1. 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. 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. Some scholars speculate that the Tractatus coislinianus summarises the contents of the lost second book.
2. Aristotle’s Poetics is the earliest surviving work of Greek dramatic theory and first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory. 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 (to include 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:
   1. Differences in music rhythm, harmony, meter and melody.
   2. Difference of goodness in the characters.
   3. Difference in how the narrative is presented: telling a story or acting
3. Aristotle never named Plato in his Poetics but challenged his arguments. Plato was an idealist. He believed in the concept of ideal world, the phenomenal world is nothing but a shadow of the ideal world. Therefore it is unreal.
4. Terminologies in Poetics:
   1. Mimesis or “imitation”, “representation,” or “expression,” given that, e.g., music is a form of mimesis, and often there is no music in the real world to be “imitated” or “represented.”
   2. Hubris or Hybris, “pride”
   3. Nemesis or, “retribution”
   4. Hamartia or “miscalculation” (understood in Romanticism as “tragic flaw”)
   5. Anagnorisis or “recognition”, “identification”
   6. Peripeteia or “reversal”
   7. Catharsis or, variously, “purgation”, “purification”, “clarification”
   8. Mythos or “plot,” defined in Ch 6 explicitly as the “structure of actions.”
   9. Ethos or “character”
   10. Dianoia or “thought”, “theme”
   11. Lexis or “diction”, “speech”
   12. Melos, or “melody”; also “music-dance” (melos meaning primarily “limb”)
   13. Opsis or “spectacle”
5. Defects of Poetics:
   1. Disproportionate handling of the subjects .
   2. Lyrical Poetry, descriptive poetry are ignored
   3. Comedy and epic have been cursorily treated.
   4. Limitations of tragedy are not discussed
   5. Essential ideas like cathersis are not explained as the text is not self sufficient.
   6. Irregularities, omissions, contradictions, repetitions are there.
   7. There are signs of hesitation and uncertainty in use of terminology.
   8. The text shows a bias of accepting the challenge of Plato.
   9. The views are based on Greek poetry and drama, which are outdated with time.

Introduction to Plato

1. Plato (428 – 348 B.C.) Plato was the most important literary critic before Aristotle.
2. He had his own Academy to develop the young pupil. Plato was a utilitarian critic and utopian citic.
3. His literary Criticism is contained in his Dialogues, particularly in Republic X.
4. Plato’s criticism can only be understood along with the contemporary scenario of the
   1. It was a time of political decline and dissolution, education was not encouraged
   2. Women were devalued and slavery was practiced.
   3. Heroism, war-crafts were celebrated by the Greeks
   4. Philosophers and orators were regarded as leading spirits and superior to artists and poets.
5. Plato attacked poetry on different grounds:
   1. Moral Ground
   2. Emotional Ground
   3. Intellectual Ground
6. Plato classified poetry as: dithyrambic, epic and dramatic, on the basis of methods of narration by them.
7. “With his remark on comedy may be said to begin the theory of the ludicrous in antiquity” – Atkins
8. “He is thus the first to enunciate the classical ideas of artistic beauty” – Atkin.

Introduction to Aristotle

1. Aristotle (384 – 322 B.C) was born at Stagirus in Macedonia. Son of Nicomachus, court physician to King Amyntas II of Macedonia.
2. Pope gave him the nickname Stagirite.
3. At seventeen, in 368-67 B.C Aristotle spent 20 years at Plato’s Academy in Athens.
4. Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great.
5. Aristotle probably wrote 400 volumes, most of them are lost.
6. His major works:
   1. 158 Constitutions (including the Constitutions of Athens)
   2. On Monarchy
   3. The Customs of Barbarians
   4. Organon, or The Instrument of Correct Thinking.
   5. Rhetoric
   6. Educational Ethics
   7. Physics
   8. Politics
   9. Dialogues
   10. Alexander
   11. Natural History
   12. On the Soul
   13. Logic
   14. Nicomachean Ethics
   15. Metaphysics
   16. Poetics

Poetics – Analysis

1. The Poetics has been penned by Aristotle after he settled as a teacher in Athens around 335 B.C.
2. It is a short treatise of 26 chapters and 45 pages.
3. The text can be divided into 6 parts:
   1. 1. Chapter I – V:  Introduction to Poetry, its classification, tragedy and comedy, imitation as a common element of art.
      2. Chapter VI – XIX: devoted to Tragedy
      3. Chapter XX – XXII: devoted to Poetic diction
      4. Chapter XXIII: Narrative Poetry and Tragedy
      5. Chapter XXIV-XXVI: The Epic
      6. Chapter XXV: Answers to the objections of critics against poetry