Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Poetics
    Poetics
    Poetics
    Ebook73 pages1 hour

    Poetics

    By Aristotle

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Among the most influential books in Western civilization, Aristotle's Poetics is really a treatise on fine art. In it are mentioned not only epic and dithyrambic poetry, but tragedy, comedy, and flute and lyre playing. Aristotle's conception of tragedy, i.e. the depiction of a heroic action that arouses pity and fear in the spectators and brings about a catharsis of those emotions, has helped perpetuate the Greek ideal of drama to the present day. Similarly, his dictums concerning unity of time and place, the necessity for a play to have a beginning, middle, and end, the idea of the tragic flaw and other concepts have had enormous influence down through the ages.
    Throughout the work, Aristotle reveals not only a great intellect analyzing the nature of poetry, music, and drama, but also a down-to-earth understanding of the practical problems facing the poet and playwright. Now, in this inexpensive edition of the Poetics, readers can enjoy the seminal insights of one of the greatest minds in human history as he sets about laying the foundations of critical thought about the arts.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateFeb 29, 2012
    ISBN9780486110714
    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.

    Read more from Aristotle

    Related authors

    Related to Poetics

    Titles in the series (60)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Classroom Culture War

      Sep 30, 2021

      TEN YEARS AGO, THIS MOTHER’S STORY would likely be considered a joke; a parody of the culture wars that were starting to simmer across the Atlantic. But a lot can happen in a decade: the child whose mother recently reported the above attends an acade

      5 min read

    • Article

      'The World Broke In Two': Four Writers, One Transformational Year

      Jul 25, 2017

      Using excerpts from letters and diaries, historian and critic Bill Goldstein follows writers Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence and T. S. Eliot through the tumultuous literary year of 1922.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Three Odysseys

      Jan 2, 2018

      Odysseys come in all shapes and forms, from epic to personal.  Three recent odysseys range in time and theme from ancient to dystopian.  Daniel Mendelsohn’s An Odyssey launches from Homer’s epic, 2017 National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Un

      6 min read

    • Article

      Three Authors in Search of Melville

      Sep 25, 2017

      "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method." The post Three Authors in Search of Melville appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      A History And Theory Of The Line In English Language Poetry

      Jul 1, 2022

      For me, and for generations of US readers before me, poetry has been defined by the appearance of the line break on the page, that ragged righthand margin signaling that something is at work in the arrangement of the words on paper beyond mere transc

      59 min read

    • Article

      How The Sonnet Turns

      May 1, 2020

      This essay is adapted from a lecture delivered at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, on January 10, 2010, at the winter residency. My thanks to The American Poetry Review for their graceful and gracious assistance in the adaptation

      30 min read

    • Article

      Time And Place

      Jan 5, 2023

      Time And Place
      4 min read

    • Article

      What Makes a Poet Difficult?

      May 28, 2019

      What Makes a Poet Difficult?
      6 min read

    • Article

      Beyond the Narrative Arc

      Mar 27, 2019

      Beyond the Narrative Arc
      9 min read

    • Article

      Formal Poetry Is Not a Museum Piece: The Millions Interviews Aaron Poochigian

      Apr 19, 2021

      There was some tension at Columbia over my formalism. I was at one point told not to write that way. Because formal poetry is what lights up my synapses, gets me high, I could not accommodate that suggestion. The post Formal Poetry Is Not a Museum Pi

      11 min read

    • Article

      Writing The Art

      Mar 2, 2023

      Writing The Art
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Language the Poet Knows

      Dec 11, 2018

      The Language the Poet Knows
      4 min read

    • Article

      Poets On Board

      Jan 4, 2024

      Poems on the theme of exploration converged in search of a prize in the competition honouring Venetian explorer Marco Polo. The traveller – who opened up the world of central Asia, explored the Silk Road, and lived a quarter of his life in China – re

      4 min read

    • Article

      Wide Open Wordsmiths

      May 5, 2022

      Wide Open Wordsmiths
      5 min read

    • Article

      Wide Open Brief

      May 4, 2023

      Wide Open Brief
      5 min read

    • Article

      Love’s Labour’s Found

      Dec 6, 2020

      From late summer 1592 until the end of the following year, the plague was rife in London, and to stop packed crowds from spreading infection, theatres were closed. William Shakespeare, who had just begun to make a name for himself as a playwright, tu

      7 min read

    • Article

      Art’s Reflection

      Jul 1, 2021

      Art’s Reflection
      4 min read

    • Article

      Joys Forever

      Jul 1, 2021

      Joys Forever
      4 min read

    • Article

      Best Of The Bunch

      May 6, 2021

      Best Of The Bunch
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Poetry No. 108

      Jun 9, 2020

      The Art of Poetry No. 108
      42 min read

    • Article

      Why Write About Music?

      Apr 14, 2022

      Why Write About Music?
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Poetics

    3.5/5

    404 ratings14 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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!
    • 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

    e9780486110714_cover.jpge9780486110714_i0001.jpg

    DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

    GENERAL EDITOR: STANLEY APPELBAUM

    EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: RICHARD KOSS

    Copyright

    Copyright © 1997 by Dover Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

    Bibliographical Note

    This Dover edition, first published in 1997, is an unabridged republication of S. H. Butcher’s translation of the Poetics as originally published by Macmillan and Co., London, as part of the volume Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art in 1895. A new Note, and footnotes translating the Greek quotations, have been added to this edition.

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Aristotle

    [Poetics. English]

    Poetics/Aristotle.

    p. cm. — (Dover thrift editions.)

    "Unabridged republication of S.H. Butcher’s translation of the

    Poetics as originally published by Macmillan and Co., London, as

    part of the volume Aristotle’s theory of poetry and fine arts in 1895

    [with] a new Note, and footnotes translating the Greek quotations" —

    T.p. verso.

    9780486110714

    1. Poetry — Early works to 1800. 2. Aesthetics—Early works to

    1800. I. Butcher, S. H. (Samuel Henry), 1850-1910. II. Title.

    III. Series.

    PN1040.A513 1997

    808.2 — dc21 96-47116

    CIP

    Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

    29577X09

    www.doverpublications.com

    Table of Contents

    Title Page

    Copyright Page

    Note

    I

    II

    III

    IV

    v

    VI

    VII

    VIII

    IX

    X

    XI

    XII

    XIII

    XIV

    XV

    XVI

    XVII

    XVIII

    XIX

    XX

    XXI

    XXII

    XXIII

    XXIV

    XXV

    XXVI

    Note

    ARGUABLY THE MOST SIGNIFICANT critical work of antiquity, Aristotle’s Poetics represents the first major analysis of Hellenic literature as well as the first attempt to distinguish between literary genres. Written circa 330 B.C., it is a reservoir of the themes and schemes deployed in ancient Greek tragedy and epic poetry (a further volume, believed to have been devoted to comedy, has not survived). The Poetics, moreover, presents a fine glimpse of Aristotelian thought.

    Born in 384 in Stagira near Macedonia, Aristotle moved at the age of 17 to Athens where he spent the subsequent 20 years as the most brilliant student in Plato’s Academy. Although in his Republic Plato condemned the arts as an imitator of things that were themselves imitations of ultimate reality, Aristotle was to verge from his mentor in the Poetics, recognizing the light both tragic drama and epic poetry shed on the human condition. Following Plato’s death in 347, Aristotle left Athens to travel, settling in 343 in Macedonia where he served as the tutor to the young Alexander the Great. In 335, he returned to Athens where he founded his own school, the Lyceum, which was to continue for several centuries after his death in 322.

    Though much of his work has not survived him, the influence of Aristotle on Western philosophy is immense. The Poetics transcends the age in which it was written as well as the ancient art forms it investigated, setting, as T. S. Eliot observed, an eternal example ... of intelligence itself swiftly operating the analysis of sensation to the point of principle and definition.

    I

    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

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1