Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

Kathleen and Cynda will be buddy reading Poetics by Aristotle in September. Anyone is welcome to join :)

All right, Cynda, it's almost time!

Anyone with insight, or like me, hoping to get some, is welcome to read with us. :-)

I'm limiting myself to library copies, and have looked at a couple of versions, but think I'll settle on this one: Aristotle's Poetics: A Translation and Commentary for Students of Literature

It is!
I have bought The Rhetoric and Poetics of Aristotle, published by Modern Library. It has been many years since I have read Rhetoric and hope to find some time to reread as well in Septmeber. I may also refer to The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present edited by Patricia Bizzell.
Looking forward to reading and discussing :-)

There are a lot of translations of the Poetics out there: it is a difficult book if you look at the mass of commentary and the controversies connected with it, but it has the merit of being short, and a lot of classicists have tried their hand. It also crops up constantly in critical literature, especially discussions of tragedy, so a lot of people are at least curious about it.

Combining it with The Rhetoric is a good idea. Although getting through that work can be a chore, it is a rewarding one.*

For those interested in a free copy of The Poetics, Archive.org (The Internet Archive) has several older versions, including PDFs of the various editions of S.H. Butcher's old "Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art. With a Critical Text and Translation of The Poetics." including the fourth edition (1907), and the posthumous minor revision of it from 1911.

This was a standard go-to "Poetics" for a good part of the twentieth-century. It once was available, complete, in a sturdy paperback from Dover Books, although by then it was outdated. Dover later reissued a translation-only copy, without the mass of (mainly) relevant information provided by Butcher.

In doing so they tossed aside well over 400 pages of Butcher's interpretation, responses to other interpretations, history of scholarship, etc. You can do the same thing with the PDF by skipping to the text and the facing translation, and ignoring the apparatus along with the introductory treatise

If anyone is still interested in trying it, I'll run down the URLs for them.

*It has long been assumed that Aristotle's Rhetoric came after rhetorical handbooks, or collections of examples, going back to some of the Sophists, so that the book reflects a teaching tradition of some depth. Fairly recently a claim has been advanced that those works are bibliographical ghosts, and that Aristotle had the use of at most of some oral teachings in the Academy of Plato. And Plato, although a very good rhetorician himself, distrusted his predecessors, and was unlikely to pass on what they had to say, if he even knew it.

So some of the difficulty with The Rhetoric may be that Aristotle was a pioneer in the theory of rhetoric, and not equipped with accepted technical terms with an already fixed meaning. This issue has been bane of rhetorical studies ever since, for that matter, since the whole modern study rests on translations from classical languages, with translators freely coining vernacular words, or just adopting the Greek or Latin, and then not agreeing on which name goes with which figure of speech...

This is so interesting, Ian. Great insight, and I really appreciate you sharing.

This may be the link you referred to, or a similar one, of the Butcher translation:
http://classics.mit.edu//Aristotle/po...

I may be using that as well.

I won't be trying to read The Rhetoric in September, although I wish I could. :-) Poetics will be all I can handle. :-)

Ian wrote: "There are a lot of translations of the Poetics out there: it is a difficult book if you look at the mass of commentary and the controversies connected with it, but it has the merit of being short, ..."

Ian, will you be joining us? You are more than welcome. Do you have any free/almost free online suggestions for background information on Poetics? Two or three links could be of great help.

Yes, I read Rhetoric in grad school. Indeed it was a worthwhile challenge. I am afraid that is all I remember. I will make an effort, no guarantees on reading the Rhetoric.

Thanks.

I was trying to be circumspect about The Rhetoric -- it is worth reading, but would take considerably more than a month to discuss, and following it would probably require some background reading in and about ancient Greek, and Latin, oratory -- which is no longer a part of the standard curriculum, even in translation. Or a very good introduction to a translation to fill in the blanks: on which point I have no suggestions.

The Poetics has its obscurities, but at least reading Greek tragedies is still in vogue -- even though almost all of those Aristotle would have known are completely gone -- and parts of it make perfect sense to readers without a full classical education.

One of the problems with reading The Poetics if you know some history of literary criticism is that a great number of things have been read into it which are not really there, so that its "historical influence" is sometimes at odds with the plain text. It was once turned into an official formula for writing "proper" plays, critics then ignoring points currently (or anyway in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) more in favor.

The link goes to Butcher's translation, and the translation only. There are many later translations which may be found more satisfactory, or at any rate less Victorian in style. That by Gerald Else is considered very good, if you can find a copy, and don't get it confused with his big "Aristotle's Poetics: The Argument." I haven't been able to call it up on Goodreads (too many books with the same title), but Amazon lists it: https://www.amazon.com/Aristotle-Poet...

For some cryptically expressed (if you aren't familiar with the literature on The Poetics) details on his work, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_...

If you are looking for a whole lot more in the way of resources, without doing a lot of searching, you can try the corrected impression of 1911, of Butcher's "Aristotle's Theory of Poetics and Fine Art, at https://archive.org/details/aristotle...

I now notice that I was a little obscure in my description of the Butcher volume: the text and translation *precede* the massive analysis and history, so there is no need to skip over them to reach the Poetics itself. You may or may not be able to get your preferred PDF reader to display the text and translation side by side, but I suppose that most of us will stick to the translation anyway: those with enough Greek to do a close comparison may want a newer text edition, anyway.

Cynda wrote: "Ian, will you be joining us? You are more than welcome. Do you have any free/almost free online suggestions for background information on Poetics? Two or three links could be of great help. ..."

I feel like I've committed myself to the reading.

I've already mentioned the huge treatment by Butcher, which is a starting place (and well organized enough that the reader can find something that looks pertinent without reading it from beginning to end!), albeit antiquated in places.

I'll take a look at what else is available on-line before September, although my schedule is getting crowded.

I used to have a small collection of translations of it, of various dates -- now gone with the rest of my hard-copy library -- which might be available used, and very cheaply, but I'm not sure if I can remember them in any detail, or even which I liked or didn't like.

Besides which there are probably a bunch more I haven't seen yet.

I can say that Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music" (available in several translations, some better than others) is of considerable importance in itself, and the history of classical studies in the twentieth century, but it is of no use whatsoever in understanding Aristotle on the subject.....

Glad you may join us. Please do not feel pressured. At all. I am completely capable of finding articles online. I was mostly wanting to be a part of the convo. If you you are able to join, we will be glad to have you. If not, we will all run into each other again at Catching Up. Happy Reading :-)

I have access to JSTOR where I have found a list of articles/reviews, etc. about Poetics. Anyone can gain access by saying independent researcher.

At the moment, and I don't know for how long, archive.org (The Internet Archive) has available the Blackwell "Companions to Philosophy" volume "A Companion to Aristotle," edited by Georgios Anagnostopoulos.

(The publisher may ask that it be taken down: use your own judgment on downloading it. Amazon has a Kindle edition at a not-too-outrageous price, but beyond my current budget.)

It is very recent (2009: Amazon gives 2013, the date of the paperback), very long (about 650 pages), and very comprehensive, but the two articles relevant for our purpose come at the very end, so there is no need to read much of anything else (although I plan to). The authors are said to be noted Aristotle scholars -- the few I recognize certainly are.

Again, if you use the Internet Archive, I suggest getting a PDF copy (not all of the other choices may download, for one thing).

https://archive.org/details/ACompanio...

Thank you Ian. I will read the last two articles.

Cynda wrote: "Thank you Ian. I will read the last two articles."

I just took a look at the table of contents again, and realized that because of a page break I'd missed noting that there are also two articles on The Rhetoric preceding those on the Poetics, both being characterized as forms of "Productive Knowledge." Those considering reading Rhetoric as well as Poetics will probably want to take a look at them.

Those interested in The Rhetoric (in general, not necessarily as part of our reading progam) may find help in Richard A. Lanham's A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms (Note: the author was one of my professors.) It is also entertaining reading if you are interested in language skills, or just what particular figures of speech are called.

I would suggest trying to find it in a library, although it may be classified as a non-circulating reference book.

The second edition used to be available in a reasonably priced Kindle version, but that no longer seems to be the case: at least Amazon has lost track of it.

The hard copies on offer there are outrageously priced (in my opinion), when I did a direct search. https://www.amazon.com/Handlist-Rheto...

However, the Goodreads Amazon link goes to a different page, where a new copy, and prices from dealers, are somewhat more reasonable, if they are available: https://www.amazon.com/Handlist-Rheto...

Ian I am glad to say I have on my reading table Lanham's A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms. I have kept it from a long ago rhetoric cluster of courses I took. What an honkr for you to have known Lanham.

It is on my table because I may need to Lanham while reading a rhetorical study of the The Gettysburg Address. I am reading Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America by Garry Wills.

I will look at the link to the articles cited in message 10.

You have once again helped me plenty. I now feel prepared. Thank you Ian. I am all set.

Cynda wrote: "Ian I am glad to say I have on my reading table Lanham's A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms. I have kept it from a long ago rhetoric cluster of courses I took...."

Great!

And now a long digression:

Since we're not getting to "The Poetics" for a while, I might as well mention that my favorite treatise on rhetoric -- which I do NOT particularly recommend to those looking for an easy introduction to the subject (or even a hard one) -- is The Book of the Honeycomb's Flow, which runs to about 600 pages, including the vital indexes.

I reviewed it on Amazon some time back: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...

I keep meaning to re-read it, but it will take a considerable block of time. Probably not this year. Unless, maybe, we decide to read Aristotle on the subject.

One of its charms is that its very existence is surprising.

It is a Renaissance treatment (published about 1475) of the subject, based on classical and medieval sources. Aristotle and Cicero (and pseudo-Aristotle and pseudo-Cicero) are major points of reference.

But it was written in Hebrew for the benefit of Italian (and other) Jews who needed familiarity with rhetorical theory and practice to fit into professional life in the larger (Christian) community, in which rhetoric was of the first importance in any good education.

The author, Judah Messer Leon, maintains the thesis that rhetoric was well-known in Biblical Israel, but was one of the secular subjects, like Ptolemaic astronomy, subsequently lost, and now being recovered from the gentiles.

To establish this, he draws primarily on the Hebrew Bible (the "Old Testament") for illustrations, and in places offers rhetorically-informed analyses of Biblical passages. (Some of them are pretty convincing, in my opinion -- and some aren't.)

So it doubles as a guide to understanding the Bible in the light of rhetorical theory, and one based on intimate acquaintance with the Hebrew text.

The modern English translator, Isaac Rabinowitz, was very careful about lining up English translations of Hebrew technical terms with their Greco-Roman originals (with detours through Arabic in some cases), although he inevitably differs in places with Lanham's preferences.

Ian, tweny years ago I would have taken up the opportunity to read The Book of the Honeycomb's Flow in a heartbeat. I would have made every attempt to read and understand after which i would have walked away with a expanded understanding. I no longer have the mental energy. Maybe someone else does. Thanks for thinking of me.

I downloaded the Companion to Aristotle, and am excited to read the last two articles. Thank you Ian!

I've been thumbing through my book, Aristotle's Poetics: A Translation and Commentary for Students of Literature, and think it will be perfect for me. The commentary is broken down by chapter, and is about three times as long as the translation. It goes into analytic detail--complete with diagrams, but without assuming any classics knowledge, which is perfect for me. I read the introduction to both parts, and am looking forward to digging in!

For anyone else joining us who doesn't have a translation of The Poetics, or would like to use another, or to have a commentary, especially if it is free:

A rival to Butcher's out-of-copyright translation (with or without his massive commentary and history of scholarship) is Ingram Bywater's from 1909, originally as part of a text, etc., edition. The translation only was also published separately, with an introduction by Gilbert Murray, a classicist at one times well-known to the reading public, under the title of "Aristotle on the Art of Poetry."

This short version is available from The Internet Archive and Project Gutenburg, as well in some commercial Kindle editions, and many people would probably find it quite satisfactory, by itself or along with another, later, translation.

Bywater also edited a text-only edition, which is nice if you read Classical Greek and Latin (for the textual notes), but not much use to the rest of us. It too is available on The Internet Archive, and I mention it here to avoid confusion. It was also not Bywater's final word on the state of the Greek text.

This is "Peri poietikes. On the Art of Poetry. A Revised text, with Critical Introduction, Translation, and Commentary," a downloadable-copy of which can be found at https://archive.org/details/peripoiet...

(Again, I recommend the PDF, which will preserve the details of the text. Unfortunately, this one came out as yellowed, but it is still readable.)

At about 400 pages, it is still shorter than Butcher, but might be used in conjunction with his full edition, for a different point of view on many issues. Unfortunately, they have to be picked out of technical material on Greek grammar and vocabulary: but the same is true of Butcher, of course.

Bywater, without, I think, mentioning Butcher by name in the opening material, specifically disapproves of his very title of "Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art." He points out that Aristotle mentions the visual arts only as a point of comparison: and adds that the assumed meaning of "Fine Art," as opposed to any product of a skill, is at most no older than the later eighteenth-century.

Bywater also deals with the attempts, partly on the basis of an Arabic translation, to improve the state of the Greek text, which is not in good condition, and reconstruct from it the lost second part of the Poetics, dealing with Comedy. He is not sanguine about either project.

(There is no Arabic commentary for the Poetics, as there are for many of Aristotle's other works, and these often provide crucial information for reconstructing the Greek text from which the Arabic was translated. In this case, the translator, unfamiliar with Homeric epics and Athenian drama, may have been at a loss to figure out what Aristotle was even talking about.)

{Important ADDENDUM: When I wrote this I was under the distinct, but, it turns out, incorrect, impression that there was no surviving Arabic commentary. And in addition, that, like the POLITICS, the POETICS was not even covered by the great Arabic-language commentator/philosopher Averroes. (Averroes never found a copy of the former, and to satisfy his patron he did a commentary on Plato's REPUBLIC, arguing that the pupil couldn't be all that different from the teacher.) It turns out that a short commentary by Averroes does survive, and has even been translated.}

There were some major publications on the issue in the early twentieth century, which I may be able to run down on The Internet Archive: I have no idea of the present status of the question, but it seems to have dropped out of active debate.

Cynda wrote: "Ian, tweny years ago I would have taken up the opportunity to read The Book of the Honeycomb's Flow in a heartbeat. I would have made every attempt to read and understand after which..."

I have the same problem, although I tend to ignore when it comes to Goodreads. Hence my reluctance to refresh my memory of it by actually re-reading it, instead of just consulting it via the index.

I see I forgot to mention that the book isn't actually as long as the page numbers indicate. They are consecutively numbered, and the English translation faces the Hebrew text, so one can drop almost half the length (to about 300 pages) in figuring reading time (barring the 70-page introduction). So it is still a long book.

What with bibliographical concerns, I keep forgetting to mention that there is a Literary Criticism Book Club currently active on Goodreads.

We've read Northrop Frye's "Anatomy of Criticism," and the current topic is Booth's "Rhetoric of Fiction." The next book is up for nominations: Huizinga's "Homo Ludens," which has the merit of being short, is receiving some consideration.

If no one objects, I'll post an announcement of this Buddy Read there: we may pick up a few people with an established interest in the subject.

Awww I would've enjoyed reading The Rhetoric of Fiction. I as a member of the group have no objection to a quick mention and no discussion. Anyone interested could PM you.

The free versions I've mentioned have, not unexpectedly, been very old (from the 1890s to about 1910), and I've been looking at some of the commercially available translations of the Poetics, such as those from Penguin Classics (Poetics), Oxford World's Classics, and the Norton Critical Edition, plus a few others. The Penguin Classics is the only one I've so far been able to pull up on Goodreads -- too many books with the same title.

The only one I've felt moved to buy is the Kindle version of the annotated translation by Sir Anthony Kenny (Oxford World's Classics, 2013), which for the moment is at a slightly reduced price on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Poetics-Oxford...

It has some useful information in the notes, not all of which I remember seeing before in that context. But the other two mentioned also look like they have merits.

I felt moved to comment on one review of the Kenny translation, because the reviewer had missed the point of the numbers appearing somewhere on the page (and also, I suspect, how to view them correctly).

As actually explained in the book, they are from the standard text edition of Aristotle's works, the page, section, and line number of which are used for precise references (like chapters and verses in a Bible).

The page/column numbers seem to be in the right positions *if* the Kindle edition is read in landscape mode, but the line numbers are run together, which is a constant problem with Kindle conversions of this sort of text. (Oxford University Press should have figure out how to improve this a long time ago: if not Amazon itself.)

I mention this here and now because the same numbers will appear in many translations of Aristotle, although not all of them, or in all editions of those translations. Bringing it up now may save some confusion, and, as intended, allow easier cross references for those using different translations.

Anyone interested in the intellectual context of The Poetics, and its (apparent lack of) impact on antiquity, can now access for free a massive collection of "Ancient Literary Criticism. The Principal Texts in New Translations" (1972).

It has been re-posted on Academia, which requires free registration (and they track your downloads and searches, which allows prompts for things in your fields of interest, but worries some people). See
https://www.academia.edu/40066857/Anc...

It is still available commercially: I'm not sure how long it will stay accessible there.

I just had this turn up on my Academia feed, so I have no experience with it -- I'm passing on the information for whatever it is worth.

I'll be busy over the weekend, so wanted to post my plan now.

I'm going to do a quick read through of this version: Aristotle On the Art of Fiction. The translator is L. J. Potts. I've browsed through it and like how smooth and easy to read it is.

Then when I finish that, I'll dive into reading more carefully, with this version that I mentioned above: Aristotle's Poetics: A Translation and Commentary for Students of Literature.

If anyone is interested in a schedule, I am open. I just wanted to familiarize myself with the work as a whole first, since this is my first reading.

Kathleen, while I do not have a clear plan, I will want to start reading when you start reading. I will review my rhetoric book from way back grad school: The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present by Patricia Bizzell starting Sunday. Whenever you start reading Poetics, just let me know so that I can pretty much read with you. Does that work for you?

Cynda wrote: "Kathleen, while I do not have a clear plan, I will want to start reading when you start reading. I will review my rhetoric book from way back grad school: [book:The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings f..."

Of course that works--you are too kind. Thank you Cynda. :-) I think I'll be able to do my quick read over the weekend, and be ready to start on Tuesday the 6th.

How's this for a very rough schedule:
Sept 1- 10: Chapters 1-10
Sept 11 - 17: Chapters 11-26
Sept 18 - 30: Catch up and Overall discussion

Or start and see how it goes!

Good plan Kathleen to do one short chapter a day, time to read and sleep on. I will have to finish up a couple or three books by the time we start reading. All Go here.

I agree about the schedule, although I am not sure whether the chapter divisions are sufficient for fine details, like comparing separated passages.

Fortunately, POETICS is short enough to navigate pretty easily. And there is a way of specifying passages very, very, precisely, which might be available to at least some of us.

A lot of translations (and all modern editions) of THE POETICS will have alphanumerics in the margins, or even embedded in the text. A quick example, from the Nicomachean Ethics, is 1094a1, page 1,094, column a, line 1. (example courtesy of Wikipedia: see below).

They are usually explained somewhere in the book, such as a "Note on the Translation," or the information is otherwise buried in the introduction, or even tucked away at the end, so it is easy for the novice reader to miss their meaning and importance.

I know: they bothered me for several years before I found a translation that clearly explained where they came from, and what they are for, instead of just naming them, and saying they were being used.

These are known most commonly as Bekker numbers, on which see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekker_...

In brief, August Bekker was the chief editor of a nineteenth-century "Complete" Aristotle,* a huge multi-volume project on which he imposed consecutive page numbering, across volumes, complete with column and line numbers. The numbers have been universally adopted in critical scholarship (although it appears that some Catholic scholars, and some medievalists, still refer to the chapter numbers of the medieval Latin translations.

Elsewhere, as in translations and secondary studies, it is widely used as a convenience for readers.

The edition was published by the Prussian Academy of Sciences, and the numbers are sometimes known as Berlin numbers, after the place of publication, instead of the editor.

I explained this all as a comment to an Amazon review of the Kindle edition of Sir Anthony Kenny's Oxford World's Classics translation of POETICS, which complained that the numbers were meaningless, but the comment has been deleted -- I suspect that the reviewer complained to Amazon, and they took the easy course of eliminating it, instead of figuring out whether it was correct and relevant. (Maybe I should have been longer and apologetic, rather than brief and to the point.)

By the way, the Kindle edition of Kenny's POETICS (Oxford Worlds Classics), like many others, *does* have some problems with its use of Bekker numbers, so the review wasn't entirely wrong. They are indeed jumbled-looking in portrait mode, but landscape mode restores the page/column numbers to their correct places in the margins: which requires a device which allows you to make the shift by rotating it. It works automatically on the Cloud Reader.

Unfortunately, in the Kindle edition, however it is viewed, the line numbers (5, 10, 15, etc.) are often included immediately after the pages/column numbers, instead of in their proper positions in relation to the text, as in the print version. Annoyingly, there are a few cases in which they seem to be in the right position.

*I put quotation marks on "Complete" Aristotle, because a plausibly Aristotelian treatise on "The Athenian Constitution" showed up after the completion of the project, and it did not include various Fragments, apparently by editorial decision.

Glad this will work, Ian, and thanks for explaining the Bekker numbers. Both of my translations have those, so I should be able to share accordingly. I expect we will digress more in some places than others, so we'll keep the schedule loose!

Above I said I'd be ready to start on the 6th, but I meant the 3rd!

I finished my quick read through of the Potts translation, and found it very readable. I'm looking forward to a deeper dive now, and am particularly excited to get to discussions and plot of mise en scene.

One idea I found most intriguing was Aristotle's distinction between telling what did happen (history) versus what "would" happen, and this idea of imitation. The Potts intro included this line about Aristotle's emphasis on it: “The radical idea is embodying another nature, identifying oneself with it, and acting as it would act." So interesting to consider the value of this, and why it occurs in music and dance as well as poetry/fiction.

I can start tomorrrow the 4th. I plan to goto library today or tomorrow to pick up Aristotle for Everybody by Mortimer J. Adler

Kathleen wrote: "Above I said I'd be ready to start on the 6th, but I meant the 3rd!

I finished my quick read through of the Potts translation, and found it very readable. I'm looking forward to a deeper dive now,...

why it occurs in music and dance"

This raises a lot of issues.

First, though, I used to have a copy of Potts, and I agree that it is very readable: also, compared to others, it seems accurate, once you grant his interpretations of terms under debate.

As for why or how music and dance could be considered imitations:

It may help to consider that music was an intrinsic part of Athenian plays, and possibly dance as well (at least in the form of the entrance of the chorus -- I've seen more than one opinion on this). Aristotle is quite clear on the role of music and "spectacle" in performances.

Different styles of music (usually identified ethnically) were thought to correspond to, and to produce, different emotions -- hence Plato's concern for the kinds of music to be allowed in the perfect state. So it too can be deemed an imitation of an experience, if not of an action.

And traditional dances performed at certain rituals were later, at least, interpreted as representing events in mythical times, e.g., Theseus leading the Athenian youths and maidens out of the Labyrinth (if I recall correctly).

It should be noted that other dances seem to have had only a general relationship to any particular message. According to some scholars, the poet Pindar was able to simply specify the traditional music for his Victory Odes, composed to honor winners at the major Games, like the Olympics.

In this view, he could trust the local organizers, from or chosen by the family of the victor, to include the related traditional dance steps as well. So he didn't have to make appearances in widely scattered places to direct the performances for himself, which may have been the case for some commissions in widely separate parts of Greece, and the Greek colonies.

It would seem that the Athenian tragedians provided music, and, at least at first, directed the performers, in cooperation with the sponsor or sponsors.

As Mary Renault pointed out, playwrights themselves directing must have declined if the later repertoire included revivals of plays by, e.g., Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, long after they were dead (as seen in her novel, The Mask of Apollo). And we know that Euripides' last play was performed in Athens posthumously, so the practice may already have been changing.

(Athens assigned wealthy citizens to finance performances at a major festival, the Dionysia, as a civic obligation. And it was a chance to show off their wealth, in ways that might otherwise have been offensive in the new democracy. Some of them still got into trouble for what were deemed excessively lavish sets and costumes.)

I'm currently reading, with another group, a work in which it is pointed out that the Greeks had no common word for recreational activities, so that there were games for children (one word) and contests for adults (another word), and music -- including a bunch of activities not covered by the English word -- and tragedy and comedy. The Romans had a word to cover them all, which is why in English gladiatorial combats and the ancient Olympics can both be called "Games." But *ludus* also covered school, as a "leisure" activity for the well-off (Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture).

Very curious what you think of the Adler, Cynda!

Interesting context, Ian. I'm not a dancer, but have played music all my life and find this idea of imitation fascinating. I guess even back then, "traditional" music was just music that had been around long enough to lose its radicalness. :-)

A few notes about Chapter 2, and then I may not have more until the weekend.

The first line says imitation must be … and then uses two words to compare. Apparently this points to whether the work is comedy or tragedy, and the translations of those words are all over the place: good or bad, noble or base, serious or trivial, or maybe my favorite, from the Potts translation: high or low, as in tragedy is of higher value (and easier to read as relating to the action, not the character, as I believe was intended.)

So that judgment is really interesting, but also the way it is judged either better or worse than the norm, which is to say us, the way we think of ourselves. So interesting how we see ourselves as the dividing line.

Kathleen, I am reading the Adler. On the the surface very basic. Adler intended to to write for general readers, something I am past. But I am not a philosopher, either. According to Adler, the "Man the Maker" is appropriate reading for those reading Poetics, so I will read that section, just short of 45 easy pages. It may help.

I am finding more conversational discussion of philosophy than I found in my lonf-ago required Philosophy course. The connections and differentiations between thoughts are clear and accessible.

I started with reading The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present. But that essay preceding the condensed The Art of Rhetoric was geared toward toward that piece of writing, not Poetics.

I will start with Poetics tonight--if you are already reading. . . . Are you reading Poetics?

Man the Maker does sound very fitting, Cynda.

I am reading Poetics. I read the Potts translation, which is Poetics but is called Aristotle On the Art of Fiction. That's the one I read through quickly. Now I'm reading a Golden translation, Aristotle's Poetics: A Translation and Commentary for Students of Literature, in which the first part is the translation of Poetics, and the second part is a detailed, chapter by chapter analysis. I liked the Potts translation better perhaps, but the analysis in the Golden is great. I'm on Chapter 3 now.

Aristotle's Poetics: A Translation and Commentary for Students of Literature sounds like something I too would enjoy. (I am on a short book-buying hiatus.) I look forward to reading any review you write. I start Poetics tonight. Now that I have refreshed and learned more philosophy, I feel prepared.

I'm planning to follow this discussion, and drop in from time to time, but I've meanwhile been persuaded to lead a discussion of another book, so my responses may be delayed until when I have enough free time -- I'll have to see how it goes.

Meanwhile, one of the more interesting things I've picked up about interpretation of the POETICS is that it is supposed to have had, for a good part of the twentieth century, a bigger presence in English than it did in Greek (or "Classical Languages") and Philosophy departments.

Apparently it is getting a new look from people interested in fitting it in to Aristotle's thought, and not in mining it for topics in literary criticism.

(There was a whole critical school of thought known as Neo-Aristotelianism, based mainly on the POETICS, which has its own Wikipedia article, plus others on its major figures. Those who embraced it were also known as the Chicago School, from its association with the University of Chicago.)

I'm not sure what any actual statistics of which professors were assigning it, and to whom, would reveal, but there have certainly been a good number of translations aimed at literature students, which reference Aristotle's other works only for usages of difficult topics like "hamartia" "catharsis," and "mimesis," some of which the POETICS mentions far less often than do the critics. And translation-only version of the old Bywater and Butcher critical editions.

I will be a silent observer too...Thanks a lot Ian for all the information on the poetics and its translations and the links.They are very helpful.
Thanks Kathleen and Cynda for your suggestions and great discussions on the translations and extra readings too.

And I am reading the Gutenberg link of S.H.Butcher's Poetics translation . Just the superficial reading to know what its about.

Hi siriusedward. Hope you can, like Ian has and may yet, drop in on occassion. We will help each other as we can.

I have found a JSTOR article I seem to be able to read and grasp: "Aristotle's Poetics, the Rhetorical Principles." by John T Kirby.

In case anyone is interested. Anyone can join JSTOR as an independent researcher (last option) at no cost. Some articles can be read online. That's what I do to find more professional resources. Sometimes I only have patience for understanding bits and pieces, just enough for me to gain new understanding. . . .

Ian wrote: "...Meanwhile, one of the more interesting things I've picked up about interpretation of the POETICS is that it is supposed to have had, for a good part of the twentieth century, a bigger presence in English than it did in Greek (or "Classical Languages") and Philosophy departments."

This is where my interest fits in (and why I chose the book I did)--Poetics as it applies to the writing of fiction. And I've noticed that it appears on the syllabus for many MFA programs.

Elena! So good to see you here, and look forward to your thoughts. Please don't be silent! I too wondered what it was all about. :-)

Thank you Cynda for JSTOR info. For now, I'm still working on the articles Ian recommended, but will definitely visit this in the future. Fun!

Cynda wrote: "I have found a JSTOR article I seem to be able to read and grasp: "Aristotle's Poe... In case anyone is interested. Anyone can join JSTOR as an independent researcher.... "

JSTOR is great for recent articles (and some older ones) that are otherwise behind paywalls, but you can keep only a few on hand for consultation later, and there is a time requirement which can keep you from following up references for days.

As I mentioned in message 23, my preference is for Academia.edu, most articles on which can be downloaded freely, for permanent retemtion -- usually more than I can conveniently read on a topic.

Basic service is free, with registration.

Some listings are just publicity announcements of newly-published works, without an upload of the text, or of works covered by copyright restrictions against on-line postings, but the vast majority are there for the asking. They sometimes include complete books.

And sidebars suggest related articles, sometimes related only by a single word in the title, but often very useful.

It is a commercial site, with advertising, and offer a premium service, which now includes automatic bulk downloads of related articles. just skip their reminders: if a popup makes the offer, you can just click on the line that says to download the article, and skip the upgrade.

Ian thank you for the suggestion of Ancient Literary Criticism: The Principal Texts in New Translations . I bought a copy. I bought this book in particular because it will help me to understand a variety of works. A multi-use book for approximately the same price of about $10.

With chapters 3 through 5, it seems we're in a review of history, which is enlightening, even though not of particular interest to me. I liked this in Chapter 4 about why we enjoy imitation (Potts translation) “… He enjoys looking at these representations, because in the act of studying them he is learning—identifying the object by an inference ….”
 And in my Golden translation analysis, they sum it up this way: “They [imitations] give pleasure and the source of the pleasure according to Aristotle is their communication of the universal in the particular.”

On to chapter 6 now.

Hi Kathleen. I am about on the same chapter. I have been in a strange place, in part because I sent it my tablet, my only personal connection with Goodreads. So now I am at the library to just do a quick update. I plan to come to the library at least every other day until my table comes back on/about the 25th.

I am remembering Ian's gentle heads up that it is too easy to read background info about Aristotle only you can become convinced that one cannot possible understand. So I have limited my philosophical study to Aristotle for Everybody and have allowed my one part of one rhetorical article from JSTOR and will have a better look at the www.academia.edu site that Ian suggested.

That sounds like a pain, Cynda! If you want to stop here and start up again when you get your tablet back, that is absolutely fine with me. I'm in no rush. :-)

Thanks for that Kathleen. That is kind.
I have some comments I am ready to make.

Chapters 4 & 5
For a couple of days, I wondered at Aristotle's/translator's use of the word "ridiculous". However, after some consideration, I have decided 'ridiculous" is a good way to describe comedy.

Question: How do other translators we are reading translate into (one word/short phrase) English Aristotle's description of comedy.

Chapter 6
The Six Parts of Every Tragedy
1. Fable or Plot
2. Characters
3. Diction
4. Thought
5. Spectacle
6. Melody

Question: Thought? I am thinking of how until the late late 19th century (perhaps earlier or later) novel characters thought out their thoughts. In what I think of as the tragedy of The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot, I see large amounts of thought, musing before any actions. The always threatening to be tragedies, the Gothic romances, I also find large musing thoughts.

Question: Melody? Maybe we just don't use that part of tragedy. I am using Shakespeare as Early Modern writer as a medium point between the ancients and ourselves.
Stage and movie productions of Shakespearean tragedies do at least sometimes contain a song and dance or otherwise theatrical/intended to be celebratory part. I am thinking of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. There are probably other examples, those just come readily to mind. I am not sure that we use this aspect--Melody--in our contemporary tragedies.

Entertaining this Quote from Chapter 6:

[T]he older poets make theirs personages discourse like statesmen and the modern like rhetoricians.

I agree that literary personages increasingly do relax and sound more relaxed.

Like this Quote from Chapter 7:

The limit, however, set by the natural nature of the thing is this: the longer the story, consistently with its be comphensible as a whole, the finer it is by reason on it magnitude.

I am remembering epic movies, movies done on epic scale, even 3-hour long 1990s movies.