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"Poetics" is an ancient Greek text by Aristotle that analyzes how poetry and drama work, examining elements like plot, character, and emotional effect. It matters because it became one of the most influential works in Western literary criticism, shaping how people have understood and created stories for over two thousand years.
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- Poetics (Aristotle)
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- Περὶ ποιητικῆς
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- Ancient Greek
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- public domain
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- Aristot. Poet.
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- ancient history
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Encyclopedic overview
Aristotle's Poetics (Ancient 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 solely focus on literary theory. In this text, Aristotle offers an account of ποιητική, which refers to poetry or, 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 poetry. The genres all share the function of mimesis, but differ in:
Musical rhythm, harmony, meter, and melody;
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Poetics” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.