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Aristotle's Poetics (Greek: Περὶ ποιητικῆς Peri poietikês; Latin: De Poetica; c. 335 BCE) is the earliest surviving work of Greek dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory.: ix  In this text Aristotle offers an account of ποιητική, which refers to poetry and more literally "the poetic art," deriving from the term for "poet; author; maker," ποιητής. Aristotle divides the art of poetry into verse drama (comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play), lyric poetry, and epic. The genres all share the function of mimesis, or imitation of life, but differ in three ways that Aristotle describes: Differences in music rhythm, harmony, meter, and melody. Difference of goodness in the characters. Difference in how the narrative is presented: telling a story or acting it out. The surviving book of Poetics is primarily concerned with drama; the analysis of tragedy constitutes the core of the discussion. Although the text is universally acknowledged in the Western critical tradition, "almost every detail about [t]his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions." Of scholarly debates on the Poetics, four have been most prominent. These include the meanings of catharsis and hamartia, the Classical unities, and the question why Aristotle appears to contradict himself between chapters 13 and 14. Background Aristotle's work on aesthetics consists of the Poetics, Politics (Bk VIII), and Rhetoric. The Poetics was lost to the Western world for a long time. The text was restored to the West in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance only through a Latin translation of an Arabic version written by Averroes. The accurate Greek-Latin translation made by William of Moerbeke in 1278 was virtually ignored. At some point during antiquity, the original text of the Poetics was divided in two, each "book" written on a separate roll of papyrus.: xx  Only the first part—that which focuses on tragedy and epic (as a quasi-dramatic art, given its definition in Ch. 23)—survives. The lost second part addressed comedy.: xx  Some scholars speculate that the Tractatus coislinianus summarises the contents of the lost second book.: xxi  Overview The table of contents page of the Poetics found in Modern Library's Basic Works of Aristotle (2001) identifies five basic parts within it. Preliminary discourse on tragedy, epic poetry, and comedy, as the chief forms of imitative poetry. Definition of a tragedy, and the rules for its construction. Definition and analysis into qualitative parts. Rules for the construction of a tragedy: Tragic pleasure, or catharsis experienced by fear and pity should be produced in the spectator. The characters must be four things: good, appropriate, realistic, and consistent. Discovery must occur within the plot. Narratives, stories, structures, and poetics overlap. It is important for the poet to visualize all of the scenes when creating the plot. The poet should incorporate complication and dénouement within the story, as well as combine all of the elements of tragedy. The poet must express thought through the characters' words and actions, while paying close attention to diction and how a character's spoken words express a specific idea. Aristotle believed that all of these different elements had to be present in order for the poetry to be well-done. Possible criticisms of an epic or tragedy, and the answers to them. Tragedy as artistically superior to epic poetry: Tragedy has everything that the epic has, even the epic meter being admissible. The reality of presentation is felt in the play as read, as well as in the play as acted. The tragic imitation requires less time for the attainment of its end. If it has more concentrated effect, it is more pleasurable than one with a large admixture of time to dilute it. There is less unity in the imitation of the epic poets (plurality of actions) and this is proved by the fact that an epic poem can supply enough material for several tragedies. Aristotle also draws a famous distinction between the tragic mode of poetry and the type of history-writing practiced among the Greeks. Whereas history deals with things that took place in the past, tragedy concerns itself with what might occur, or could be imagined to happen. History deals with particulars, whose relation to one another is marked by contingency, accident, or chance. Contrariwise, poetic narratives are determined objects, unified by a plot whose logic binds up the constituent elements by necessity and probability. In this sense, he concluded, such poetry was more philosophical than history was in so far as it approximates to a knowledge of universals. Synopsis Aristotle distinguishes between the genres of "poetry" in three ways: Matter language, rhythm, and melody, for Aristotle, make up the matter of poetic creation. Where the epic poem makes use of language alone, the playing of the lyre involves rhythm and melody. Some poetic forms include a blending of all materials; for example, Greek tragic drama included a singing chorus, and so music and language were all part of the performance. These points also convey the standard view. Recent work, though, argues that translating rhuthmos here as "rhythm" is absurd: melody already has its own inherent musical rhythm, and the Greek can mean what Plato says it means in Laws II, 665a: "(the name of) ordered body movement," or dance. This correctly conveys what dramatic musical creation, the topic of the Poetics, in ancient Greece had: music, dance, and language. Also, the musical instrument cited in Ch. 1 is not the lyre but the kithara, which was played in the drama while the kithara-player was dancing (in the chorus), even if that meant just walking in an appropriate way. Moreover, epic might have had only literary exponents, but as Plato's Ion and Aristotle's Ch. 26 of the Poetics help prove, for Plato and Aristotle at least some epic rhapsodes used all three means of mimesis: language, dance (as pantomimic gesture), and music (if only by chanting the words). Subjects (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 deals with serious, important, and virtuous people. Comedy, on the other hand, treats of less virtuous people and focuses on human "weaknesses and foibles". Aristotle introduces here the influential tripartite division of characters: superior (βελτίονας) to the audience, inferior (χείρονας), or at the same level (τοιούτους). Method One may imitate the agents through use of a narrator throughout, or only occasionally (using direct speech in parts and a narrator in parts, as Homer does), or only through direct speech (without a narrator), using actors to speak the lines directly. This latter is the method of tragedy (and comedy): without use of any narrator. Having examined briefly the field of "poetry" in general.... Discover the Aristotle Philip Freeman popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Aristotle Philip Freeman books.