Aristotle's Poetics

by S H Butcher (Translator), Aristotle

Overview

A work of transcendent importance, both for the history of literary criticism and in its own right. --(Text refers to a previous edition)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781461069041
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	04/14/2011
Pages:	66
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.14(d)

About the Author

Other works by the renowned classical scholar, translator, and literary critic Francis Fergusson include The Idea of a Theater: A Study of Ten Plays, Sallies of the Mind: Essays, Trope and Allegory: Themes Common to Dante and Shakespeare, and Dante's Drama of the Mind: A Modern Reading of the Purgatorio.

Translator and scholar S. H. Butcher served as editor for the Dover Thift Edition of the Poetics, as well as for the Orationes, Volume 1 by Demosthenes. Butcher is also the author of Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art.

Table of Contents

Introduction to 1988 edition
Abbreviations
I. The Setting of the Poetics
II. Aristotle's Aesthetics 1: Art and its Pleasure
III. Aristotle's Aesthetics 2: Craft, Nature and Unity in Art
IV. Mimesis
V. Action and Character
VI. Tragedy and the Emotions
VII. Fallibility & Misfortune: The Securlarisation of the Tragic
VIII. The Chorus of Tragedy
IX. Epic, Comedy and Other Genres
X. Influence & Status: the Nachleben of the Poetics
App. 1 The Date of the Poetics
App. 2 The Poetics and Plato
App. 3 Drama in the Theatre: Aristotle on Spectacle (opsis)
App. 4 Aristotle on Language (lexis)
App. 5 Interpretations of katharsis
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

This useful book, an extended study of the Poetics , treats such subjects as Aristotle's general aesthetic views; mimesis; pity, fear, and katharsis; recognition, reversal, and hamartia; tragic misfortune; the nontragic genres; and the historical influence of the work. Aristotle emerges as holding a deeply cognitivist view of poetry and as rejecting the attempt to judge art primarily by external (e.g., moral, political) criteria; his call for the relative autonomy of art, however, neither commits him to an aestheticist view nor prevents him from attributing to art a significant moral dimension. Halliwell's attempts to keep Plato in close view and to keep the Poetics within the context of Aristotle's philosophy as a whole are illuminating. For academic collections. Richard Hogan, Philosophy Dept., Southeastern Massachusetts Univ., N. Dartmouth

Library Journal

Pivoting on the argument that at its heart lies a philosophical urge to work out a secularized understanding of Greek tragedy, Halliwell (Greek, U. of St. Andrews, Scotland) offers a sustained interpretation of the . He assumes no knowledge of Greek. The 1986 edition published by Gerald Duckworth and Company is here reprinted with a new introduction. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknew.com)

Booknews

A work which must become essential reading no only for all serious students of the Poetics, including those who, like [this] reviewer, have dabbled in it from time to time, but also for those (the great majority) who have prudenty fought shy of it altogether.
— Classical Review

B. R. Rees

A work which must become essential reading not only for all serious students of the Poetics . . . but also for those (the great majority) who have prudenty fought shy of it altogether.” —B. R. Rees, Classical Review

From the Publisher