Poetics

During the golden age of ancient Greece bards roamed the countryside mesmerizing crowds by reciting the epics of Homer. Thousands of men and women gathered and were moved to tears by tragedies performed outside in amphitheaters during sacred festivals. Such an amazingly powerful and profound experie......more

It’s odd that the most ancient essay on literary criticism is one of the easiest to understand. It is so accessible. If you compare this to works by Nietzsche, Hegel and Freud the extremities of this can easily be seen. Aristotle explains his theory in the most basic language possible with no artful......more

This is perhaps my favourite philosopher of the Ancient world chatting about literary criticism – it doesn’t really get too much better than this. Plato, of course, wanted to banish all of the artists from his ideal republic. He wanted to do this because the world we live in is a poor copy of the ‘r......more

If you want to learn about tragedy--or narrative in general--this is still the best place to start.......more

The title is misleading; Aristotle discusses in this treatise not poetry but drama, and in particular the tragedy. The confusion rises from the fact that Classical Greek plays used to be written in metred verse. Aristotle's analysis is so lucid and systematic that it is hard to believe that this boo......more