Poetics: lxxiii (Penguin Classics)

by Aristotle (Author), Aristotle (Author)

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  Essential reading for all students of Greek theatre and literature, Aristotle's Poetics remains equally stimulating for anyone interested in literature. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with an introduction and notes by Malcolm Heath. In his near-contemporary account of classical Greek tragedy, Aristotle examine the dramatic elements of plot, character, language and spectacle that combine to produce pity and fear in the audience, and asks why we derive pleasure from this apparently painful process. Taking examples from the plays of Aeschylus , Sophocles and Euripides , the Poetics introduced into literary criticism such central concepts as mimesis ('imitation'), hamartia ('error') and katharsis, which have informed serious thinking about drama ever since. Aristotle explains how the most effective tragedies rely on complication and resolution, recognition and reversals, while centring on characters of heroic stature, idealised yet true to life. One of the most perceptive and influential works of criticism in Western literary history, the Poetics has informed serious thinking about drama ever since. Malcolm Heath's lucid translation makes the Poetics fully accessible to the modern reader. It is accompanied by an extended introduction, which discusses the key concepts in detail, and includes suggestions for further reading. Aristotle (384-22 BC) studied at the Academy of Plato for 20 years and then established his own school and research institute, 'The Lyceum'. His writings, which were of extraordinary range, profoundly affected the whole course of ancient and medieval philosophy and are still eagerly studied and debated by philosophers today. If you enjoyed Poetics , you might like Aristotle's The Metaphysics , also available in Penguin Classics .

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  Aristotle's doctrines are basic to every critical discussion of Greek tragedy and of other literary forms. Although the Poetics has often been denounced or rejected, such rejection is usually the result of a misunderstanding of what Aristotle says. And that is where Hutton's work is uniquely important.

  Commentators have long recognized the need to view the Poetics in the context of its creation and it re-emergence in the Renaissance. Few, if any, however, have had the necessary combination of talents that James Hutton possessed as an accomplished Hellenist with a particularly strong background in Greek philosophy, a graceful stylist in English, and a leading authority on the Renaissance humanists.

  To supplement his translation, Hutton has provided full explanatory and glossarial notes. In his introduction he discusses the work in terms of Aristotelian thought and its Platonic roots, thereby correcting the dogmatism that often attends study of the Poetics. The introduction also fully outlines the work's historical influence.