Poetics (Aristotle)
Aristotle's Poetics (Greek: Ποιητικός, c. 335 BC)[Dukore (1974, 31).] aims to give an account of what he calls 'poetry' (covering the lyric, the epos, and the drama). Aristotle attempts to explain 'poetry' through 'first principles' and by discerning its different genres and component elements. His analysis of tragedy constitutes the core of his discussion.[Poetics: 1447a13] Aristotle's Poetics is universally acknowledged in Western critical tradition.
Core terms
 Mimesis or 'imitation', 'representation'
Catharsis or, variously, 'purgation', 'purification', 'clarification'
Peripeteia or 'reversal'
Anagnorisis or 'recognition', 'identification'
Hamartia or 'miscalculation' (understood in Romanticism as 'tragic flaw')
Mythos or 'plot'
Ethos or 'character'
Dianoia or 'thought', 'theme'
Lexis or 'diction', 'speech'
Melos or 'melody'
Opsis or 'spectacle'
Content
Aristotle divided poetry into three genres: Tragedy, Comedy, and Epic poetry.
Being all the modes of imitation of actions and life, of happiness and misery, the poetic arts are distinguished in three ways: differences in the means, the objects and the modes of their imitations. The means cover language, rhythm, and harmony, used separately or in combination. The objects refer to actions, virtual or vicious, and the agents, good or bad. Tragedy is defined asthe imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself. As a complete whole in itself having beginning, middle, and end, every dramatic play includes six parts: Plot (fable)(a combination of dramatic events), Characters (the moral purpose of the agents), Diction (the composition of the verses), Thought (the arts of Politics and Rhetoric), Melody, and Spectacle. The key elements of the Plot are Peripeteia (the changes of states of the things to the opposite, by the probable or necessary sequence of events), Discoveries (the changes from ignorance to knowledge) and Suffering (an action of a destructive kind). The best form of Tragedy is when the Plot is complex, imitating actions arousing horror, fear and pity, and when the hero's fortune changes from happiness to misery because of some tragic error on his own part. The deed of horror is to be perpetrated within the family, by brother on brother, by son on father, by mother on son, or son on father or mother. It can be done consciously and knowingly (Medea), unknowingly (Oedipus), or unknowingly but with timely discovery. The characters (personages) must be good, appropriate, real, consistent, or consistently inconsistent. The objections of the critics against the Plot or characters of generally five kinds: impossible, improbable, corrupting, contradictory, technically incorrect. The effect of tragic pleasure or poetic effect is more powerful with Tragedy than with the Epic.
Poetics focuses mainly on tragedy, while a second work by Aristotle focusing on comedy has been lost. It has been speculated that the Tractatus coislinianus 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", still common in many towns at the time of Aristotle.[Poetics, 1449a-b][The origins of comedy][Mastromarco, Giuseppe: (1994) Introduzione a Aristofane (Sesta edizione: Roma-Bari 2004). ISBN 8842044482 p. 3.]
The surviving text of Poetics is most likely not the entire text. The existing text was most likely transcribed by one of his students. Evidence suggests the existence of a more complete work. Many of Aristotle's texts were transcribed by his students. The clearest example of this is Nicomachean Ethics which is named after Nicomachus who is credited with editing the text.[Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics] However, it is also possible that the name of the "Nicomachean Ethics" derives from Aristotle's father, Nicomachus, whom he credits for much of his early understanding of ethics.
The centerpiece of Aristotle's surviving work is his examination of tragedy:
: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 of these emotions.[From Chapter 6 of Poetics:1449b24-29, SH Butcher transl.]
This work combined with the Rhetoric make up Aristotle's works on aesthetics.
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 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 transmitted 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.[Hardison, 81.]
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.
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 existent first book and the lost second book -- figure prominently in Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose.
In English translation
Thomas Twining, 1789
Samuel Henry Butcher, 1902: full text
Ingram Bywater, 1909: full text
William Hamilton Fyfe, 1926: full text
L. J. Potts, 1953
G. M. A. Grube, 1958
Richard Janko, 1986
librivox.org audio recording
Other translations
Seven parallel translations of Poetics: Russian, English, French
In Japanese by Tomonobu Imamichi
Secondary sources
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.
Dukore, Bernard F. 1974. Dramatic Theory and Criticism: Greeks to Grotowski. Florence, KY: Heinle & Heinle. ISBN 0030911524.
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, Plot and Form in Aristotle's Poetics, The Classical Association of the Middle West and South (CAMWS), 2005.
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