Poetics (English)

by Aristotle

Publisher:

Perseus Digital Library

, 1932

Overview

Contents

Top Highlights

“The plot then is the first principle and as it were the soul of tragedy: character comes second.” (source)

“It is just in this respect that tragedy differs from comedy. The latter sets out to represent people as worse than they are to-day, the former as better.” (source)

“The real difference is this, that one tells what happened and the other what might happen. For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.” (source)

“Tragedy is, then, a representation of an action²⁹ that is heroic and complete and of a certain magnitude—by means of language enriched with all kinds of ornament, each used separately in the different parts of the play: it represents men in action and does not use narrative, and through pity and fear it effects relief to these and similar emotions.” (source)

“Comedy, as we have said, is a representation of inferior people, not indeed in the full sense of the word bad, but the laughable is a species of the base or ugly.²³ It consists in some blunder or ugliness that does not cause pain or disaster, an obvious example being the comic mask which is ugly and distorted but not painful.” (source)

Product Details

• Title: Poetics (English)
• Author: Aristotle
• Publisher: Perseus Digital Library
• Print Publication Date: 1932
• Logos Release Date: 2011
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subject: Classics › English--History
• Resource ID: LLS:ARISTOTPOETENG
• Resource Type: text.monograph.ancient-manuscript.translation
• Metadata Last Updated: 2021-03-03T20:23:37Z

About Aristotle

Aristotle (384–322 BC) was born in the Greek colony of Stagirus, on the coast of Thrace. When he was 17, Aristotle went to Athens, where he studied under Plato at the Academy for 20 years. Following the death of Plato, and due to Aristotle’s divergence from platonic ideas, Aristotle left the Academy. He was later hired by Philip of Macedonia as a tutor for his son, Alexander (who would grow up to become Alexander the Great). After tutoring Alexander for five years, Aristotle returned to Athens and founded the Lyceum as a rival to Plato’s Academy. Because he was in the practice of walking while he taught, his followers became known as peripatetics, a Greek word meaning “to walk about.”

Known as the father of logic, Aristotle was the first philosopher to develop a system of reasoning. He was also the first to classify human knowledge into specific disciplines (e.g. mathematics, biology, etc.). He is most famous known for rejecting the platonic theory of forms, setting up a dichotomy that has dominated philosophy to this day.