All Topics  
Poetics

 

 
   Email Print
   Bookmark   Link
 

 

Poetics
 
 
  Topics Poetics Topic Home

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....
's Poetics (Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
: , c. 335 BCE) aims to give an account of what he calls 'poetry' (for him, the term includes the lyric
Lyric poetry

Lyric poetry refers to a usually short poem that expresses personal feelings, which may or may not be set to music. Aristotle, in Poetics , contrasted lyric poetry with drama and epic poetry....
, the epos
Epic poetry

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation....
, and the drama
Drama

Drama is the specific Mode of fiction Mimesis in performance. The term comes from a Ancient Greek word meaning "Action " , which is derived from "to do" ....
). Aristotle attempts to explain 'poetry' through 'first principles' and by discerning its different genres and component elements. His analysis of tragedy
Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of The arts based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific Poetic tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western culture....
 constitutes the core of his discussion. "Although Aristotle's Poetics is universally acknowledged in Western critical tradition," Marvin Carlson explains, "almost every detail about his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions."


totle taught that poetry could be divided into three genres: Tragedy
Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of The arts based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific Poetic tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western culture....
, Comedy
Comedy

Comedy as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse generally intended to amuse, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western culture origins are found in Ancient Greece....
, and Epic verse
Epic poetry

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation....
.






Discussion
Ask a question about 'Poetics'
Start a new discussion about 'Poetics'
Answer questions from other users
Full Discussion Forum



Encyclopedia


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....
's Poetics (Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
: , c. 335 BCE) aims to give an account of what he calls 'poetry' (for him, the term includes the lyric
Lyric poetry

Lyric poetry refers to a usually short poem that expresses personal feelings, which may or may not be set to music. Aristotle, in Poetics , contrasted lyric poetry with drama and epic poetry....
, the epos
Epic poetry

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation....
, and the drama
Drama

Drama is the specific Mode of fiction Mimesis in performance. The term comes from a Ancient Greek word meaning "Action " , which is derived from "to do" ....
). Aristotle attempts to explain 'poetry' through 'first principles' and by discerning its different genres and component elements. His analysis of tragedy
Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of The arts based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific Poetic tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western culture....
 constitutes the core of his discussion. "Although Aristotle's Poetics is universally acknowledged in Western critical tradition," Marvin Carlson explains, "almost every detail about his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions."

Core terms

  • Mimesis
    Mimesis

    Mimesis is a Critical theory and philosophical term that carries a wide range of meanings, which include: imitation, Representation , mimicry, imitatio, nonsensuous similarity, the act of Resemblance, the act of expression, and the Impression management....
     or 'imitation', 'representation'
  • Catharsis
    Catharsis

    Catharsis is a Ancient Greek word meaning "purification", "cleansing" or "clarification." It is derived from the infinitive verb of Transliteration as kathairein "to purify, purge," and adjective katharos "pure or clean."...
     or, variously, 'purgation', 'purification', 'clarification'
  • Peripeteia
    Peripeteia

    Peripeteia is a reversal of circumstances, or turning point. The term is primarily used with reference to works of literature. The English form of peripeteia is peripety....
     or 'reversal'
  • Anagnorisis
    Anagnorisis

    Anagnorisis , also known as discovery, originally meant recognition in its Greek context, not only of a person but also of what that person stood for, what he or she represented; it was the hero's suddenly becoming aware of a real situation and therefore the realisation of things as they stood; and finally it was a perception that resulte...
     or 'recognition', 'identification'
  • Hamartia
    Hamartia

    Hamartia is a term developed by Aristotle in his work Poetics . The term can simply be seen as a character?s flaw or error. The word hamartia is rooted in the notion of missing the mark and covers a broad spectrum that includes accident and mistake, as well as wrongdoing, error, or sin.....
     or 'miscalculation' (understood in Romanticism as 'tragic flaw')
  • Mythos
    Mythos (Aristotle)

    Mythos is the term used by Aristotle in his Poetics for the Plot of an Classical Athens tragedy. It is the first of the six elements of tragedy that he gives....
     or 'plot'
  • Ethos
    Ethos

    Ethos is a Ancient Greek word originally meaning "accustomed place" , "custom, habit", that can be translated into English language in different ways....
     or 'character'
  • Dianoia or 'thought', 'theme'
  • Lexis
    Lexis (Aristotle)

    Lexis - A Greek word meaning: A complete group of words in a language, vocabulary, the total set of all words in a language, all words that have meaning or a function in grammar....
     or 'diction', 'speech'
  • Melos or 'melody'
  • Opsis
    Opsis

    Opsis is the greek word for spectacle in the theatre and performance. Its first use has been traced back to Aristotle's Poetics. It is now taken up by theatre critics, historians, and theorists to describe the mise en sc?ne of a performance or theatrical event....
     or 'spectacle'


Content

Aristotle taught that poetry could be divided into three genres: Tragedy
Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of The arts based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific Poetic tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western culture....
, Comedy
Comedy

Comedy as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse generally intended to amuse, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western culture origins are found in Ancient Greece....
, and Epic verse
Epic poetry

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation....
. Poetics focuses mainly on tragedy; a second work by Aristotle focusing on comedy may have been written and subsequently lost. It has been speculated that the Tractatus coislinianus
Tractatus coislinianus

The Tractatus coislinianus is a manuscript outlining a theory of comedy in the tradition of the Poetics of Aristotle. The Tractatus states that comedy invokes laughter and pleasure, thus purging those emotions , in a manner parallel to the description of tragedy in the Poetics....
 was an outline of his lectures on the subject, or notes from a philosopher in the Aristotelian tradition. The work contains the famous hypothesis that comedy originated from "those who lead off the phallic processions
Phallic processions

Phallic processions, or Penis Parade, originally called phallika in the Ancient Greece, were a common feature of Dionysiac celebrations; they were procession that advanced to a cult center, and were characterized by obscenities and verbal abuse....
" that were still common in many towns in Aristotle's time.

The centerpiece of Aristotle's surviving work is his examination of tragedy
Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of The arts based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific Poetic tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western culture....
:

Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper catharsis
Catharsis

Catharsis is a Ancient Greek word meaning "purification", "cleansing" or "clarification." It is derived from the infinitive verb of Transliteration as kathairein "to purify, purge," and adjective katharos "pure or clean."...
 of these emotions.

Aristotle distinguishes between the three genres of poetry in three ways: differences in the means, the objects and the modes of their imitations. The means cover language
Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
, rhythm
Rhythm

Rhythm is the variation of the length and accentuation of a series of sounds or other events....
, and harmony
Harmony

In Western music, harmony is the use of different pitches simultaneously, and chord s, actual or implied, in music. The word is related to the word "harmonic" which implies related wavelengths of waves....
, used separately or in combination. The objects refer to actions, virtuous or vicious, and the agents, good or bad. As a complete whole in itself having beginning, middle, and end, every tragedy includes six parts: plot
Plot

In literary and dramatic works, the plot is the primary sequence of events experienced by the protagonist. Aristotle wrote in Poetics that Mythos is the most important element of storytelling....
 (mythos
Mythos (Aristotle)

Mythos is the term used by Aristotle in his Poetics for the Plot of an Classical Athens tragedy. It is the first of the six elements of tragedy that he gives....
), character
Character

Character may refer to:*Character , an agent in a work of literature, drama, opera or other works of fiction*Character , the abstraction of an observable physical or biochemical trait of an organism...
 (ethos
Ethos

Ethos is a Ancient Greek word originally meaning "accustomed place" , "custom, habit", that can be translated into English language in different ways....
), thought (dianoia), diction (lexis
Lexis (Aristotle)

Lexis - A Greek word meaning: A complete group of words in a language, vocabulary, the total set of all words in a language, all words that have meaning or a function in grammar....
), melody (melos), and spectacle
Spectacle

In general spectacle refers to an event that is memorable for the appearance it creates. Derived in Old English from c.1340 as "specially prepared or arranged display" it was borrowed from Old French spectacle, itself a reflection of the Latin spectaculum "a show" from spectare "to view, watch" frequentative form of specere "t...
 (opsis
Opsis

Opsis is the greek word for spectacle in the theatre and performance. Its first use has been traced back to Aristotle's Poetics. It is now taken up by theatre critics, historians, and theorists to describe the mise en sc?ne of a performance or theatrical event....
). The key elements of the plot are reversals (peripeteia
Peripeteia

Peripeteia is a reversal of circumstances, or turning point. The term is primarily used with reference to works of literature. The English form of peripeteia is peripety....
), recognitions (anagnorisis
Anagnorisis

Anagnorisis , also known as discovery, originally meant recognition in its Greek context, not only of a person but also of what that person stood for, what he or she represented; it was the hero's suddenly becoming aware of a real situation and therefore the realisation of things as they stood; and finally it was a perception that resulte...
) and suffering (pathos
Pathos

Pathos is one of the three modes of persuasion in rhetoric . Pathos appeals to the audience's emotions. It is a part of Aristotle's philosophy in rhetoric....
). The best form of tragedy, Aristotle argues, has a plot that is what he calls "complex," it imitates actions arousing horror, fear and pity, and the hero's fortune changes from happiness to misery because of some tragic mistake (hamartia
Hamartia

Hamartia is a term developed by Aristotle in his work Poetics . The term can simply be seen as a character?s flaw or error. The word hamartia is rooted in the notion of missing the mark and covers a broad spectrum that includes accident and mistake, as well as wrongdoing, error, or sin.....
) that he or she makes. The horrific deed may be done consciously and knowingly (Medea
Medea

Medea is a woman in Greek mythology. She was the daughter of Aeetes of Colchis, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason, with whom she had two children: Mermeros and Pheres....
), or unknowingly with knowledge following after (Oedipus
Oedipus

Oedipus was a Greek mythology monarch of Thebes, Greece. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus brought disaster on his city and family....
); or it may be left undone, due to timely discovery, or to full knowledge present at the point of doing the deed. The characters must be good, appropriate, consistent, or consistently inconsistent, he argues.

This work combined with the Rhetoric
Rhetoric (Aristotle)

Aristotle's Rhetoric is an ancient Greek treatise on the art of persuasion, dating from the fourth century BCE. In Greek, it is titled ?????S ????????S, in Latin Ars Rhetorica. In English, its title varies: typically it is titled the Rhetoric, the Art of Rhetoric, or a Treatise on Rhetoric....
 make up Aristotle's works on aesthetics
Aesthetics

Aesthetics or esthetics is commonly known as the study of senses or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste ....
.

Influence

Poetics was not influential in its time, and was generally understood to coincide with the more famous Rhetoric. This is because in Aristotle's time, rhetoric and poetry were not as separated as they later became and were in a sense different versions of the same thing. In later times, Poetics became hugely influential. The conception of tragedy during the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment or The Enlightenment is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life centered upon the eighteenth century, in which rationalism was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority....
 especially owes much to Poetics.

The Arabic version of Aristotle’s Poetics that influenced the Middle Ages was translated from a Greek manuscript dating from before the year 700. This manuscript was translated from Greek to Syriac and is independent of the currently accepted eleventh-century source designated “Paris 1741.”

The Syriac source used for the Arabic translations departed widely in vocabulary from the original Poetics, and it initiated a misinterpretation of Aristotelian thought that continued through the Middle Ages.

There are two different Arabic interpretations of Aristotle’s Poetics in commentaries by Abu Nasr al-Farabi
Al-Farabi

Abu Nasr al-Farabi , known in the Western world as Alpharabius , was a Muslim polymath and one of the greatest Islamic sciences and Early Islamic philosophys of History of Iran and the Islamic Golden Age in his time....
 and Averroes
Averroes

Abu 'l-Walid Mu?ammad ibn A?mad ibn Rushd , better known just as Ibn Rushd , and in European literature as Averroes , was an Al-Andalus-Arab Muslim polymath: a master of early Islamic philosophy, Islamic theology, Maliki Sharia and Fiqh, Logic in Islamic philosophy, Psychology in medieval Islam, Arabic music theory, and the Scien...
 (i.e., Abu al-Walid Ibn Rushd).

Al-Farabi’s treatise endeavors to establish poetry as a logical faculty of expression, giving it validity in the Islamic world. Averroes’ commentary attempts to harmonize his assessment of the Poetics with al-Farabi’s, but he is ultimately unable to reconcile his ascription of moral purpose to poetry with al-Farabi’s logical interpretation.

However, Averroes' interpretation of the Poetics was accepted by the West because of its relevance to their humanistic viewpoints, and at times, the philosophers of the Middle Ages even preferred Averroes’ commentary over Aristotle's actual meaning. This resulted in the survival of Aristotle’s Poetics through the Arabic literary tradition.

Popular culture


The Poetics — both the extant first book and the lost second book — figure prominently in Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco is an Italy medievalist, Semiotics, philosopher, Literary criticism and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory....
's novel The Name of the Rose
The Name of the Rose

The Name of the Rose, a novel by Umberto Eco, is a historical whodunnit ? a murder mystery set in an Italy monastery in the year 1327. It is an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory....
.

Primary sources


In Greek
  • from Hodoi elektronikai
  • (Oxford Classical Texts
    Oxford Classical Texts

    Oxford Classical Texts , or Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, is a series of books published by Oxford University Press. It contains texts of ancient Greek and Latin literature, such as Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid, in the original language with a critical apparatus....
    ) by Ingram Bywater
    Ingram Bywater

    Ingram Bywater was an England classical scholar.He was born in London. He was educated at University College School and King's College School, then at Queens College, Oxford....


In English translation
  • Thomas Twining
    Thomas Twining

    Thomas Twining was an England classical scholar.The son of Daniel Twining, tea merchant of London, he was originally intended for a commercial life, but his distaste for it and his fondness for study decided his father to send him to the university....
    , 1789
  • Samuel Henry Butcher
    Samuel Henry Butcher

    Samuel Henry Butcher, Member of Parliament Dublin born classical scholar and, in his final years, an English politician. His many publications included, in collaboration with Dr Andrew Lang, a prose translation of The Odyssey which appeared in 1879....
    , 1902:
  • Ingram Bywater
    Ingram Bywater

    Ingram Bywater was an England classical scholar.He was born in London. He was educated at University College School and King's College School, then at Queens College, Oxford....
    , 1909:
  • William Hamilton Fyfe
    William Hamilton Fyfe

    Sir William Hamilton Fyfe was an England and Canadian classics scholar, educator, and educational administrator. He served as the 10th principal of Queen's University, Ontario, from 1930 to 1936, and was the first layman to hold that position....
    , 1926:
  • L. J. Potts, 1953
  • G. M. A. Grube, 1958
  • Richard Janko, 1986
  • librivox.org


Other translations
  • In Japanese
    Japanese language

    IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
     by Tomonobu Imamichi


Secondary sources

  • F. L. Lucas
    F. L. Lucas

    Frank Laurence Lucas was an English literary critic, essayist, poet, novelist, and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.He is now best remembered for his scathing attacks on the poetry of T....
    : Tragedy - Serious Drama in Relation to Aristotle's “Poetics” (1957; useful introductory study; many reprints: Collier Books, N.Y. ISBN 0-389-20141-3, Chatto, London ISBN 0-7011-1635-8))
  • Belfiore, Elizabeth, S., Tragic Pleasures: Aristotle on Plot and Emotion, Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1992. ISBN 0691068992
  • Carlson, Marvin. 1993. Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey from the Greeks to the Present. Expanded ed. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801481546.
  • Ari Hiltunen, 2001, Aristotle in Hollywood, Intellect Books, ISBN 1-84150-060-7
  • Hardison, O.B., Jr. “Averroes.” Medieval Literary Criticism: Translations and Interpretations. New York: F. Ungar Pub. Co. 1987. 81-88.
  • Sampson, C. Michael, , The Classical Association of the Middle West and South (CAMWS), 2005.