or idealistic in his
expectation that every citizen can learn to enjoy literature on more than a gut
level, the important point to bear in mind is that, unlike Plato, Aristotle does
not presume to regulate how citizens occupy their leisure; seeing nothing
harmful in Athens’ musical festivals, his plan is to educate his future citizens,
let public and private uses of music largely go their own ways, and hope for
the best. The upshot is that at symposia and other social gatherings, people
will be free to talk of politics, or of poetry and politics together. (These are,
after all, the people who loved Aristophanes.) But chapter 25 insists that there
should also be a place for those who wish to think about poetry disentangled
from the other arts so as to observe the art of poetry in action. This produces

54. Democr. B 144 DK; Pl. Resp. 373b.

55. See further in Ford 2004, 316–25.
56. Pol. 1334a 36–40; cf. Eth. Nic. 10.4, esp. 1174b17–20.
18 ANDREW FORD

not a self-congratulatory pride in outdoing other critics, but a more disinter-

ested pleasure of realizing that the principles of poetry are real and are valid.
Aristotle’s approach to understanding poetry through its kinds and their
parts can be described as formal, but it is not pure formalism since he would
not reduce the pleasure poetry affords to the pleasure of appreciating form in
itself: the Poetics never commends form as an end but only as appropriately
augmenting the power of a work to provide its proper pleasure. 57 Because
Aristotle’s conception of the art is so much deeper than Plato’s, his criticism
of poetry will not be restricted to formalistic observations; it can ask whether
what a poet says is true, or even plausible, or possible and, if not, whether
there is a reason why it is not. Again, there is no denying that the pleasure of
this kind of criticism will in fact be available only to those with the requisite
training or instincts. Certainly Aristotle’s students will understand aspects
of poetry that elude or do not interest many in the theater: they will know
what Protagoras said was the most important thing education should teach,
to distinguish what is truly correct in poetry (ἅ τε ὀρθῶς πεποίηται καὶ ἃ μή,
Prt. 339a), though they will define the “correct” in poetic terms. This may
condemn Aristotle as a cultural elitist in some eyes, but as a sociological posi-
tion it is close to that of Bourdieu, who held that a person’s ability to enjoy
and exploit a culture’s goods depended largely on one’s social shaping, what
he called habitus, a notion he derived from Aristotle’s conception of ethical
hexis. 58
In closing I would like to mention two aspects of Aristotle’s theory that I
find valuable. The first is the simple point in Poetics 25 that political critiques
of poetry are talking about something other than poetry. This suggests we may
rethink the possibilities for literary criticism after decades in which the idea
of literariness has been rejected as a mystified concept whose only use is to
lay claim to a privileged social position. Academic criticism of literature in
the last three decades has been dominated by political readings (criticism that
in Aristotelian terms claims to know the good for a community) underwritten
by ethical commitments (that claim to know the good for man). But chapter
25 urges that there is a value in bracketing your politics, ethics, or theology
when you are discussing if a poem is well or ill made. By all means discuss
the “politics of literary form” when you are discussing politics (as Aristotle
himself does in Pol. 8.5–8), but Poetics is there to remind you there are other
things to talk about, and chapter 25 is there to tell you how to talk about poetry
in terms of the art of poetry and not another art.
On a certain view of politics, of course, there is nothing but politics to talk
about and the proposal to depoliticize criticism is itself a political proposal. So
it may be described, but the Nobelist Gao Xingjian suggests why one might

57. Pace Porter (2010, 96–102, 248–51), who portrays Aristotle as a “staunch formalist” (101) with “mo-
mentary” lapses. He goes too far in saying, e.g., that for Aristotle “all that matters in tragedy . . . is its rational
form” (84) or that “poetry’s ‘content’ just is its final form, but it is nothing other than this final form” (96, his
emphasis). Rorty (1992b, 2) is this much right: “Although Aristotle focuses on the formal elements of tragedy
. . . his is not an aesthetic theory. The pleasures and insights of tragedy do not rest solely or primarily in their
purely formal properties, in the elegance and structural tension of balance.”
58. Cf. Pol. 1337a6–9; I have profited from discussing this point with Mark Griffith.
 THE PURPOSE OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS 19

support Aristotle on this point: “To demand that writers act as the conscience
of the society can only strangle literature,” he writes from exile, having had
firsthand experience with that political expert Mao Tse-tung. 59 Gao insists that
“Once literature is contrived as the hymn of the nation, the flag of the race, the
mouthpiece of a political party or the voice of a class or a group. . . . literature
loses what is inherent in literature, ceases to be literature, and becomes a
substitute for power and profit.” 60 One might take a different view from Gao
about “what is inherent in literature,” but Aristotelians will recognize the
necessity of trying to arrive at poetic principles and of centering their discus-
sions of literature there. An extra benefit of relaxing our political vigilance
when reading poems is that it becomes possible for us to be surprised at what
we find; if we let poetry, not politics, teach us the limits of what is sayable in
poetry, we may find ourselves presented with things we have not encountered
before, things that only poetry can say. Plato’s insistence on controlling poetry
has something compelling about it, possibly the sense we have that it springs
from a nearly equally strong attraction; Aristotle’s analysis, though cooler, is
indispensable because he defends the freedom of poetry to define poetry. 61
The second idea that comes out of the Poetics, and for me personally the
most encouraging one, is Aristotle’s fundamental conviction that poetry is
something real. One can come away from prolonged exposure to political
criticism, whether it emanates from the old or the recent academy, with the
idea that poetry is merely a form of rhetoric, a way of tricking out logos with
verbal and musical effects to make its fantasies appealing and so better to
insinuate its patrons’ ideologies. This view of poetry as logos with meter and
other seasonings added was promoted by the sophists, who did so to reduce
poetry to rhetoric, in which art they were supreme. But the opening phrase
of the Poetics asserts what the rest of the treatise tries to prove, that poetry
is something on its own apart from rhetoric (which is why Aristotle devoted
a separate treatise to that art). For a poetic criticism of poetry, logos is inter-
esting primarily not as the bearer of argument or ideology or even meaning,
but as the constituent medium through which the art becomes manifest and
works its peculiar effects (1.1447a21–23). Wittgenstein makes a compatible
point: “Do not forget that a poem, although it is composed in the language
of information, is not used in the language-game of giving information.” 62
So poetry is something real, and if poetry is real, it follows that literary
criticism is real as well, for the principles of the art of poetry only come to
light in our responses to art. Like poetry, criticism is a distinctive activity—a
praxis—of homo sapiens, a natural outgrowth of our susceptible physical na-
ture and of our nature as social beings. As chapter 25 shows, Aristotle regards
criticism no less than poetry as a social activity, a pleasurable exchange with
others. This suggests that the benefits of criticism may be not only personal,
to better understand ourselves through art, but also interpersonal, to supply

59. Gao 2012, 11.

60. Gao 2000.
61. Burnyeat 1998, 1: “To rebut Plato’s critique of poetry, what is needed is not a defence of poetry, but a
defence of the freedom of poets to write as, and what, they wish.”
62. Wittgenstein 2007, 26.
20 ANDREW FORD

a language in which to express the pleasure we take in poetry and in which

others can reply on the same terms. If we base our conversations about poetry
on the principles Aristotle espouses, challenging and defending the merits
of poetic texts in terms of the art, the irreducible reality of poetry becomes
apparent and our sense of our own natures and of our commonalities with
others is enlarged.
For these reasons one may come away from the Poetics with the convic-
tion that poetry is worth serious attention, if one can find the time, and worth
attention as poetry. Aristotle also teaches in chapter 25, as I have tried to
show, how to test that conviction against our most favored texts with the most
reasonable interlocutors we can find. This is what the Poetics—all twenty-six
chapters of it—teaches; this is what it is for.

Princeton University

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