{"history":[],"article":{"id":"55519741-4585-4137-890b-aae95a187a1d","title":"Poetics (Aristotle)","slug":"poetics-aristotle","content":":::summary\n:::\n\n# \n[Aristotle](https://bliptext.com/articles/aristotle)'s **Poetics** ( Peri poietikês; ; ) is the earliest surviving work of Greek [dramatic theory](https://bliptext.com/articles/dramatic-theory) and the first [extant](https://bliptext.com/articles/extant-literature) philosophical treatise to focus on [literary theory](https://bliptext.com/articles/literary-theory).\nIn this text, Aristotle offers an account of ποιητική, which refers to poetry, and more literally, \"the poetic art,\" deriving from the term for \"poet; author; maker,\" ποιητής.\nAristotle divides the art of poetry into verse [drama](https://bliptext.com/articles/drama) ([comedy](https://bliptext.com/articles/comedy-drama), [tragedy](https://bliptext.com/articles/tragedy), and the [satyr play](https://bliptext.com/articles/satyr-play)), [lyric poetry](https://bliptext.com/articles/lyric-poetry), and [epic](https://bliptext.com/articles/epic-poetry).\nThe genres all share the function of [mimesis](https://bliptext.com/articles/mimesis), or imitation of life, but differ in three ways that Aristotle describes:\nThe surviving book of Poetics is primarily concerned with drama; the analysis of [tragedy](https://bliptext.com/articles/tragedy) constitutes the core of the discussion.\nAlthough the text is universally acknowledged in the [Western](https://bliptext.com/articles/western-culture) critical tradition, \"almost every detail about [t]his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions.\"\nOf scholarly debates on the Poetics, four have been most prominent.\nThese include the meanings of [catharsis](https://bliptext.com/articles/catharsis) and [hamartia](https://bliptext.com/articles/hamartia), the [Classical unities](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-unities), and the question why Aristotle appears to [contradict](https://bliptext.com/articles/metabasis-paradox) himself between chapters 13 and 14.\n\n# Background\nAristotle's work on [aesthetics](https://bliptext.com/articles/aesthetics) consists of the Poetics, Politics (Bk VIII), and [Rhetoric](https://bliptext.com/articles/rhetoric-aristotle).\nThe Poetics was lost to the Western world for a long time.\nThe text was restored to the West in the [Middle Ages](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-ages) and early [Renaissance](https://bliptext.com/articles/renaissance) only through a Latin translation of an Arabic version written by [Averroes](https://bliptext.com/articles/averroes).\nThe accurate [Greek](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-greek)-[Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) translation made by [William of Moerbeke](https://bliptext.com/articles/william-of-moerbeke) in 1278 was virtually ignored.\nAt some point during antiquity, the original text of the Poetics was divided in two, each \"book\" written on a separate roll of [papyrus](https://bliptext.com/articles/papyrus).\nOnly the first part—that which focuses on [tragedy](https://bliptext.com/articles/tragedy) and epic (as a quasi-dramatic art, given its definition in Ch. 23)—survives.\nThe lost second part addressed [comedy](https://bliptext.com/articles/comedy-drama).\nSome scholars speculate that the [Tractatus coislinianus](https://bliptext.com/articles/tractatus-coislinianus) summarises the contents of the lost second book.\n\n# Overview\nThe table of contents page of the Poetics found in Modern Library's Basic Works of Aristotle (2001) identifies five basic parts within it.\n

Preliminary discourse on tragedy, epic poetry, and comedy, as the chief forms of imitative poetry.
Definition of a tragedy, and the rules for its construction.\nDefinition and analysis into qualitative parts.
Rules for the construction of a tragedy: Tragic pleasure, or [catharsis](https://bliptext.com/articles/catharsis) experienced by fear and pity should be produced in the spectator.\nThe characters must be four things: good, appropriate, realistic, and consistent.\n[Discovery](https://bliptext.com/articles/discovery-fiction) must occur within the plot.\nNarratives, stories, structures, and poetics overlap.\nIt is important for the poet to visualize all of the scenes when creating the plot.\nThe poet should incorporate complication and [dénouement](https://bliptext.com/articles/d-nouement) within the story, as well as combine all of the elements of [tragedy](https://bliptext.com/articles/tragedy).\nThe poet must express thought through the characters' words and actions, while paying close attention to [diction](https://bliptext.com/articles/diction) and how a character's spoken words express a specific idea.\nAristotle believed that all of these different elements had to be present in order for the poetry to be well-done.
Possible criticisms of an epic or tragedy, and the answers to them.
Tragedy as artistically superior to epic poetry: Tragedy has everything that the epic has, even the epic meter being admissible.\nThe reality of presentation is felt in the play as read, as well as in the play as acted.\nThe tragic imitation requires less time for the attainment of its end.\nIf it has more concentrated effect, it is more pleasurable than one with a large admixture of time to dilute it.\nThere is less unity in the imitation of the epic poets (plurality of actions) and this is proved by the fact that an epic poem can supply enough material for several tragedies.

\nAristotle also draws a famous distinction between the tragic mode of poetry and the type of history-writing practiced among the Greeks.\nWhereas history deals with things that took place in the past, tragedy concerns itself with what might occur, or could be imagined to happen.\nHistory deals with particulars, whose relation to one another is marked by contingency, accident, or chance.\nContrariwise, poetic narratives are determined objects, unified by a plot whose logic binds up the constituent elements by necessity and probability.\nIn this sense, he concluded, such poetry was more philosophical than history was in so far as it approximates to a knowledge of [universals](https://bliptext.com/articles/universal-metaphysics).\n\n# Synopsis\nAristotle distinguishes between the [genres](https://bliptext.com/articles/genre) of \"poetry\" in three ways:\nHaving examined briefly the field of \"poetry\" in general, Aristotle proceeds to his definition of tragedy:\nTragedy is a [representation](https://bliptext.com/articles/mimesis) of a serious, complete action which has magnitude, in embellished speech, with each of its elements [used] separately in the [various] parts [of the play] and [represented] by people acting and not by [narration](https://bliptext.com/articles/diegesis), accomplishing by means of pity and [terror](https://bliptext.com/articles/fear) the [catharsis](https://bliptext.com/articles/catharsis) of such emotions.\nBy \"embellished speech\", I mean that which has rhythm and melody, i.e. song.\nBy \"with its elements separately\", I mean that some [parts of it] are accomplished only by means of spoken verses, and others again by means of song.\nHe then identifies the \"parts\" of tragedy:\nHe offers the earliest-surviving explanation for the origins of tragedy and comedy:\nAnyway, arising from an [improvisatory](https://bliptext.com/articles/improvisation) beginning (both tragedy and comedy—tragedy from the leaders of the [dithyramb](https://bliptext.com/articles/dithyramb), and comedy from the leaders of the [phallic processions](https://bliptext.com/articles/phallic-processions) which even now continue as a custom in many of our cities)...\n\n# Influence\nThe Arabic version of Aristotle's Poetics that influenced the [Middle Ages](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-ages) was translated from a Greek manuscript dated to some time prior to the year 700.\nThis manuscript, translated from Greek to Syriac, is independent of the currently-accepted 11th-century source designated Paris 1741.\nThe [Syriac-language](https://bliptext.com/articles/syriac-language) 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.\nThe scholars who published significant commentaries on Aristotle's Poetics included [Avicenna](https://bliptext.com/articles/avicenna), [Al-Farabi](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-farabi), and [Averroes](https://bliptext.com/articles/averroes).\nMany of these interpretations sought to use Aristotelian theory to impose morality on the Arabic poetic tradition.\nIn particular, Averroes added a moral dimension to the Poetics by interpreting tragedy as the art of praise and comedy as the art of blame.\nAverroes' interpretation of the Poetics was accepted by the [West](https://bliptext.com/articles/western-culture), where it reflected the \"prevailing notions of poetry\" the 16th century.\n[Giorgio Valla](https://bliptext.com/articles/giorgio-valla)'s 1498 Latin translation of Aristotle's text (the first to be published) was included with the 1508 [Aldine](https://bliptext.com/articles/aldine-press) printing of the Greek original as part of an [anthology](https://bliptext.com/articles/anthology) of Rhetores graeci.\nBy the early decades of the sixteenth century, vernacular versions of Aristotle's Poetics appeared, culminating in [Lodovico Castelvetro](https://bliptext.com/articles/lodovico-castelvetro)'s Italian editions of 1570 and 1576.\nItalian culture produced the great Renaissance commentators on Aristotle's Poetics, and in the [baroque](https://bliptext.com/articles/baroque) period [Emanuele Tesauro](https://bliptext.com/articles/emanuele-tesauro), with his Cannocchiale aristotelico, re-presented to the world of post-[Galilean](https://bliptext.com/articles/galileo-galilei) [physics](https://bliptext.com/articles/physics) Aristotle's poetic theories as the sole key to approaching the [human sciences](https://bliptext.com/articles/human-science).\nRecent scholarship has challenged whether Aristotle focuses on literary theory per se (given that not one poem exists in the treatise) or whether he focuses instead on dramatic musical theory that only has language as one of the elements.\nThe lost second book of Aristotle's Poetics is a core plot element in [Umberto Eco](https://bliptext.com/articles/umberto-eco)'s novel [The Name of the Rose](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-name-of-the-rose).\n# [Arabic translation of the Poetics by Abū Bishr Mattā. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Poetique///Aristote///Arabe///2346.jpg]\n\n# Core terms\n\n# Editions – commentaries – translations\n\n# Sources","current_revision":null,"created_by":"kACnuQmH5k9Nr5VNVEpVeg7XpvUmMctD","created_at":"2025-01-25T19:27:16.538Z","updated_at":"2025-01-25T19:27:16.538Z","search_vector":"'aristotl':2 'poetic':1","search_content":" \n \n\n# \n[Aristotle](https://bliptext.com/articles/aristotle)'s **Poetics** ( Peri poietikês; ; ) is the earliest surviving work of Greek [dramatic theory](https://bliptext.com/articles/dramatic-theory) and the first [extant](https://bliptext.com/articles/extant-literature) philosophical treatise to focus on [literary theory](https://bliptext.com/articles/literary-theory).\nIn this text, Aristotle offers an account of ποιητική, which refers to poetry, and more literally, \"the poetic art,\" deriving from the term for \"poet; author; maker,\" ποιητής.\nAristotle divides the art of poetry into verse [drama](https://bliptext.com/articles/drama) ([comedy](https://bliptext.com/articles/comedy-drama), [tragedy](https://bliptext.com/articles/tragedy), and the [satyr play](https://bliptext.com/articles/satyr-play)), [lyric poetry](https://bliptext.com/articles/lyric-poetry), and [epic](https://bliptext.com/articles/epic-poetry).\nThe genres all share the function of [mimesis](https://bliptext.com/articles/mimesis), or imitation of life, but differ in three ways that Aristotle describes:\nThe surviving book of Poetics is primarily concerned with drama; the analysis of [tragedy](https://bliptext.com/articles/tragedy) constitutes the core of the discussion.\nAlthough the text is universally acknowledged in the [Western](https://bliptext.com/articles/western-culture) critical tradition, \"almost every detail about [t]his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions.\"\nOf scholarly debates on the Poetics, four have been most prominent.\nThese include the meanings of [catharsis](https://bliptext.com/articles/catharsis) and [hamartia](https://bliptext.com/articles/hamartia), the [Classical unities](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-unities), and the question why Aristotle appears to [contradict](https://bliptext.com/articles/metabasis-paradox) himself between chapters 13 and 14.\n\n# Background\nAristotle's work on [aesthetics](https://bliptext.com/articles/aesthetics) consists of the Poetics, Politics (Bk VIII), and [Rhetoric](https://bliptext.com/articles/rhetoric-aristotle).\nThe Poetics was lost to the Western world for a long time.\nThe text was restored to the West in the [Middle Ages](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-ages) and early [Renaissance](https://bliptext.com/articles/renaissance) only through a Latin translation of an Arabic version written by [Averroes](https://bliptext.com/articles/averroes).\nThe accurate [Greek](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-greek)-[Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) translation made by [William of Moerbeke](https://bliptext.com/articles/william-of-moerbeke) in 1278 was virtually ignored.\nAt some point during antiquity, the original text of the Poetics was divided in two, each \"book\" written on a separate roll of [papyrus](https://bliptext.com/articles/papyrus).\nOnly the first part—that which focuses on [tragedy](https://bliptext.com/articles/tragedy) and epic (as a quasi-dramatic art, given its definition in Ch. 23)—survives.\nThe lost second part addressed [comedy](https://bliptext.com/articles/comedy-drama).\nSome scholars speculate that the [Tractatus coislinianus](https://bliptext.com/articles/tractatus-coislinianus) summarises the contents of the lost second book.\n\n# Overview\nThe table of contents page of the Poetics found in Modern Library's Basic Works of Aristotle (2001) identifies five basic parts within it.\n \n Preliminary discourse on tragedy, epic poetry, and comedy, as the chief forms of imitative poetry. \n Definition of a tragedy, and the rules for its construction.\nDefinition and analysis into qualitative parts. \n Rules for the construction of a tragedy: Tragic pleasure, or [catharsis](https://bliptext.com/articles/catharsis) experienced by fear and pity should be produced in the spectator.\nThe characters must be four things: good, appropriate, realistic, and consistent.\n[Discovery](https://bliptext.com/articles/discovery-fiction) must occur within the plot.\nNarratives, stories, structures, and poetics overlap.\nIt is important for the poet to visualize all of the scenes when creating the plot.\nThe poet should incorporate complication and [dénouement](https://bliptext.com/articles/d-nouement) within the story, as well as combine all of the elements of [tragedy](https://bliptext.com/articles/tragedy).\nThe poet must express thought through the characters' words and actions, while paying close attention to [diction](https://bliptext.com/articles/diction) and how a character's spoken words express a specific idea.\nAristotle believed that all of these different elements had to be present in order for the poetry to be well-done. \n Possible criticisms of an epic or tragedy, and the answers to them. \n Tragedy as artistically superior to epic poetry: Tragedy has everything that the epic has, even the epic meter being admissible.\nThe reality of presentation is felt in the play as read, as well as in the play as acted.\nThe tragic imitation requires less time for the attainment of its end.\nIf it has more concentrated effect, it is more pleasurable than one with a large admixture of time to dilute it.\nThere is less unity in the imitation of the epic poets (plurality of actions) and this is proved by the fact that an epic poem can supply enough material for several tragedies. \n \nAristotle also draws a famous distinction between the tragic mode of poetry and the type of history-writing practiced among the Greeks.\nWhereas history deals with things that took place in the past, tragedy concerns itself with what might occur, or could be imagined to happen.\nHistory deals with particulars, whose relation to one another is marked by contingency, accident, or chance.\nContrariwise, poetic narratives are determined objects, unified by a plot whose logic binds up the constituent elements by necessity and probability.\nIn this sense, he concluded, such poetry was more philosophical than history was in so far as it approximates to a knowledge of [universals](https://bliptext.com/articles/universal-metaphysics).\n\n# Synopsis\nAristotle distinguishes between the [genres](https://bliptext.com/articles/genre) of \"poetry\" in three ways:\nHaving examined briefly the field of \"poetry\" in general, Aristotle proceeds to his definition of tragedy:\nTragedy is a [representation](https://bliptext.com/articles/mimesis) of a serious, complete action which has magnitude, in embellished speech, with each of its elements [used] separately in the [various] parts [of the play] and [represented] by people acting and not by [narration](https://bliptext.com/articles/diegesis), accomplishing by means of pity and [terror](https://bliptext.com/articles/fear) the [catharsis](https://bliptext.com/articles/catharsis) of such emotions.\nBy \"embellished speech\", I mean that which has rhythm and melody, i.e. song.\nBy \"with its elements separately\", I mean that some [parts of it] are accomplished only by means of spoken verses, and others again by means of song.\nHe then identifies the \"parts\" of tragedy:\nHe offers the earliest-surviving explanation for the origins of tragedy and comedy:\nAnyway, arising from an [improvisatory](https://bliptext.com/articles/improvisation) beginning (both tragedy and comedy—tragedy from the leaders of the [dithyramb](https://bliptext.com/articles/dithyramb), and comedy from the leaders of the [phallic processions](https://bliptext.com/articles/phallic-processions) which even now continue as a custom in many of our cities)...\n\n# Influence\nThe Arabic version of Aristotle's Poetics that influenced the [Middle Ages](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-ages) was translated from a Greek manuscript dated to some time prior to the year 700.\nThis manuscript, translated from Greek to Syriac, is independent of the currently-accepted 11th-century source designated Paris 1741.\nThe [Syriac-language](https://bliptext.com/articles/syriac-language) 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.\nThe scholars who published significant commentaries on Aristotle's Poetics included [Avicenna](https://bliptext.com/articles/avicenna), [Al-Farabi](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-farabi), and [Averroes](https://bliptext.com/articles/averroes).\nMany of these interpretations sought to use Aristotelian theory to impose morality on the Arabic poetic tradition.\nIn particular, Averroes added a moral dimension to the Poetics by interpreting tragedy as the art of praise and comedy as the art of blame.\nAverroes' interpretation of the Poetics was accepted by the [West](https://bliptext.com/articles/western-culture), where it reflected the \"prevailing notions of poetry\" the 16th century.\n[Giorgio Valla](https://bliptext.com/articles/giorgio-valla)'s 1498 Latin translation of Aristotle's text (the first to be published) was included with the 1508 [Aldine](https://bliptext.com/articles/aldine-press) printing of the Greek original as part of an [anthology](https://bliptext.com/articles/anthology) of Rhetores graeci.\nBy the early decades of the sixteenth century, vernacular versions of Aristotle's Poetics appeared, culminating in [Lodovico Castelvetro](https://bliptext.com/articles/lodovico-castelvetro)'s Italian editions of 1570 and 1576.\nItalian culture produced the great Renaissance commentators on Aristotle's Poetics, and in the [baroque](https://bliptext.com/articles/baroque) period [Emanuele Tesauro](https://bliptext.com/articles/emanuele-tesauro), with his Cannocchiale aristotelico, re-presented to the world of post-[Galilean](https://bliptext.com/articles/galileo-galilei) [physics](https://bliptext.com/articles/physics) Aristotle's poetic theories as the sole key to approaching the [human sciences](https://bliptext.com/articles/human-science).\nRecent scholarship has challenged whether Aristotle focuses on literary theory per se (given that not one poem exists in the treatise) or whether he focuses instead on dramatic musical theory that only has language as one of the elements.\nThe lost second book of Aristotle's Poetics is a core plot element in [Umberto Eco](https://bliptext.com/articles/umberto-eco)'s novel [The Name of the Rose](https://bliptext.com/articles/the-name-of-the-rose).\n# [Arabic translation of the Poetics by Abū Bishr Mattā. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Poetique///Aristote///Arabe///2346.jpg]\n\n# Core terms\n\n# Editions – commentaries – translations\n\n# Sources","revisionCount":0},"hasMore":false,"nextCursor":null}