Poetics

In his Poetics, perhaps the most influential work on art ever written, he makes it clear that art is a moral issue, since it deals with human character. “The objects of imitation…represent men either as better than in real life, or as worse, or as they are.”…

…much of the corpus of Aristotle), is testimony to the great esteem in which it was held.

…Rhetoric, and above all, the Poetics, had an immense effect on literary theory after the Renaissance. In the ancient world, Aristotelian doctrine was known mainly through the works of his successor Theophrastus (c. 372–288/287), now lost except for two books on plants and a famous collection of 30 Characters, sketches…

…by French classicists from Aristotle’s Poetics; they require a play to have a single action represented as occurring in a single place and within the course of a day. These principles were called, respectively, unity of action, unity of place, and unity of time.

Thus, Aristotle’s statement in the Poetics that dance is rhythmic movement whose purpose is “to represent men’s characters as well as what they do and suffer” refers to the central role that dance played in classical Greek theatre, where the chorus through its movements reenacted the themes of the drama…

…on a misunderstanding of Aristotle’s Poetics, in which the philosopher attempted to give a critical definition of the nature of tragedy. The new theory was first put into dramatic practice in Jean Mairet’s Sophonisbe (1634), a tragedy that enjoyed considerable success. Corneille, not directly involved in the call for regular…

…a literal interpretation of Aristotle’s Poetics, he argued that Nature was governed by reason and that it was the task of poets to imitate reason as it manifested itself in Nature. He also initiated a reform of the German theatre aimed on the one hand against the Baroque extravagance of…

…scholars focused particularly on the Poetics. In constructing his epic poem, Tasso was strongly influenced by Aristotle’s views regarding the philosophical dimension of poetry. Loosely paraphrasing Aristotle, he held (in his Apologia [1585]) that poetry, by incorporating both particulars and universals, is capable of seeking truth in its perfect wholeness.…

In the literary field, Aristotle’s Poetics, practically unknown until 1500, was now read and analyzed in both the Greek and Latin versions; its doctrines were compared and partly made to harmonize with the then-prevailing views of the ancient Roman poet Horace, and Aristotle’s view that art imitates nature prevailed for…

…discussed by Aristotle in the Poetics as an essential part of the plot of a tragedy, although anagnorisis occurs in comedy, epic, and, at a later date, the novel as well. Anagnorisis usually involves revelation of the true identity of persons previously unknown, as when a father recognizes a stranger…

…used by Aristotle in the Poetics to describe the effects of true tragedy on the spectator. The use is derived from the medical term katharsis (Greek: “purgation” or “purification”). Aristotle states that the purpose of tragedy is to arouse “terror and pity” and thereby effect the catharsis of these emotions.…

…the term casually in the Poetics in describing the tragic hero as a man of noble rank and nature whose misfortune is not brought about by villainy but by some “error of judgment” (hamartia). This imperfection later came to be interpreted as a moral flaw, such as Othello’s jealousy or…

…discussed by Aristotle in the Poetics as the shift of the tragic protagonist’s fortune from good to bad, which is essential to the plot of a tragedy. It is often an ironic twist, as in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex when a messenger brings Oedipus news about his parents that he thinks…

…is Aristotle’s remark in the Poetics that it should be clear without being “mean.” But subsequent generations of poets were more scrupulous in avoiding meanness than in cultivating clarity. Depending heavily on expressions used by previous poets, they evolved in time a language sprinkled with such archaic terms as eftsoons,…

Aristotle in his Poetics insisted that literature should reflect nature—that even highly idealized characters should possess recognizable human qualities—and that what was probable took precedence over what was merely possible.