Poetics
Related: aesthetics - literary theory - poetry - Aristotle
A treatise on or study of poetry or aesthetics.
Poetics () - Aristotle [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
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Aristotle's Poetics
Aristotle's Poetics aims to give an account of poetry. Aristotle does this by attempting to explain poetry through first principles (1447a13), and by classifying poetry into its different genres and component parts. The centerpiece of Aristotle's surviving work is his examination of tragedy. This occurs in Chapter 6 of "Poetics:"
"Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions." (1449b24-29, SH Butcher transl.)
He goes on to define the major characteristics of Greek dramatic structure.
This work combined with the Rhetoric make up Aristotle's works on aesthetics. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetics [Aug 2006]
Ambivalence in Aristotle's Poetics
Two translations from chapter four, on why we like things which are painful to see, for example: horror:
- Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. --sourced here. [Aug 2005]
- for we enjoy looking at accurate likenesses of things which are themselves painful to see, obscene beasts, for instance, and corpses. --sourced here. [Aug 2005]
See also: ambivalence - art horror - representation
The Poetics of Space (1957) - Gaston Bachelard
This is a deep, magical, densely captivating book about space, our homes, how we live in them, and how dwellings and space affect us; it is as much a book of philosophy as a work of serious literature. It requires careful, preferably leisurely reading, with the possibility of moments to pause and digest and re-read the words. It will change the way you look at your home and your life, providing a deeper, more insightful relationship with the spaces you occupy. --Amazon.com
See also: Gaston Bachelard
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