Book details

Aristotle's Poetics

Author: Aristotle; Translated by S. H. Butcher; Introduction by Francis Fergusson

Aristotle's Poetics

Aristotle's Poetics

$15.00

Trade Paperback

About This Book

Introduced by Francis Fergusson, the Poetics, written in the fourth century B.C., is still an essential study of the art of drama, indeed the most fundamental one we have. It has been used...

Page Count
128
On Sale
01/01/1961

Book Details

Introduced by Francis Fergusson, the Poetics, written in the fourth century B.C., is still an essential study of the art of drama, indeed the most fundamental one we have. It has been used by both playwrights and theorists of many periods, and interpreted, in the course of its two thousand years of life, in various ways. The literature which has accumulated around it is, as Mr. Fergusson points out, "full of disputes so erudite that the nonspecialist can only look on in respectful silence." But the Poetics itself is still with us, in all its suggestiveness, for the modern reader to make use of in his turn and for his own purposes.

Francis Fergusson's lucid, informative, and entertaining Introduction will prove invaluable to anyone who wishes to understand and appreciate the Poetics. Using Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, as Aristotle did, to illustrate his analysis, Mr. Fergusson pints out that Aristotle did not lay down strict rules, as is often thought: "The Poetics," he says, "is much more like a cookbook than it is like a textbook of elementary engineering." Read in this way, it is an essential guide not only to Sophoclean tragedy, but to the work of so modern a playwright as Bertolt Brecht, who considered his own "epic drama" the first non-Aristotelian form.

Imprint Publisher

Hill and Wang

ISBN

9780809005277

In The News

“A work which must become essential reading not only for all serious students of the Poetics . . . but also for those (the great majority) who have prudenty fought shy of it altogether.” —B. R. Rees, Classical Review

About the Creators

Aristotle's Poetics

Aristotle's Poetics

$15.00

Trade Paperback