Ars Poetica

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Ars Poetica

Ars Poetica is a term meaning "The Art of Poetry" or "On the Nature of Poetry". Early examples of Ars Poetica by Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
and Horace

Horace

This article is about the Roman poet Horace. For other uses, see Horace .Quintus Horatius Flaccus, , known in the English language world as Horace, was the leading Roman Empire Lyric poetry during the time of Augustus....
have survived and have since spawned many other poems that bear the same name. Three of the most notable examples, including the work by Horace, are as follows.

Horace
Horace

Horace

This article is about the Roman poet Horace. For other uses, see Horace .Quintus Horatius Flaccus, , known in the English language world as Horace, was the leading Roman Empire Lyric poetry during the time of Augustus....
's Ars Poetica (also known as "The Art of Poetry", Epistula Ad Pisones, or Letters to Piso
Piso

The Piso family of ancient Rome was a prominent plebeian branch of the gens Calpurnia, with at least 50 prominent Roman family members recognized....
), published c.

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Ars Poetica is a term meaning "The Art of Poetry" or "On the Nature of Poetry". Early examples of Ars Poetica by Aristotle

Aristotle

Horace

This article is about the Roman poet Horace. For other uses, see Horace .Quintus Horatius Flaccus, , known in the English language world as Horace, was the leading Roman Empire Lyric poetry during the time of Augustus....
have survived and have since spawned many other poems that bear the same name. Three of the most notable examples, including the work by Horace, are as follows.

Horace

This article is about the Roman poet Horace. For other uses, see Horace .Quintus Horatius Flaccus, , known in the English language world as Horace, was the leading Roman Empire Lyric poetry during the time of Augustus....
's Ars Poetica (also known as "The Art of Poetry", Epistula Ad Pisones, or Letters to Piso
Piso

The Piso family of ancient Rome was a prominent plebeian branch of the gens Calpurnia, with at least 50 prominent Roman family members recognized....
), published c. 18 BC, was a treatise on poetics. It was first translated into English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
by Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson

Benjamin Jonson was an England English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satire plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist , and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his Lyric poetry poems....
, Three quotes in particular are associated with the work:

"in medias res
In medias res

In medias res, also medias in res , is a literary and artistic technique where the narrative starts in the middle of the story instead of from its beginning ....
", or "into the middle of things"; this describes a popular narrative technique that appears frequently in ancient epics and remains popular to this day

"bonus dormitat Homerus" or "good Homer nods
Homeric nod

Homeric nod is a proverbial phrase for a Continuity . It has its origins in Homeric epic poetry.The phrase was coined by the Ancient Rome poet Horace in his Ars poetica:...
"; an indication that even the most skilled poet can make continuity errors

"ut pictura poesis
Ut pictura poesis

Ut pictura poesis is Latin, literally "As is painting so is poetry." The statement occurs most famously in Horace's Ars Poetica, near the end, immediately after the "other" most famous quotation from Horace's treatise on poetics, "bonus dormitat Homerus", or "even Homer nods" :...
", or "As is painting so is poetry", by which Horace meant that poetry (in its widest sense, "imaginative texts") merited the same careful interpretation that was, in Horace's day, reserved for painting.

The latter two quotes occur back-to-back, near the end of the treatise.

The work is also key for its discussion of the principle of decorum

Decorum

Decorum was a principle of classical rhetoric, poetry and theatrical theory. The term is also applied to prescribed limits of appropriate social behavior within set situations....
(using appropriate vocabulary and diction in each style of writing).

The term "ars poetica" can refer to devices of metalanguage

Metalanguage

In logic and linguistics, a metalanguage is a language used to make statements about statements in another language which is called the object language....
. The definition of "ars poetica" in the past decade extends to defining techniques of rhetoric

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of using language as a means to persuade. Along with logic and dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse....
, including but not limited to: writing about writing, singing about singing, thinking about thinking, etc. Stemming first from poetry on poetry, "ars poetica" is now widely used as a literary device to enhance imagery, understanding, or profundity.

Moreover, the technique of "ars poetica" was previously an attempt to capture the essence of poetry through poetry; the poet would write his poem, then step back, and his poem would become a way of knowing, of seeing, albeit through the senses, the emotions, and the imagination. In the modern century, a passage of writing or composition employing an "ars poetica" style is one that tries to capture the essence, the intrinsic value, of what it is expressing through. A song about a song, for example, would be an attempt to manifest the fleeting beauty

Beauty

Beauty is a characteristic of a person, Location , Object , or idea that provides a perception experience of pleasure, Value , or satisfaction....
of lyrics, notes, and dynamics

Dynamics

Dynamics may refer to:In Physics:*Dynamics , in physics, dynamics refers to time evolution of physical processes*Analytical dynamics refers to the motion of bodies as induced by external forces...
.

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