Poetics
(Aristotle)
Preserved in the form of Students' Lecture notes, Poetics by Aristotle is a short piece on philosophy and literary theory that had a major influence upon the Western Aesthetic philosophy. The work can be taken up as an answe or response of the student Aristotle to the comments of his teacher and guide Plato who in his work 'The Republic' considered poetry to be mere representation of appearances and thus being misleading and untrue.
Aristotle took an individual stand on the whole concept of poetry and art that was quite opposed to his teacher Plato. In Poetics, Aristotle tries to justify and explain the social function and utility of art and did not think that banishing the pets from society was the right thing. The 26 chapters/books in the book take up different arguments presented by Aristotle regarding art/literature/poetry.
Criticism, according to Aristotle, should not be considered just a simple application of unexamined aesthetic principles, but has to pay careful attention to the overall function of any feature of a work of art in its context within the work. Furthermore, it should never lose sight of the function of the work of art in its social context. the different terms that Aristotle talks about in the Poetics include catharsis, hamartia, comedy, tragedy, unities, epic, drama, narrative, genre, poetry, pathos, pity, fear, peripeteia, song, diction, comedy, complication, denouement, character, anagnorisis, hexameter, mimesis, medium, etc.
One difficult yet very interesting concept introduced in the book is that of 'catharsis' that has come to be used as a very commonly in our daily lives also. Defined as purging and cleansing of emotions of fear and pity after watching a tragedy, catharsis is a concept that is the topic of discussion and debate among scholars even today as it is actually understood in the Poetics.
Resumos Relacionados
- Poetics
- La Noción De Mímesis En Aristóteles (the Notion Of Mimesis In Aristotle)
- La Noción De Mímesis En Aristóteles (the Notion Of Mimesis In Aristotle)
- Nichomachean Ethics
- Apology For Poetry
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