VELOSO, Claudio William. Pourquoi la Poétique d’Aristote? Diagogè. Préface de Marwan Rashed. Paris

Abstract

Aristotle probably wrote his Poetics to indicate what would be the noblest form of intellectual pastime (diagōgḗ) to those who do not devote their lives to philosophy, and not as a medical prescription of poetry in general, and of tragedy in particular, as an element capable of purifying or purging passions noxious to the individual and to the polis. In fact, the (only) passage in it in which the Stagirite advocates the cathartic function of tragedy seems to be unauthentic, a marginal gloss inadvertently incorporated into a text transmitted by three independent testimonia.