Poetics (Aristotle)
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Aristotle's Poetics (Greek: Περὶ ποιητικῆς, c. 335 BCE) is the earliest-surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory. In it, Aristotle offers an account of what he calls "poetry" (a term which in Greek literally means "making" and in this context includes drama—comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play—as well as lyric poetry, epic poetry, and the dithyramb). He examines its "first principles" and identifies its genres and basic elements. His analysis of tragedy constitutes the core of the discussion. "Although Aristotle's Poetics is universally acknowledged in the Western critical tradition," Marvin Carlson explains, "almost every detail about his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions." The work was lost to the Western world and often misrepresented for a long time. It was available through the Middle Ages and early Renaissance only through a Latin translation of an Arabic version written by Averroes. Core termsContentAristotle's work on aesthetics consists of the Poetics and Rhetoric. The Poetics is specifically concerned with drama. At some point, Aristotle's original work was divided in two, each "book" written on a separate roll of papyrus. Only the first part–that which focuses on tragedy–survives. The lost second part addressed comedy. Scholars speculate that the Tractatus coislinianus summarises the contents of the lost second book. Aristotle distinguishes between the genres of "poetry" in three ways: Also "agents" in some translations. Aristotle differentiates between tragedy and comedy throughout the work by distinguishing between the nature of the human characters that populate either form. Aristotle finds that tragedy treats of serious, important, and virtuous people. Comedy, on the other hand, treats of people who are less virtuous, who are unimportant, undignified, laughable. In one of the more confusing parts of the work, Aristotle argues that comedy and tragedy might make use of the same matter and thematic elements, but approach them in a different way. Having examined briefly the field of "poetry" in general, Aristotle proceeds to his definition of tragedy: Tragedy consists of six parts which Aristotle enumerates in order of importance, beginning with the most essential and ending with the least: He offers the earliest-surviving explanation for the origins of tragedy and comedy: InfluencePoetics is considered to have been less influential in its time compared with what is generally understood to be its more famous contemporary, Rhetoric. This is probably because in Aristotle's time rhetoric and poetics were classified as sort of siblings in the pantheon of ideal things. Because of rhetoric's direct importance for law and politics, it evolved to become, to a large degree, distinct from poetics, in spite of both themas being classified under aesthetics in the Aristotelian system of metaphysics. In this sense, rhetoric and poetics are two sides of the same thing—the aesthetic dimension. In Aristotelian philosophy, this is regarded as one of the metaphysical aspects of things; in the Kantian view of the pure aesthetic, it is understood as something non-conceptual that frees the mind. The Arabic version of Aristotle’s Poetics that influenced the Middle Ages was translated from a Greek manuscript dated to sometime prior to the year 700. This manuscript was translated from Greek to Syriac and is independent of the currently-accepted 11th-century source designated Paris 1741. The 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. There are two different Arabic interpretations of Aristotle’s Poetics in commentaries by Abu Nasr al-Farabi and Averroes (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. Averroes' interpretation of the Poetics was accepted by the West because of its relevance to their humanistic viewpoints. Occasionally the philosophers of the Middle Ages even preferred Averroes’ commentary to Aristotle's stated sense. This resulted in the survival of Aristotle’s Poetics through the Arabic literary tradition. English translationsPopular cultureThe Poetics—both the extant first book and the lost second book—figure prominently in Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose. NotesSourcesExternal links
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