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Classical Literary Criticism: Poetics/Ars Poetica/On the Sublime
Aristotle's Poetics has long been recognized as a seminal work of literary criticism. His analysis of tragic drama, epic poetry and stylistic devices such as metaphor, and his famous notion of the cathartic purging of the emotions, have defined a critical terminology for generations of later writers. In the Ars Poetica Horace defends the civilizing power of poetry and the fundamental importance of the principle decorum, while the anonymous author of the treatise On the Sublime (who was formerly erroneously thought to be Longinus) stresses the innate ability required to produce poetry of sublime grandeur.
158 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1961
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About the author
Aristotle
4,286 books5,523 followersAristotle (Greek: Αριστοτέλης; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, and the arts. As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of modern science.
Little is known about Aristotle's life. He was born in the city of Stagira in northern Greece during the Classical period. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, and he was brought up by a guardian. At 17 or 18, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of 37 (c. 347 BC). Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored his son Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. He established a library in the Lyceum, which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls.
Though Aristotle wrote many treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. His teachings and methods of inquiry have had a significant impact across the world, and remain a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.
Aristotle's views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. The influence of his physical science extended from late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and was not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed. He influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology, especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church.
Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as "The First Teacher", and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply "The Philosopher", while the poet Dante Alighieri called him "the master of those who know". His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, and were studied by medieval scholars such as Pierre Abélard and Jean Buridan. Aristotle's influence on logic continued well into the 19th century. In addition, his ethics, although always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics.
Little is known about Aristotle's life. He was born in the city of Stagira in northern Greece during the Classical period. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, and he was brought up by a guardian. At 17 or 18, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of 37 (c. 347 BC). Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored his son Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. He established a library in the Lyceum, which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls.
Though Aristotle wrote many treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. His teachings and methods of inquiry have had a significant impact across the world, and remain a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.
Aristotle's views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. The influence of his physical science extended from late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and was not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed. He influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology, especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church.
Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as "The First Teacher", and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply "The Philosopher", while the poet Dante Alighieri called him "the master of those who know". His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, and were studied by medieval scholars such as Pierre Abélard and Jean Buridan. Aristotle's influence on logic continued well into the 19th century. In addition, his ethics, although always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 7, 2022
Great little collection of some Classical literary criticism. The star is Aristotle’s poetics, which isn’t exactly the first piece of literary criticism, but is the first great one that aims to be exhaustive (at least in regards to tragedy) and conciliatory. Aristotle differs from Plato in that the artist can stay in the city and create more than just propaganda, because proper tragedy enables a purgation of emotions. The obvious point to make is this: very early on in culture to perspectives on art were established by ancient philosophers: art can be immoral in itself and influence people to do bad things (Plato), or conversely, art can lead to a confrontation and a reckoning and conquering of negative emotions (Aristotle). You can see this dichotomy, variegated or not, everywhere.
Included also in the Poetics are some linguistic definitions and definitions of the constituent parts of narrative tragedy. Aristotle also includes some advice to people seeking to write literary criticism, and in this advice we can also see Aristotle’s prescience, predicting more annoying parts of pop criticism:
“Whenever a word seems to involve some inconsistency of meaning, we ought to consider in how many ways it may be interpreted in context - in, for example, ‘there the brazen spear was stopped’, how many ways are there of taking ‘there… was stopped’. We should think how best we shall avoid the fault described by Glaucon when he says that critics make unreasonable presuppositions, and go on to draw conclusions from their own adverse comments on the poet; if his words conflict with the conclusions they have thus reached, they censure him as though he had actually said what they ascribe to him.” (72-73)
You see this all the time in “popular criticism” by which I basically mean amateur/approachable criticism that is legible to a broad audience. The kind of stuff that lives on YouTube or in the goodreads review section. A lot of hay is often made about what makes sense, and if something is interpreted to not make sense then the work and author are at fault. “Why didn’t they fly the Eagles to Mordor” type shit. Aristotle understands very early that such criticism is the mark of someone who doesn’t want to think creatively, someone who wants interpretation only to happen on the avenues they are comfortable with.
The Horace essay isn’t all that interesting, other than he reminds you to criticize your friends truthfully and tell them their shit sucks if it sucks, because it will be better for them in the long run. A good point that often deserves reiteration.
The pseudo Longinus’ essay is more interesting, an definitional account of and advice to achieve sublime poetry. For Longinus, sublime is not exactly the later, Burkian notion of being struck by smallness in the face of immeasurable beauty and grandness, but it isn’t far off either. The sublime is most often associated with truth and beauty and power that overwhelms the reader/listener and through sheer intensity makes questions of literary form, that nonetheless are constituent parts of sublime poetry, null and void. It’s a bit contradictory. “... it might be said, indeed, that he overpowers with his thunder and lightning the orators of every age. One could more easily outface a descending thunderbolt than meet unflinchingly his continual outbursts of passion.” (146) There is a sense in which analysis can always try to meet sublime poetry, but overwhelming passion keeps you from an intellectual understanding, or, an intellectual understanding is pointless in the face of the sublime. So, not exactly like the more familiar conception of sublime but not very far from it either.
Great little collection with a great introduction, although I’m sure that there are more in depth scholarly editions out there, especially of the poetics.
Included also in the Poetics are some linguistic definitions and definitions of the constituent parts of narrative tragedy. Aristotle also includes some advice to people seeking to write literary criticism, and in this advice we can also see Aristotle’s prescience, predicting more annoying parts of pop criticism:
“Whenever a word seems to involve some inconsistency of meaning, we ought to consider in how many ways it may be interpreted in context - in, for example, ‘there the brazen spear was stopped’, how many ways are there of taking ‘there… was stopped’. We should think how best we shall avoid the fault described by Glaucon when he says that critics make unreasonable presuppositions, and go on to draw conclusions from their own adverse comments on the poet; if his words conflict with the conclusions they have thus reached, they censure him as though he had actually said what they ascribe to him.” (72-73)
You see this all the time in “popular criticism” by which I basically mean amateur/approachable criticism that is legible to a broad audience. The kind of stuff that lives on YouTube or in the goodreads review section. A lot of hay is often made about what makes sense, and if something is interpreted to not make sense then the work and author are at fault. “Why didn’t they fly the Eagles to Mordor” type shit. Aristotle understands very early that such criticism is the mark of someone who doesn’t want to think creatively, someone who wants interpretation only to happen on the avenues they are comfortable with.
The Horace essay isn’t all that interesting, other than he reminds you to criticize your friends truthfully and tell them their shit sucks if it sucks, because it will be better for them in the long run. A good point that often deserves reiteration.
The pseudo Longinus’ essay is more interesting, an definitional account of and advice to achieve sublime poetry. For Longinus, sublime is not exactly the later, Burkian notion of being struck by smallness in the face of immeasurable beauty and grandness, but it isn’t far off either. The sublime is most often associated with truth and beauty and power that overwhelms the reader/listener and through sheer intensity makes questions of literary form, that nonetheless are constituent parts of sublime poetry, null and void. It’s a bit contradictory. “... it might be said, indeed, that he overpowers with his thunder and lightning the orators of every age. One could more easily outface a descending thunderbolt than meet unflinchingly his continual outbursts of passion.” (146) There is a sense in which analysis can always try to meet sublime poetry, but overwhelming passion keeps you from an intellectual understanding, or, an intellectual understanding is pointless in the face of the sublime. So, not exactly like the more familiar conception of sublime but not very far from it either.
Great little collection with a great introduction, although I’m sure that there are more in depth scholarly editions out there, especially of the poetics.
March 23, 2013
The inclusion of Horace was a little strange but the poem had a few good things to say about the figure of the poet in Rome and showed how a lot of Aristotle and Plato's ideas had been translated to Roman literary thought.
Longinus and the Poetics were both really great. I'm not convinced by Aristotle's conviction that plot has to be central to these plays. His obsession with 'recognition' is somewhat more dubious; it's a necessary step in a fair few tragedies but by no means all of them. There's the interesting suggestion that some plays were staged purely for spectacle ('to show Hades on stage' or whatever). I think in general people are a little bit too specific in the way they understand a lot of the plot terms he comes up with (surely by hartema he means something less than a general flawed trait in the protagonist of a tragedy but something closer to a mistake or 'erring') and that's been a problem in the way Aristotle has traditionally been read here. I think he openly contradicts himself on the issue of the moral quality of a tragic hero (at one point, he says they have to be normal and at another 'good') so again there's textual problems, potentially because these are just lecture notes. His treatment of epic is way too cursory (perhaps an indication that he's not planning on delving into comedy?). Very interesting things are said about the mechanics of poetry.
Longinus is much more general and has a marked interest in historians and orators as well as poets. His interest in 'the sublime' or perhaps better translated as 'the elevated' seems to mostly revolve around the power of language to express emotionally striking sentiments as well as the ability of language to evoke grand things. This is how he reads Demosthenes and Hyperides among other orators and so this is not quite a rhetorical manual (although the interest in oratory surely stems from this being an Imperial Greek text, perhaps linking him to the concerns of the authors of the second sophistic somehow?). He gets to the nuts and bolts of rhetorical devices again from a markedly literary perspective and also has interesting complaints about excessive bombast (neither him nor Aristotle like Aeschylus too much). Shame it hasn't survived in full.
Most other collections of Classical Literary Criticism include excerpts of the Republic, the Laws and full dialogues like Ion and the two Hippias(es?)(plural in the Greek Hippiantes?) but I didn't really miss them. Aristotle resolves a lot of the problems Plato creates for the understanding of art in the poetics (the madness and irrationality of artistic inspiration, portraying gods doing bad things, etc.) and this is far as I think we need to care about Plato in these circumstances.
Longinus and the Poetics were both really great. I'm not convinced by Aristotle's conviction that plot has to be central to these plays. His obsession with 'recognition' is somewhat more dubious; it's a necessary step in a fair few tragedies but by no means all of them. There's the interesting suggestion that some plays were staged purely for spectacle ('to show Hades on stage' or whatever). I think in general people are a little bit too specific in the way they understand a lot of the plot terms he comes up with (surely by hartema he means something less than a general flawed trait in the protagonist of a tragedy but something closer to a mistake or 'erring') and that's been a problem in the way Aristotle has traditionally been read here. I think he openly contradicts himself on the issue of the moral quality of a tragic hero (at one point, he says they have to be normal and at another 'good') so again there's textual problems, potentially because these are just lecture notes. His treatment of epic is way too cursory (perhaps an indication that he's not planning on delving into comedy?). Very interesting things are said about the mechanics of poetry.
Longinus is much more general and has a marked interest in historians and orators as well as poets. His interest in 'the sublime' or perhaps better translated as 'the elevated' seems to mostly revolve around the power of language to express emotionally striking sentiments as well as the ability of language to evoke grand things. This is how he reads Demosthenes and Hyperides among other orators and so this is not quite a rhetorical manual (although the interest in oratory surely stems from this being an Imperial Greek text, perhaps linking him to the concerns of the authors of the second sophistic somehow?). He gets to the nuts and bolts of rhetorical devices again from a markedly literary perspective and also has interesting complaints about excessive bombast (neither him nor Aristotle like Aeschylus too much). Shame it hasn't survived in full.
Most other collections of Classical Literary Criticism include excerpts of the Republic, the Laws and full dialogues like Ion and the two Hippias(es?)(plural in the Greek Hippiantes?) but I didn't really miss them. Aristotle resolves a lot of the problems Plato creates for the understanding of art in the poetics (the madness and irrationality of artistic inspiration, portraying gods doing bad things, etc.) and this is far as I think we need to care about Plato in these circumstances.
July 15, 2025
I can’t believe I haven’t heard of Longinus’ ‘On the Sublime’ before. Sure, our understanding of the classical plays and poetry would be very limited if it weren’t for Aristotle’s Poetics and Horace, but if you’re somebody who writes poetry in 2025, they’re not gonna be useful to you and your writing personally. But Longinus truly gives great advice, which I think works across all literary genres and is timeless.
July 31, 2019
I acquired this book to read "On the Sublime" by Pseudo-Longinus. I was never a big fan of Aristotle, and I'd already read Horace's Ars Poetica, so I was surprised when I finished reading that I enjoyed the Aristotle piece the most out of the three. The other two pieces are still worth reading, and overall, this book is a nice compilation of early literary criticism. Aristotle and Pseudo-Longinus read more like theoretical treatises while Horace is more pragmatic and full of advice. I loved Aristotle and Pseudo-Longinus where they quoted from works that are no longer extant, especially all the Euripides, one of my favorite tragedians.
While there are many quotable pieces from all three works, I liked this one the best from Pseudo-Longinus: "For a piece is truly great only if it can stand up to repeated examination, and if it is difficult, or, rather, impossible to resist its appeal, and it remains firmly and ineffaceably in the memory." (Longinus 7, p. 107).
While there are many quotable pieces from all three works, I liked this one the best from Pseudo-Longinus: "For a piece is truly great only if it can stand up to repeated examination, and if it is difficult, or, rather, impossible to resist its appeal, and it remains firmly and ineffaceably in the memory." (Longinus 7, p. 107).
May 17, 2018
If you need understanding of the elements of Drama, poetry, and prose of western society, this anthology is worth the read. The register is rather high for the layman but its excellence in thought pulls you through some of the passages that give you a challenge to your sense of logic. Authoritative and piercing, it is a must for those aiming to excel in the literary arts as readers and as writers.
December 31, 2019
O ano em que eu, finalmente, entendi A poética em todas as suas nuances. É um livro que sei, vou levar comigo para toda a vida. Dos muitos títulos que fizeram o meu ano, A poética, sem dúvidas, é um dos mais importantes. Perceber padrões e modos de contar, espelhados em aulas de milhares de anos, é desafiador e enriquecedor. Foi uma grande jornada a compreensão destas três visões tão diversas, uma jornada da qual saio mais preparada para contar ao mundo as minhas próprias histórias - "sobre os ombros de gigantes".
October 30, 2019
The four stars are for the first section of the book, by Aristotle. This is a very logical treatise on what makes good drama. The treatise by Horace rambles and the one by pseudo-Longinus has chunks missing, which makes it less than satisfying to read.
April 20, 2021
"Ignoble qualities in literature arise from one cause--from that passion for novel ideas which is the dominant craze among the writers today; for our faults spring, for the most part, from very much the same sources as our virtues." --"Longinus", On the Sublime.
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July 8, 2021Obviously indispensable
October 25, 2015
I found Aristotle's On the Art of Poetry virtually unreadable so eventually I gave up.
Horace's On the Art of Poetry was excellent! Clearly written and conceived with logical advice that is still relevant to any writer today.
I didn't really attempt Longinus's On the Sublime.
Horace's On the Art of Poetry was excellent! Clearly written and conceived with logical advice that is still relevant to any writer today.
I didn't really attempt Longinus's On the Sublime.
November 28, 2017
Aristotle suggests a drama should have a beginning, a middle and an end. Good advice. Horace and Longinus expand on this at some length. Well worth a read.
March 8, 2013
The standard text on storytelling. A must read. Much of it will seem cliched or hackneyed but remember this had never been said before 2 and a half thousand years ago!
February 5, 2016
Much less harder than I thought it would be! It is completely understandable, quite enjoyable, and certainly interesting. A must read for literature students.
September 17, 2017
This book simply provides the profound wisdom of ancient thinkers that is by itself satisfies a modern reader.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews