Poetics of Aristotle: Translation And Commentary - Softcover

Halliwell, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0715621769 ISBN 13: 9780715621769

Publisher: Bristol Classical Press, 1987

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Modern students can now appreciate the wisdom of the world’s greatest thinkers. Through clear, faithful translations in the Focus Philosophical Library, renowned scholars have made modern and classical philosophical texts accessible and inspirational.

From the Introduction
Some of the most exhilarating things an educated person can think about come tumbling out of Aristotle’s inquiry into the questions of what a tragedy is, what it does, and how it does it. In the Poetics a human achievement of rare power and a thinker of rare depth met, and the world has never stopped talking about their encounter.

“I find the Introduction extremely convincing, lucid, learned, fair to past scholarship, and truly illuminating about the meaning of tragedy in general and about the very specific acceptions of hamartia, katharsis, ekplêxis, and thauma, in the context of an appropriate understanding of the Poetics. Another remarkable feature is the dexterity and ease with which it draws on all the relevant parts of the Aristotelian corpus to shed light on troublesome textual passages in the Poetics. Finally, the style of the Introduction is straightforward, free of unnecessary jargon, direct, and economical, the best interpretation of the Poetics I ever read.”
—Sabetai Unguru, Tel Aviv University

“The translations of Joe Sachs are a great gift to Greekless amateurs like me. He uses simple, unambiguous words joined into sentences that are often complex, as they must be to be accurate, but always clear (after sufficient attention has been paid). A stylist may find some awkwardness in the hyphenated compound words and the noun clauses he prefers to the polysyllabic Latinate words often found in English versions of Aristotle. But these blunt locutions — along with Sachs’ excellent notes — manage to convey both the richness of meaning and the clarity of thought of their Greek antecedents. The resulting translation may strike some as awkward in style, but it will strike the careful reader who cares about what is translated as elegant (in the way mathematicians use that word).”
Jerry L. Thompson, Author, Truth and Photography

About the Author:

Joe Sachs taught for thirty years at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. He has translated Aristotle's "Physics," "Metaphysics" and "On the Soul" and, for the Focus Philosophical Library, Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" and "Poetics", and Plato's "Theaetetus" and "Republic."

About this edition

• Publisher: Bristol Classical Press
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0715621769
• ISBN 13: 9780715621769
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208