Poetics Group
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accessteacher Teacher
High School - 10th GradeeNotes Editor
Posted by accessteacher on Sunday April 12, 2009 at 5:25 AMIn Poetics Aristotle seeks to explore what is poetry. And for Aristotle, poetry is first and foremost a "medium of imitation", by which he means poetry is a form of art that seeks to duplicate or replicate life. In fact, poetry evolved because of man's instinct to imitate and copy things. Poetry for Aristotle had a much wider remit that today, so it included tragedy, epic poetry and comedy to name a few.
Aristotle argued that poetry imitated life through its medium of rhythm, language and harmony. Art also has to imitate men in action. In order to imiate men, art has to represent them as being better or worse than they were in real life. For Aristotle, comedy presents men as worse than they are in real life, and tragedy presents men as being better.
It is this distinction of genre that leads to Aristotle's concept of catharsis or purging of the emotions. Through watching skilfull imitations of tragedy or comedy on stage, we have our emotions purged through vicariously participating in the drama.
Hope this helps - I have put a link to a more thorough summary of Poetics. Enjoy!
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