Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Early Greek views of poets and poetry
- 2 Language and meaning in archaic and classical Greece
- 3 Plato and poetry
- 4 Aristotle's poetics
- 5 The evolution of a theory of artistic prose
- 6 Hellenistic literary and philosophical scholarship
- 7 The growth of literature and criticism at Rome
- 8 Augustan Critics
- 9 Latin Criticism of the Early Empire
- 10 Greek Criticism of the Empire
- 11 Christianity and Criticism
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
4 - Aristotle's poetics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
Edited by
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Early Greek views of poets and poetry
- 2 Language and meaning in archaic and classical Greece
- 3 Plato and poetry
- 4 Aristotle's poetics
- 5 The evolution of a theory of artistic prose
- 6 Hellenistic literary and philosophical scholarship
- 7 The growth of literature and criticism at Rome
- 8 Augustan Critics
- 9 Latin Criticism of the Early Empire
- 10 Greek Criticism of the Empire
- 11 Christianity and Criticism
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
When, towards the end of the first century after Christ, the rhetorician Dio of Prusa called Aristotle the figure ‘from whom they say that criticism [kritike] and the study of language [Grammatikē] took their origin’ (53.1), it was not the Poetics which he, or those whose judgement he was citing, had in mind. Dio mentions in this context the ‘many dialogues’ in which Aristotle had discussed and praised the poems of Homer, and the phrase indicates that it was the work On Poets, among others, to which he was referring. The three books of On Poets, and the six or more books of Homeric Problems (presumably not in dialogue form), were in fact the two chief works in which Aristotle's ideas on poetry were disseminated in the ancient critical tradition; while the Poetics, originally produced for use within the philosophical school, never became at all readily available or widely known. Our own view of Aristotle the literary critic is therefore bound to differ substantially from that of antiquity; and it is the more inward voice of the philosophical theorist of poetry which the Poetics, if incompletely, allows us to hear. But it is a useful first step in a fresh approach to the surviving text to consider briefly what can still be discerned of its relation to the lost works on poetry which Aristotle intended for a more public audience.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism , pp. 149 - 183Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990
References
, Accent and Rhythm: Prosodic Features of Latin and Greek: A Study in Theory and Reconstruction (Cambridge, 1973).Google Scholar
, Ethos and Education in Greek Music: The Evidence of Poetry and Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., 1966).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Plato on the triviality of literature’, in and (eds.), Plato on Beauty (see below)
, Aristotle on Political Reasoning: A Commentary on the Rhetoric (DeKalb, Illinois, 1981).Google Scholar
, Comoedia: Die Entwicklung der Komodiendiskussion von Aristotles bis Ben Jonson (Frankfurt, 1982).Google Scholar
, ‘ “Lies unlike the truth”: Plato on Hesiod, Theogony 27’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association (Currently, Scholars Press, Atlanta, Georgia) 115 (1985)Google Scholar
, ‘A theory of imitation in Plato's Republic’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association (Currently, Scholars Press, Atlanta, Georgia), 114 (1984)Google Scholar
, ‘Plato's greatest accusation against poetry’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Suppl. vol.9 (1983)Google Scholar
, Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes; I: Economic, parenté, société; II: Pouvoir, droit, religion (Paris, 1969); Indo-European Language and Society tr. (London, 1973).Google Scholar
, Hamartia: Tragic Error in the Poetics of Aristotle and in Greek Tragedy (Amsterdam, 1969).Google Scholar
, Plato's Phaedrus: A Defense of a Philosophic Art of Writing (University, Alabama, 1980).Google Scholar
, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, tr. (Berkeley, 1983).Google Scholar
, Les choeurs dejeunesfilles en Grèce archaïque; I: Morphologie, fonction religieuse et sociale; II: Alcman (Rome, 1977).Google Scholar
, ‘Flutes and elegiac couplets’, Journal of Hellenic Studies (London), 84 (1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Eidos und eidolon: Das Problem des Schönen und der Kunst in Platons Dialogen’, Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg (1922 – 3)Google Scholar
, Dictionnaire étymologique de la languegrecque (4 vols., continuously paginated, Paris, 1968 – 80).Google Scholar
, ‘The Greekless reader and Aristotle's Rhetoric’, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 65 (1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, The Poetics of Aristotle: Its Meaning and Influence (Boston, 1923; rpt. New York, 1963).Google Scholar
, Platons Sprachphilosophie im Kratylos und in den späteren Schriften (Darmstadt, 1972).Google Scholar
, ‘La pharmacie de Platon’, in La dissémination (Paris, 1972), Dissemination, tr. (Chicago, 1981)Google Scholar
, ‘Idéologie et communication dans la poésie grecque archaïque’, Quaderni Urbinati, new series 9 (1981)Google Scholar
, ‘The Ion. Plato's characterisation of art’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 32 (1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and , Dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences du langage (Paris, 1972); Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Sciences of Language, tr. (Baltimore, 1979).Google Scholar
, ‘The genre of Theognidean poetry’, in and (eds.), Theognis of Megara: Poetry and the Polis (Baltimore, 1985)Google Scholar
, ‘ “Imitation” in the fifth century’, Classical Philology (Chicago), 53 (1958)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘The structure and date of book 10 of Plato's Republic’, Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse (1972), Abhandlung 3.Google Scholar
, ‘The Theognidea and Megarian society’, in and (eds.), Theognis of Megara: Poetry and the Polis (Baltimore, 1985)Google Scholar
, The Delphic Oracle: Its Responses and Operations, with a Catalogue of Responses (Berkeley, 1978).Google Scholar
, ‘The seal of Theognis’, in and (eds.), Theognis of Megara: Poetry and the Polis (Baltimore, 1985)Google Scholar
, Aristotle on Emotion: A Contribution to Philosophical Psychology Rhetoric, Poetics, Politics, and Ethics (New York, 1975).Google Scholar
, ‘Aristotle on the period (Rhet. 3.9)’, Classical Quarterly (Oxford) 32 (1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘The impossibility of perfection: Socrates’ criticism of Simonides' poem in the Protagoras', Review of Metaphysics, 39 (1986)Google Scholar
, ‘Plato and the poets’, in Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermen-eutical Studies in Plato, tr. (New Haven, 1980)Google Scholar
, Anthropologie de la Grèce antique (Paris, 1968); The Anthropology of Ancient Greece, tr. and (Baltimore, 1981).Google Scholar
, ‘The ethos/pathos distinction in rhetorical and literary criticism’, Classical Quarterly (Oxford) 34 (1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘The consequences of literacy’, in (ed.), Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1969)Google Scholar
, ‘Plato's view of poetry’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology (Cambridge, Mass.), 29 (1918)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘The epic cycle and the uniqueness of Homer’, Journal of Hellenic Studies (London), 97 (1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘The ideas and criticism of poetry in Plato's Republic, book 10’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 19, 2 (1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Die Simonides-Interpretation in Platons Protagoras’, in Hermeneia: Festschrift Otto Regenbogen (Heidelberg, 1952), rpt. in Platonstudien (Amsterdam, 1977)Google Scholar
, ‘Enthousiasmos und logos bei Platon’, Lexis, 2 (1949), rpt. in Platonstudien (Amsterdam, 1977)Google Scholar
, ‘Zum Spiel bei Platon’, in Beispiele. Festschrift fur Eugen Fink (Heidelberg, 1954), rpt. in Platonstudien (Amsterdam, 1977)Google Scholar
, ‘The classification of Greek lyric poetry’, Classical Quarterly (Oxford), 5 (1955)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Ancient Greek music’, in (ed.), New Oxford History of Music; I: Ancient and Oriental Music (London, 1957)Google Scholar
, The Pindaric Mind: A Study of Logical Structure in Early Greek Poetry (Leiden, 1985).Google Scholar
, ‘Historical criticism in Aristotle's Homeric Questions’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 79 (1979)Google Scholar
Works in English, ed. and (12 vols., Oxford, 1908–52); ed. (2 vols., Princeton, 1984);
, ‘An Aristotelian trilogy: Ethics, rhetoric, politics, and the search for truth’, Philosophy and Rhetoric, 13 (1980)Google Scholar
, ‘Der alte Streit zwischen Philosophic und Dichtung’, Altsprachliche Unterncht, 23, 6 (1980)Google Scholar
, ‘Das kitharodische Prooimion: Eine formgeschichtliche Unter-suchung’, Philologus, 100 (1956)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘The true tragedy: On the relationship between Greek tragedy and Plato’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology (Cambridge, Mass.), 52 (1941), 53 (1942)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Tōkai egō: The first person in Pindar’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology (Cambridge, Mass.), 67 (1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Paradox in Plato's Phaedrus’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, 27 (1982)Google Scholar
, Die Auffassung des Dichterberufs im frühen Griechentum bis zur Zeit Pindars (Göttingen, 1963).Google Scholar
, ‘Hesiod, Odysseus, and the instruction of princes’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association (Currently, Scholars Press, Atlanta, Georgia), 114 (1984)Google Scholar
, ‘Die visuelle Dimension des Theaters bei Aristoteles’, Philologus, 124 (1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Phthonos and paraphasis: Nemean 8. 19 – 34’, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies (Durham, North Carolina), 23 (1982)Google Scholar
, ‘Greek lyric poets’, in (ed.), Ancient Writers, Greece and Rome (2 vols., New York, 1982), 1Google Scholar
, The Measures of Praise: Structure and Function in Pindar's Second and Seventh Nemean Odes (Göttingen, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Ancient Greek praise and epic poetry’, in (ed.), Tradition in Literature: Interpretation in Context (Columbia, Missouri, 1986).Google Scholar
, ‘On the origins of the Greek hexameter’, in (ed.), Festschrift Oswald Szemerényi (Amsterdam, 1979).Google Scholar
, ‘Theognis of Megara: A poet's vision of his city’, in and (eds.), Theognis of Megara: Poetry and the Polis (Baltimore, 1985).Google Scholar
, The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (Baltimore, 1979).Google Scholar
, ‘Plato on imitation and poetry in Republic 10’, in and (eds.), Plato on Beauty (see above).
, Die Poetik des Aristoteles. Textstruktur und Textbedeutung; I: Interpretationen; II: Analysen (Frankfurt, 1980).Google Scholar
, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge, 1986).Google Scholar
, The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Mdman Parry, ed. (Oxford, 1971).Google Scholar
, Classical Scholarship. See above, General works on classical criticism.
, Odysseus Polytropos: Intertextual Readings in the Odyssey and the Iliad (Ithaca, 1987).Google Scholar
, Dichter und Gruppe: Eine Untersuchung zu den Bedingung und zur historischen Funktion früher Lyrik am Beispiel Alkaios (Munich, 1980).Google Scholar
, Epigrammund Skolion: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der alexandrinischen Dichtung (Giessen, 1893).Google Scholar
, ‘On ancient and medieval semantics and metaphysics: Plato's semantics in his critical period’, Vivarium, 19(1981), 20 (1982).Google Scholar
, Psyche: Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen (2 vols., Freiburg 1898); Psyche, tr. (New York, 1925; rpt. 1966).Google Scholar
, ‘I generi letterari e le loro leggi scritte e non scritte nelle letterature classiche’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 18 (London, 1971).Google Scholar
, and (eds.), Ancient Literary Criticism: The Principal Texts in New Translations (Oxford, 1972).Google Scholar
, ‘Plato's Gorgias and Phaedrus and Aristotle's theory of rhetoric: A speculative account’, Athenaeum, 57 (1979).Google Scholar
, La question platonicienne: Etude sur les rapports de lapensée et de l'expression dans les dialogues (2nd ed., Neuchâtel, 1969).Google Scholar
, ‘The bee maidens of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology (Cambridge, Mass.), 83(1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Gorgias and the psychology of the logos’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology (Cambridge, Mass.), 66 (1962).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Lyric narrative: Structure and principle’, in et al. (eds.), Studies in Classical Lyric: A Homage to Elroy Bundy (Classical Antiquity, 2) (Berkeley, 1983).Google Scholar
, ‘The moral view of Aristotle's Poetics’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 44(1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, The Dark Age of Greece: An Archaeological Survey of the Eleventh to the Eighth Centuries (Edinburgh, 1971).Google Scholar
, ‘Hamartia in Aristotle and Greek tragedy’, Classical Quarterly (Oxford), 25 (1975).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘La découpe du poème: Notes sur les origines sacrificielles de la poétique grecque’, Poétique, 58 (1984).Google Scholar
, La parole et le marbre: Aux origines de la poétique grecque (Lund, 1976; rev. Italian ed., Turin, 1984).Google Scholar
‘Plato and allegorical interpretation’, Classical Quarterly (Oxford) 23 (1929); 24 (1930).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Mimesis: Plato's Doctrine of Artistic Imitation and its Meaning to Us (Leiden, 1949).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Image et apparence dans la théorie platonicienne de la “mimêsis”’, Journal de Psychologie, 2 (1975); rpt. as ‘Naissance d'images’, in Religions, Histoires, Raison (Paris, 1979).Google Scholar
, The Varieties of Enchantment: Early Greek Views of the Nature and Function of Poetry (Chapel Hill, 1984).Google Scholar
, ‘Marked and unmarked: A choice between unequals in semiotic structure’, Semiotica, 38 (1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, When Words Lose their Meaning: Constitutions and Reconstitutions of Language, Character, and Community (Chicago, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Notes sur misthos’, in et al. (eds.), Le monde grecque: Hommage à Claire Préaux (Brussels, 1975).Google Scholar
, ‘Pindar and the mercenary muse: Isthmian 2.1–13’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association (Currently, Scholars Press, Atlanta, Georgia), 99 (1968).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Pindar, Aristotle, and Homer: A study in ancient criticism’, in et al. (eds.), Studies in Classical Lyric: A Homage to Elroy Bundy (Classical Antiquity, 2) (Berkeley, 1983).Google Scholar
, ‘Re-creating the canon’, see below, bibliography to chapters 5–9.
- 7
- Cited by