Tammy’s Reviews > Poetics > Status Update
Tammy
is 33% done
Content drives form, not meter (keeping in mind that, in Aristotle’s day, science and history were written in meter). The word poetics had a broader meaning to him than it does to us. “Imaginative writing” might best fit what he is discussing in Poetics, which transcends time in its application. This book focuses on tragedy (his treatise on comedy is lost). Epic is treated in the periphery since it is not tragedy.
— 6 hours, 8 min ago
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Tammy’s Previous Updates
Tammy
is 33% done
This book is useful is because the principles can be applied elsewhere. I probably need to read Plato’s Republic and it’s a long read! He attacked Homer for misrepresenting the gods, encouraging debased emotions, and using deceptive and degrading dramatic represention (drama). According to his theory of ideas, material objects are once removed from Ideas and drama is twice removed, appealing to our baser selves.
— 5 hours, 44 min ago
Tammy
is 33% done
It has three actors, limited choral lyrics, iambic trimeter. Well, that’s not what Shakespeare did nor is it what we do today. Forms are not static. Some mocked Aristotle for trying to trace the natural history of poetics but we do that today. It helps us understand how to read well. Regardless of what tragedy has become today, it is still an impressive form of drama.
— Nov 29, 2025 05:03PM
Tammy
is 33% done
Poetics includes a tracing of the history of its development. First, it was improvised ditties and sketches: hymns to gods, panegyrcs for heroes, lampoons of fools, and invectives against knaves. Tragedy came out fo the first two and comedy against the latter, too. Homer is their common ancestor. After many changes, tragedy stopped evolving. Its form is basically Sophocles which means nothing to me.
— Nov 29, 2025 04:18PM
Tammy
is 33% done
The objects are people in action, which means that comedy and tragedy only differ in the kinds of people represented, which rules out animals and a lot of programme music. The two modes are narrative and dramatic. He prioritized tragedy over comedy and we have not found his writings about comedy sadly. (Shakes fist at the burning of the library at Alexandria.)
— Nov 29, 2025 12:00PM
Tammy
is 33% done
Aristotle includes epics, drama, painting, sculpture, dancing, and music under the umbrella of representation. Greek dance resembled ballet or liturgical processions. We are unsure what Greek music was like but programme music best fits representation. He says that representations differ by medium, object, and mode. The concept of media is broad., but the other two are narrow.
— Nov 29, 2025 11:49AM
Tammy
is 33% done
Because he prized universals over particulars, Aristotle had this rank: philosophy, poetry, and history. Plato flipped the latter two. Aristotle believed that representation (imitation) gave humans superiority because they learn from imitation. It even brings delight when we might otherwise feel disgusted (a painting or a story). Mimesis is the Greek word used, which is hard to translate into English.
— Nov 28, 2025 05:52PM
Tammy
is 33% done
I can narrate that, but I don’t quite get it! Thanks to Lit Life, it makes sense that the broad definition of poetry includes the staples of CM: poems, myths, Bibles, and tales. The prose (history and science) must be clothed in poetry. They caution against applying Aristotle’s writings on rhetorice (logic applied to words) to literature. If you want to know what Aristotle thinks bout literature, read the poetics.
— Nov 28, 2025 12:30PM
Tammy
is 33% done
If particular things all equal something, that something is an idea. They either participate in or imitate the idea. Since Plato disliked imitation, he disliked art. Aristotle criticized this classical theory of Idea (as did Plato) because it does not address how particulars come into existence. Ideas do not add to the knowledge of other things or their being. This criticism undermines the pushback against poetry.
— Nov 28, 2025 12:23PM
Tammy
is 33% done
Aristotle believes in moderate amounts of emotion, the happy mean. Both see a close link between emotion and poetry. Their attitudes toward poetry differ because their attitudes toward emotion differ. Plato believed in the concept of idea in which a word that stands for something (man for example) which is an idea is immutable, universal, eternal, and universal. He later tried to tweak this flawed concept.
— Nov 28, 2025 10:05AM
Tammy
is 33% done
Wow! I overlooked that bit about Xenophanes, who wrote, “One god, lord over gods and human kind, like mortals neither in body nor in mind.” Aristotle sides with this idea and waters down the divine element in tragedy to salvage Homer. Both Plato and Aristotle put reason and feeling as activities of the soul but elevates the intellect. For Plato, the virtuous man minimizes expression of emotion.
— Nov 28, 2025 09:01AM
