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.

    Aristotle on the Art of Poetry
    Aristotle on the Art of Poetry
    Aristotle on the Art of Poetry
    Ebook79 pages1 hour

    Aristotle on the Art of Poetry

    By Aristotle

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateJul 31, 2015
    ISBN9781473376823
    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 Aristotle on the Art of Poetry

    Related ebooks

    Literary Criticism For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      It’s Time To Act!

      Mar 21, 2020

      It’s Time To Act!
      4 min read

    • Article

      What Makes Keanu Reeves So Great? 2 Chicago Writers Reflect In A New Essay Collection

      Oct 30, 2019

      Keanu Reeves. The name evokes visions of a rain-soaked Johnny Utah from "Point Break" or a very bronzed Prince Siddhartha in "Little Buddha" or the cancerous and weary John Constantine in the 2005 eponymously named film where hell and heaven is a day

      4 min read

    • Article

      Theatre Props and Civic Identity in Athens, 458-405 BC

      Jan 23, 2023

      ISBN: 978-1350186477 Bloomsbury (2020) - £28.99 www.bloomsbury.com Modern society is all too aware of the potential that the arts have for exploring contemporary identities and politics. Comedians have always been pointing to the contradictions in pe

      3 min read

    • Article

      W.G. Sebald and the Malthusian Tragic

      Mar 28, 2018

      In 1798, an unknown curate named Robert Thomas Malthus published the essay that would give his name to a new breed of anxiety. He argued that the growth rate of the population would always exceed the growth rate of the food supply, inevitably reducin

      14 min read

    • Article

      Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency

      Jul 14, 2017

      I read non-fiction books that I thought might indirectly tell me something about fiction, even though they were really about something else. The post Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency appeared first on The Millions.

      5 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

      Book Reviews

      Dec 14, 2021

      TWELVE CAESARS: Images of power from the ancient world to the modern By Mary Beard ISBN: 978-0691222363 Princeton University Press (2021) – $35.00 www.press.princeton.edu The Caesars of Rome continue to beguile us. What is perplexing is why the first

      5 min read

    • Article

      Ambiguities Of The Second Person In English Language Fiction And Poetry

      Mar 1, 2024

      Let’s start with something that really happened. I was at a production of Bertold Brecht’s A Man’s a Man at a small theater in the East Village. During the first act, one of the actors ran off stage, followed by screaming, followed by a voice over th

      38 min read

    • Article

      The Cult Of The Imperfect

      Oct 28, 2019

      The Cult Of The Imperfect
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Greeks Aren’t Done with Us: Simon Critchley on Tragedy

      Nov 8, 2019

      “Tragedy is democracy turning itself into a spectacle,” and anyone with Twitter will concur with that observation of Critchley’s. The post The Greeks Aren’t Done with Us: Simon Critchley on Tragedy appeared first on The Millions.

      15 min read

    • Article

      The Forgotten History of the Chapter

      Nov 27, 2023

      The chapter possesses the trick of vanishing while in the act of serving its various purposes. The post The Forgotten History of the Chapter appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      Memoirs of an Ass: Part 2

      Mar 14, 2018

      Memoirs of an Ass: Part 2
      8 min read

    • Article

      Beyond the Narrative Arc

      Mar 27, 2019

      Beyond the Narrative Arc
      9 min read

    • Article

      In The Middle Of Even This: Poetry

      Jan 1, 2020

      To be brought from the bright schoolyard into the house:to stand by her bed like an animal stunned in the pen:against the grid of the quilt, her hand seemsstitched to the cuff of its sleeve—although he wantsmost urgently the hand to stroke his head,a

      7 min read

    • Article

      Classical Corner

      Mar 24, 2022

      Classical Corner
      7 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Nov 21, 2021

      by Bryan Walpert Mākaro Press — $35 It needs to be made clear that this is a science fiction novel, specifically of the time travel variety. It takes place in three alternating narrative streams, one of which is told in reverse, so that the couple wh

      7 min read

    • Article

      Subversive Scribes And Killer Rabbits

      Aug 6, 2020

      Marginalia was used to both praise God and subvert the natural order The format most commonly associated with the term ‘marginalia’ is, perhaps, the manuscript illumination. Illumination, from the Latin ‘illuminare’ (meaning to ‘enlighten’ or ‘illumi

      5 min read

    • Article

      Shaking off Late-Summer Hebetude

      Sep 7, 2017

      I’m not normally much of a napper. But something about these late-summer Sunday afternoons has made it seem more appealing than usual to stretch out for a few minutes – just a few, really – on the living room sofa. I may not even fall asleep. Except

      2 min read

    • Article

      DeLillo, Lethem, and the Seductive Sentence

      Apr 11, 2018

      DeLillo is so famously and distinctively a writer who appeals to sentence-lovers, with all their blindnesses, hubristic ideals, and narrow-minded cerebrations. The post DeLillo, Lethem, and the Seductive Sentence appeared first on The Millions.

      10 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

      Chronicling Life’s White Machine

      Jul 31, 2017

      It is not hard to mentally recast writers as social media types: Knausgaard, the maximalist oversharer; Lerner, the pomo ironic; Cusk, the reticent philosopher; Heti, the more traditional diarist.   The post Chronicling Life’s White Machine appeared

      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Aristotle on the Art of Poetry

    4/5

    494 ratings14 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 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!
    • 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.
    • 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

    Aristotle on the Art of Poetry - Aristotle

    ON THE ART OF POETRY

    By

    ARISTOTLE

    Translated By Ingram Bywater

    With A Preface By Gilbert Murray

    Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

    This book is copyright and may not be

    reproduced or copied in any way without

    the express permission of the publisher in writing

    British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

    A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

    Contents

    PREFACE

    1

    2

    3

    4

    5

    6

    7

    8

    9

    10

    11

    12

    13

    14

    15

    16

    17

    18

    19

    20

    21

    22

    23

    24

    25

    26

    PREFACE

    In the tenth book of the Republic, when Plato has completed his final burning denunciation of Poetry, the false Siren, the imitator of things which themselves are shadows, the ally of all that is low and weak in the soul against that which is high and strong, who makes us feed the things we ought to starve and serve the things we ought to rule, he ends with a touch of compunction: ‘We will give her champions, not poets themselves but poet-lovers, an opportunity to make her defence in plain prose and show that she is not only sweet—as we well know—but also helpful to society and the life of man, and we will listen in a kindly spirit. For we shall be gainers, I take it, if this can be proved.’ Aristotle certainly knew the passage, and it looks as if his treatise on poetry was an answer to Plato’s challenge.

    Few of the great works of ancient Greek literature are easy reading. They nearly all need study and comment, and at times help from a good teacher, before they yield up their secret. And the Poetics cannot be accounted an exception. For one thing the treatise is fragmentary. It originally consisted of two books, one dealing with Tragedy and Epic, the other with Comedy and other subjects. We possess only the first. For another, even the book we have seems to be unrevised and unfinished. The style, though luminous, vivid, and in its broader division systematic, is not that of a book intended for publication. Like most of Aristotle’s extant writing, it suggests the MS. of an experienced lecturer, full of jottings and adscripts, with occasional phrases written carefully out, but never revised as a whole for the general reader. Even to accomplished scholars the meaning is often obscure, as may be seen by a comparison of the three editions recently published in England, all the work of savants of the first eminence, (1) or, still more strikingly, by a study of the long series of misunderstandings and overstatements and corrections which form the history of the Poetics since the Renaissance.

    (1) Prof. Butcher, 1895 and 1898; Prof. Bywater, 1909; and Prof. Margoliouth, 1911.

    But it is of another cause of misunderstanding that I wish principally to speak in this preface. The great edition from which the present translation is taken was the fruit of prolonged study by one of the greatest Aristotelians of the nineteenth century, and is itself a classic among works of scholarship. In the hands of a student who knows even a little Greek, the translation, backed by the commentary, may lead deep into the mind of Aristotle. But when the translation is used, as it doubtless will be, by readers who are quite without the clue provided by a knowledge of the general habits of the Greek language, there must arise a number of new difficulties or misconceptions.

    To understand a great foreign book by means of a translation is possible enough where the two languages concerned operate with a common stock of ideas, and belong to the same period of civilization. But between ancient Greece and modern England there yawn immense gulfs of human history; the establishment and the partial failure of a common European religion, the barbarian invasions, the feudal system, the regrouping of modern Europe, the age of mechanical invention, and the industrial revolution. In an average page of French or German philosophy nearly all the nouns can be translated directly into exact equivalents in English; but in Greek that is not so. Scarcely one in ten of the nouns on the first few pages of the Poetics has an exact English equivalent. Every proposition has to be reduced to its lowest terms of thought and then re-built. This is a difficulty which no translation can quite deal with; it must be left to a teacher who knows Greek. And there is a kindred difficulty which flows from it. Where words can be translated into equivalent words, the style of an original can be closely followed; but no translation which aims at being written in normal English can reproduce the style of Aristotle. I have sometimes played with the idea that a ruthlessly literal translation, helped out by bold punctuation, might be the best. For instance, premising that the words poesis, poetes mean originally ‘making’ and ‘maker’, one might translate the first paragraph of the Poetics thus:—

    MAKING: kinds of making: function of each, and how the Myths ought to be put together if the Making is to go right.

    Number of parts: nature of parts: rest of same inquiry.

    Begin in order of nature from first principles.

    Epos-making, tragedy-making (also comedy), dithyramb-making (and most fluting and harping), taken as a whole, are really not Makings but Imitations. They differ in three points; they imitate (a) different objects, (b) by different means, (c) differently (i.e. different manner).

    Some artists imitate (i.e. depict) by shapes and colours. (Obs. sometimes by art, sometimes by habit.) Some by voice. Similarly the above arts all imitate by rhythm, language,

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1