Ousia And Tragedy An Ontological Approach To Aristotles Poetics

The main idea of this thesis is to suggest a new type of reading on Aristotle's Poetics. Commentators of Poetics tried to relate it to Aristotle's ethical treatises. However, in this research, it will be argued that Poetics should be read under the light of Metaphysics. The interpretation proposed here is based on Aristotle's understanding of ousia (substance). The ontological status of artifacts in Aristotle's philosophy will be examined while inquiring the relationships between Poetics and Metaphysics. Consequently, I will argue that tragedy is an ousia and attemted to show that Aristotle's ontological philosophy is applicable to Poetics. Becouse of the fact that Aristotle treats a tragedy as a partial independent being, I will argue in Aristotelian terms that a tragedy should be judged by its intrinsic values, rather than ethical or rhetorical merits.

Ontology and the Art of Tragedy is a sustained reflection on the principles and criteria from which to guide one's approach to Aristotle's Poetics. Its scope is twofold: historical and systematic. In its historical aspect it develops an approach to Aristotle's Poetics, which brings his distinctive philosophy of being to bear on the reception of this text. In its systematic aspect it relates Aristotle's theory of art to the perennial desiderata of any theory of art, and particularly to Kandinsky's.

This collection of essays locates Aristotle's analysis of tragedy in its larger philosophical context. Philosophers, classicists, and literary critics connect the Poetics to Taristoltle's psychology and history, ethics an politics. There are discussions of plot and the unity of action, character and fictional necessity, catharsis, pity and fear, and aesthetic pleasure.

In this, the fullest, sustained interpretation of Aristotle's Poetics available in English, Stephen Halliwell demonstrates that the Poetics, despite its laconic brevity, is a coherent statement of a challenging theory of poetic art, and it hints towards a theory of mimetic art in general. Assessing this theory against the background of earlier Greek views on poetry and art, particularly Plato's, Halliwell goes further than any previous author in setting Aristotle's ideas in the wider context of his philosophical system. The core of the book is a fresh appraisal of Aristotle's view of tragic drama, in which Halliwell contends that at the heart of the Poetics lies a philosophical urge to instill a secularized understanding of Greek tragedy. "Essential reading not only for all serious students of the Poetics . . . but also for those—the great majority—who have prudently fought shy of it altogether."—B. R. Rees, Classical Review "A splendid work of scholarship and analysis . . . a brilliant interpretation."—Alexander Nehamas, Times Literary Supplement

Introduced by Francis Fergusson, the Poetics, written in the fourth century B.C., is still an essential study of the art of drama, indeed the most fundamental one we have. It has been used by both playwrights and theorists of many periods, and interpreted, in the course of its two thousand years of life, in various ways. The literature which has accumulated around it is, as Mr. Fergusson points out, "full of disputes so erudite that the nonspecialist can only look on in respectful silence." But the Poetics itself is still with us, in all its suggestiveness, for the modern reader to make use of in his turn and for his own purposes. Francis Fergusson's lucid, informative, and entertaining Introduction will prove invaluable to anyone who wishes to understand and appreciate the Poetics. Using Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, as Aristotle did, to illustrate his analysis, Mr. Fergusson pints out that Aristotle did not lay down strict rules, as is often thought: "The Poetics," he says, "is much more like a cookbook than it is like a textbook of elementary engineering." Read in this way, it is an essential guide not only to Sophoclean tragedy, but to the work of so modern a playwright as Bertolt Brecht, who considered his own "epic drama" the first non-Aristotelian form.

Poetics Aristotle - Aristotle's Poetics (Greek: Peri poietikês; Latin: De Poetica; c. 335 BC) is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory. In this text Aristotle offers an account of , which refers to poetry or more literally "the poetic art," deriving from the term for "poet; author; maker," . 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: Differences in music rhythm, harmony, meter and melody. Difference of goodness in the characters. Difference in how the narrative is presented: telling a story or acting it out. The analysis of tragedy in the Poetics constitutes the core of the discussion. Although the text is universally acknowledged in the Western critical tradition, "almost every detail about his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions". The work was lost to the Western world for a long time. It was available in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance only through a Latin translation of an Arabic version written by Averroes.

In his introduction, Mr. Potts sketches the history of the work; by quoting extensively from the great critics he illustrates its influence and indicates the significance of Aristotle's formulations. The notes take up the hints, judgements and insights that Aristotle lets fall, show their deeper meaning and give them an application. They also explain to the reader the allusions that gave the original is topicality. There is a brief bibliography and a full index. -- Back cover

Aristotle's Poetics (c. 335 BC) 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: Differences in music rhythm, harmony, meter and melody. Difference of goodness in the characters. Difference in how the narrative is presented: telling a story or acting it out. 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