Poetics Of Aristotle Research Articles

Mimesis

Abstract This article starts off from the observation of the deeply polysemic character of the term mimesis in current literary studies. On the one hand, it is used to denote a poetics of imitation which was mainly derived from the Poetics of Aristotle and was to become the predominant conception of poetry in early modern times until the advent of Romanticism. On the other hand, besides this historical meaning, mimesis has, at the same time, a systematic significance. It refers to any poetics that defines poetry as a specific representation of reality. In this sense, the poetics of realism is quite unanimously considered to be a paradigmatic example of mimetic literature. Our attempt to bring together both sides of the notion of mimesis, to connect its systematic and its historical meaning, is based on a theoretical approach developed in the first part of our study by a criticism of Wittgenstein’s notion of “family resemblance” (Familienähnlichkeit). In the second part, this theoretical model is used for an analysis of the conception of mimesis in Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Poetics, and Horace’s Ars poetica.

Lo fantástico verosímil. Análisis de los tipos de verosimilitud en la serie Game of Thrones

Las audiencias de la serie Game of Thrones han ido en aumento desde su estreno, en 2011. El enganche de un público heterogéneo ha convertido a Game of Thrones en un fenómeno mediático cuyo éxito puede deberse a diversos factores, entre ellos la verosimilitud de la historia, que puede resultar convincente para espectadores que buscan historia fantástica, una trama de poder o una serie de época.
 Abordamos, los principios de la verosimilitud, entendida como la factibilidad de una historia para resultar lógica y posible ante los ojos del espectador.
 Los primeros postulados de lo verosímil aparecen en la Poética de Aristóteles, pero son sólidamente desarrollados por la semiótica del siglo XX, en los trabajos de Todorov, Kristeva y Metz, que constituyen el marco del que derivamos las categorías de análisis de los distintos tipos de verosimilitud: semántica, sintáctica, genérica y diegética.
 El análisis de la verosimilitud de la serie, apunta a la lógica espacio temporal del relato y a la sucesión articulada de acciones de personajes cuya trayectoria responde a la causalidad y que, por tanto, adquiere el estatus de verosímil, aun cuando se trate de personajes que se mueven en un mundo imaginario.

Colloquium 3 Likely and Necessary: The Poetics of Aristotle and the Problem of Literary Leeway

Abstract Taking as a starting point a crucial passage of Aristotle’s Poetics where poetical technique is declared to be different from all other disciplines in human knowledge (25, 1460b8–15), I try to determine in what sense and up to what point poetry can be seen as an autonomous or sui generis creative activity. On this path, I come across the so-called “likely and necessary” rule mentioned many times in Aristotle’s essay, which might be seen as a limitation of the poet’s literary freedom. I then endeavour to show that this rule of consistency does not preclude the many means by which the poet can astonish his or her audience, bring them into error, introduce exaggerations and embellishments on the one hand (and viciousness and repulsiveness on the other), have the characters change their conduct along the way, etc. For Aristotle, the poetic art—and artistic activities in general—is concerned not with what in fact is or what should be (especially ethically), but simply with what might be. Accordingly, one can see him as historically the very first theorist fiction, not only because he states that poetry relates freely to the possible, but also because he explains why poetry is justified in doing so.

Cervantes y el humanismo. El somnium humanista en la Cueva de Montesinos (El coloquio de los perros y Quijote, II, 22–23)

Abstract Miguel de Cervantes lived a time of transition between the 15th century humanism and new literary genres that we identify with the aesthetic and ideological leadership of Justus Lipsius (1547-1606). Focusing especially on El coloquio de los perros and on chapters II, 22 and II, 23 of Don Quixote, the essay examines Cervantes’ use of the genre of somnium for various purposes. Especially in chapter II, 23 of Don Quixote, Cervantes criticizes the new literary genre boomed at the end of the 16th century in the light of his own aesthetic convictions from the reflection on the Poetics of Aristotle. By doing so, Cervantes expresses aesthetic positions of great originality, and of a singular, almost individual independence from dominant poetic and rhetoric currents at the beginning of the 17th century.

Aristotle'shomo mimeticusas an Educational Paradigm for Human Coexistence

In the Poetics of Aristotle there is a definition of the human being that perhaps has not yet been well considered in educational theory and practice. This definition calls into question a dynamism that according to Plato was unavoidable for an appropriate understanding of the educational process that turns a human being into a beautiful, good and just citizen: mimesis. The paper's intent is to reconsider the definition of the human being, centred on mimesis, presented by Aristotle in the Poetics (4. 1448 b5–9) to demonstrate if, and how, it might establish new paradigms for human coexistence. Aristotle's anthropological statement is included in a much wider discourse concerning philosophy of art; but if isolated from the context, it is an essential definition of human beings that can be synthesised as follows: human beings are the mimetic animal par excellence, and their process of understanding (that distinguishes them from other animals) has a fundamental connection with such excellence. Ignorance and/or negligence of how relevant mimesis might be in the educational process may have decisively contributed to separate human beings from this core aspect of their humanity and therefore produced painful consequences in human coexistence. As long as education does not pay attention to the pedagogical implications of the definition taken from the Poetics, how can human flourishing be safeguarded? I argue that recognition of the centrality of mimesis in the educational process allows human edification to proceed devoid of ideological basis, be it secular or confessional; and overcomes the risk of relativism. Mimesis, formerly recognised by Plato as a link between what is expressed and what really is, is masterfully reinterpreted by Aristotle. Aristotle recognised its positive pedagogic value in the Poetics, and nowadays we can recognise how it offers existential dynamics that restore the vital human relationship between self and other (be it another human or other than a human being). The sense of this proposal lies in giving mimesis the role it deserves in education, by raising the significance of how coexistence might benefit from a vast human dimension, capable of recognising our humanity beyond our rational capacity.

Teoría de la épica en el Renacimiento y el Barroco hispanos y la épica indiana

Fecha de recepción: 9 de noviembre de 2012.Fecha de aceptación: 28 de febrero de 2014. La teoría de la épica de los siglos XVI y XVII estaba dominada por la Poética de Aristóteles y sus comentaristas italianos y por el modelo de Virgilio. Sin embargo, como intentamos demostrar en este artículo,los poemas épicos indianos se alejan notablemente de estas normas. Los puntos centrales de la teoría de la épica, como es sabido, eran la exigencia de la distancia temporal de los hechos narrados y la del héroe perfecto; la épica indiana, por el contrario, narraba hechos recientes, y los protagonistas (reales) eran menos que perfectos. Los autores españoles buscaban una solución en dos direcciones distintas: 1) la equiparación de la épica con la historia y 2) la adopción del modelo italiano del romanzo (Boiardo, Ariosto). Con esto se establecieron dos modelos modernos que se apartaron de los modelos heredados de la Antigüedad. Sin embargo, ya hacia fines del siglo XVI, surgieron dudas en cuanto a la autenticidad de estos nuevos modelos quese manifestaron, sobre todo, en la poética del Pinciano, quien intuye que la novela podría ser una forma superior al poema épico. Partiendo de esta intuición, el presente artículo cierra −inspirado por la teoría de la novela de Lukácz− con una reflexión sobre la antinomia épica novela como expresiones auténticas de la modernidad.

A torção mimética do real: sobre a concepção freudiana da literatura

O objetivo do texto é fazer uma leitura de elementos conceituais presentes na concepção freudiana sobre a poesia e a literatura, apontando aspectos problemáticos, como também os que se mostram pertinentes para análise do fenômeno estético. Inicialmente, passamos brevemente em revista pontos significativos de comentários críticos às reflexões estéticas freudianas da tradição, passando então a comentar o texto "Der Dichter und das Phantasieren" (1908), em que nos serviremos da comparação com temas e conceitos presentes na Poética de Aristóteles e na Kritik der Urteilskraft de Kant. Na última parte, contrapomos alguns conceitos presentes neste primeiro texto ao artigo "Das Unheimliche" (1919), em que propomos uma leitura que faz contrastar o papel e importância conferidos à dimensão estética em ambos os textos. Toda a trajetória está orientada para demonstrar a necessidade de conceber o estético a partir do entrelaçamento, da identidade e da diferença, entre o âmbito psíquico inconsciente e suas formas de atualização refratadas pela dimensão imagético-imaginária.

An introduction to Neopoetics

Neopoetics is a matrix for dynamic perceptual convergences between material and immaterial systems. The deep foundational ground for Neopoetics is the Poetics of Aristotle and its relation to the ancient Greek theatre as a practical systemic ideology for the mythic Greek drama. As Aristotle’s Poetics posits six basic components for the construction of drama (plot, character, thought, diction, song and spectacle) the neopoetic system has six constituent aspects: expanded embodiment, experiential metaphor, matrix architecture, perceptual resonance, the rheomode and neopoetic mythos. Expanded embodiment describes an expansion of the corporeal body into fluid, dematerialized dimensions of experience, expression and exchange. Experiential metaphor is a sensate interface between the expanded body and the dematerialized field that contextualizes it in a neopoetic framework. It is what Roy Ascott terms an interspace: ‘found between the virtual and actual, where reality is renegotiated and the new consciousness is embodied’. The next three neopoetic aspects describe the language structures through which a new mythos is articulated. Matrix architecture is a framework for activation and alignment of the senses. It is a multisensory perceptual membrane that ignites the prism of the expanded body’s sensorium within the fluid interface of experiential metaphor. Matrix architecture articulates both a new sensorium and its interface with an integrated material/immaterial perceptual field. Perceptual resonance is the cathartic awakening of ‘the space between the senses’, evoked by the alignment of perceptual dimensions through matrix architecture. From this prismatic aperture emerges the mythic, transformative rheomode – the experiential language of the quantum wave. The rheomode is an expression of language. The term was coined by the quantum physicist David Bohm as an experiment in pursuit of a linguistic dimension of the wave. Yet in a neopoetic context, the rheomode becomes an evolutionary system. As Roy Ascott states,Language is not merely a device for communicating ideas about the world but rather a tool for bringing the world into existence. Art is a form of world building, of mind construction, of self-creation, whether through digital programming, genetic code, articulation of the body, imaging, simulation, or visual construction. Art is the search for new language, new metaphors, new ways of constructing reality, and for the means of redefining ourselves.Neopoetics mythos unfurls through the rheomode. It is an expression of an emerging ecology, an experiential awakening of the wave within the particle. Neopoetic myths are fluid evolutionary pulsations. They are transformation in the liquid convergences between material and immaterial dimensions. They are streams of lava birthing bedrock for an emerging paradigm.

A Study of the Popularity of Film through Poetics of Aristotle - Comparative analysis of the plot-structure in "Love" and "A Bittersweet Life"-

A Study of the Popularity of Film through Poetics of Aristotle - Comparative analysis of the plot-structure in "Love" and "A Bittersweet Life"-

La Vraisemblance narrative en question: Walter Scott, Barbey d'Aurevilly

By Fiona McIntosh. Paris, Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2002. 364 pp. Pb €23.00. In this immensely solid, if rather densely written, study, Fiona McIntosh invites us to turn our attention away from the nineteenth century's apparent obsession with realism and to examine the seemingly regressive concern with vraisemblance that is shown by her to have formed the central preoccupation of both Walter Scott and his anti-Naturalist disciple, Barbey d'Aurevilly. Her analysis, which derives much of its authority from her familiarity with both the rhetoricians of the Scottish Enlightenment and such hands-on theorists of language and literature as Charles Nodier, is prefaced by a lucid and subtle discussion of post-Enlightenment responses to the poetics of Aristotle. McIntosh argues convincingly that, amid much semantic confusion and the presence of ‘zones de flou’, the fundamental elements of Aristotelian vraisemblance survived the assault on those aspects of the philosopher's poetics that the Romantics associated with the aesthetics of classical drama to form a context in which the central reference point was constituted by the scandalous ‘événement unique’. Not surprisingly, it was with regard to the historical novel that the engagement with the concept of vraisemblance was most acutely experienced, for it was therein that the novelist was obliged to confront most obviously the problematic combination of fiction and the ‘real’, with Scott, moreover, providing a provocative incorporation of the fantastic, arguably the most blatant literary embodiment of a suspect singularité. If McIntosh, who, incidentally, underlines the contribution of contemporary legal thinking to the debate, advances our understanding of the aesthetics of a genre that was perpetually seeking its own justification, it is largely because of her appreciation that the historical event, far from being in simple opposition to popular notions of the fictional, shared with the latter a capacity to produce ‘une rupture dans le cours normal des choses’. Yet individual authors (and critics) inevitably responded differently to the challenge presented by the need for vraisemblance. This diversity is amply demonstrated with the aid of a typology that extrapolates from the authors themselves four different types of ‘rhétorisation’, each of which brings its own contradictions and paradoxes. In revealing the privileged status of ‘la rhétorisation de l'auctor’, McIntosh's rigorous analyses lead to the rehabilitation of a form of fiction that depended for its authority on compromise and a respect for the imaginative input of the reader, and, she argues suggestively, invites respect for its recognition of its own limits.

The Poetics of Aristotle as a Practical Guide

The following essay by Jill Paton Walsh is based on the lecture she gave during the Creative Writing Strand that was launched at CLISS 2003. The Creative Writing Strand proved a popular addition to the summerschool program and represented a new direction for the MA in Children’s Literature. The teaching team at NCRCL had wanted to introduce creative writing to the MA for some time; CLISS 2 provided the ideal opportunity for running a pilot version of the forthcoming module, Writing for A Young Audience. The MA in Children’s Literature has increasingly attracted both aspiring and practicing writers/illustrators, so creative writing seemed an obvious area for development. Indeed, the inception of this strand at CLISS reflects a widening interest in writing for children, which has been fuelled by the international success of writers such as J. K. Rowling and Philip Pullman and the “crossover” phenomenon that allows writers access to both child and adult markets. The Creative Writing Strand offered a diverse program of lectures by experienced and highly regarded practitioners in the field of children’s literature. Lectures were followed by practical workshops, providing students with the opportunity to share and develop their own work with peers and tutors. Students were also able to take this strand for credit; this option was taken up by more students than any other strand at CLISS. Each lecturer on this strand offered a different approach to the writing process and though, as Jill Paton Walsh confirms in her paper, some had doubts about the value of teaching creative writing, each offered useful insights into his or her craft nonetheless. Indeed, the notion of “craft”

The Birth of Literary Fiction in Ancient Greece

The purpose of this study is to find out how and why the 'poetics of fiction' arose, its sources, and the materials from which it was created. A series of cultural choices made in archaic and classical Greece produced a clash between the traditional 'poetics of truth', which derived poetry from divine inspiration and in the last analysis did not construe the poem as a work of art at all, and the new 'poetics of fiction', which derived poetry from art. The eventual succession of the latter, culminating with the Poetics of Aristotle, amounted to an aesthetic revolution because, as a result of it, literary fiction, which since then has become a necessary framework for both the theory and practice of literature in Western tradition, was for the first time separated from non-fiction and given a status of its own.

By Love Dispossessed: Comic Pharmacology in Calderón's Antes que todo es mi dama

The inclusive endings of most Calderón plays have latterly troubled critics to the point where some have seen his indeterminacy as a failure to face the consequences of his own dramatic postulates. "Comic Pharmacology" invites the calderonista to put aside the sharp and mutually exclusive binary oppositions inherent in the thinking of the Poetics of Aristotle, as inscribed in generic ideology, in favor of two other models, an earlier one provided by Socrates in the Symposium and the Phaedrus , and a later Derridaian one derived from these. "Comic Pharmacology" proposes that Socrates's struggle to align comedy with tragedy likewise informs the dramaturgy of Calderón and that the degree to which a play partakes of one mode rather than its companion other—sibling, twin—is a function of the strength of the tragic dose, pharmakon . Comedy is thus a dilute of the prime tragic potion.

The Limits of Chivalry: Tasso and the End of the Aeneid

T HE AENEID'S conclusion has been a source of enduring dissatisfaction for Vergil's readers. A suppliant Turnus stretches his hand forward, begging Aeneas to remember a parent's grief and not to press his hatred further. Aeneas hesitates, momentarily allowing the reader to expect that he will show mercy. But the sight of Pallas's baldric incites Aeneas to anger and revenge; he buries his sword in Turnus's breast and sends him to the shades below. From Servius to the present day, readers have shared two basic complaints about the Vergilian ending: Aeneas is unduly cruel in slaying his adversary, and the epic, with its abrupt and violent close, is narratively incomplete. The body of criticism that Torquato Tasso inherited as a sixteenthcentury reader of the Aeneid also attacked the poem's solution. It did so with a new critical vocabulary drawn from the re-discovered Poetics of Aristotle, and influenced by a revival of interest in the Ethics. The sixteenth-century Italian critics endlessly compared Vergil with Homer and scrutinized his invention and diction for flaws.' One aspect of neo-Aristotelian criticism that became particularly fashionable in connection with discussions of the Aeneid's conclusion was the newly re-defined concept of honor culled from the Ethics. In 1547, in a series of lectures delivered at Rome, Antonio Bernardi was among the first to discuss affairs of honorparticularly with regard to duels-in connection with Aristotle's theory of ethics.2 Bernardi's

The Poetics of Aristotle: Translation and Commentary

Incorporating the best modern work on the Poetics, Halliwell's translation is aimed at those who want a reliable version of Aristotle's ideas along with concise and stimulating guidance. A running commentary explains the structure and detail of Aristotle's argument, attempts to provoke further thought about the work's strengths and weaknesses, and offers suggestions on relating the Poetics to later stages of literary theory and practice.

Aristotle's Poetics - Stephen Halliwell: The Poetics of Aristotle (Translated, with Commentary). Pp. x + 197. London: Duckworth, 1987. £19.50 (paper, £8.95).

Aristotle's <i>Poetics</i> - Stephen Halliwell: The Poetics of Aristotle (Translated, with Commentary). Pp. x + 197. London: Duckworth, 1987. £19.50 (paper, £8.95).

Medea's Flight: The Fourth Book of the Argonautica

If Medea has attracted more readers to the Argonautica than any other character – thereby also determining which parts of the poem have become generally familiar – she has also provided critics of the poem with their major (sometimes their sole) topic for discussion. The main charge, particularly among critics writing in English, is that the various aspects of Medea – awakening love, deadly magic, fratricide – form neither a consistent nor a credible whole. One quotation, from an article which explicitly aims to summarise recent criticism, may stand as representative: ‘[Medea′s passion] produced an inconsistency [Apollonius] either ignored deliberately in the confidence of his Medea in love, or, just possibly, may not have noticed. The same emotionally immature and helpless Medea is the competent, unfrightened servant of Hecate, the cool instructress of Jason in taming the bulls, the calm soother of the dragon…the behaviour of Medea later in the [fourth] Book is, against all reason, quite untouched by what we would think of as a shattering experience, at the very least destructive of any real trust between her and Jason….It is as if Apollonius has thrown in [Apsyrtus′ murder] without care or realisation of its consequence for the consistency of her character’. Behind criticism of this kind lies both an understandable desire to relate the characters of ancient literature, if not to our own experience, at least to what instinct tells us is possible, and the whole tradition of criticism which descends from the Poetics of Aristotle. In recent years other approaches have gained currency, but in this paper I shall explore the presentation of Medea as a whole (Part I) and particularly of her flight from Colchis (Part II) within a traditional framework in an attempt to clarify what seem to me to be critical misunderstandings.

"Philanthropia" and the Evolution of Dramatic Taste

IN THE Poetics OF ARISTOTLE, the term LXadvOppwrov stands close behind axapria and Kadapcr-L among the problematical words and concepts which have attracted the most extensive study and comment. The importance of 4XkavOpworia in the moral and esthetic world of Menander has been emphasized by T. B. L. Webster, among others,1 and the passage in Plutarch's Table Talk discussed below (71 f-712d), where the word occurs in the context of a comparison of Aristophanes and Menander, has been remarked upon by those concerned with the influence and appreciation of Menander.2 What I hope to add is simply a clearer articulation of the shift in dramatic taste between the time of Sophocles and Aristophanes and that of

The Poetics ‘Through a Glass Darkly’ - I. M. Dahiyat: Avicenna's Commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle: a critical study with an annotated translation of the text. Pp. x + 126. Leiden: Brill, 1974. Cloth, fl. 52.

The Poetics ‘Through a Glass Darkly’ - I. M. Dahiyat: Avicenna's Commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle: a critical study with an annotated translation of the text. Pp. x + 126. Leiden: Brill, 1974. Cloth, fl. 52. - Volume 26 Issue 2

Hamartia. Tragic Error in the Poetics of Aristotle and in Greek Tragedy

Hamartia. Tragic Error in the Poetics of Aristotle and in Greek Tragedy