by Aristotle, F. Fergusson (Designer), S. H. Butcher (Translator)
The original, Aristotle's short study of storytelling, written in the
fourth century B.C., is the world's first critical book about the
laws of literature.
Amazon.com
The original, Aristotle's short study of storytelling, written in the
fourth century B.C., is the world's first critical book about the
laws of literature. Sure, it's 2400 years old, but Aristotle's
discussions--Unity of Plot, Reversal of the Situation,
Character--though written in the context of ancient Greek Tragedy,
Comedy and Epic Poetry, still apply to our modern literary forms. The
book is quite short, and Aristotle illuminates his points with clear
examples, making the Poetics perfectly readable, the better to impress
people at parties when you say, "Of course, as Aristotle says..."
From the Back Cover:
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 in his Introduction, "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 points 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 textboon of elementary engineering." Read in this way,
it is an esential 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-Aristotleian form.
