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Poetics

Aristotle

The founding text of Western literary theory. It conceives poetry as imitation (mimesis) of human actions, natural to human beings and a source of knowledge and pleasure, and claims it is more philosophical than history because it speaks of the universal. It defines tragedy as the imitation of a serious and complete action which, through pity and fear, accomplishes the purification (katharsis) of such emotions, and analyses its six parts, with the plot as the “soul” of the work, reversal, recognition and the tragic error (hamartia). Rediscovered in the Renaissance, it dictated the rules of classical drama for centuries.