In the tenth book of the Republic, when Plato has completed his final burning denunciation of Poetry, the false Siren, the imitator of things which themselves are shadows, the ally of all that is low and weak in the soul against that which is high and strong, who makes us feed the things we ought to starve and serve the things we ought to rule, he ends with a touch of compunction: 'We will give her champions, not poets themselves but poet-lovers, an opportunity to make her defence in plain prose and show that she is not only sweet—as we well know—but also helpful to society and the life of man, and we will listen in a kindly spirit. For we shall be gainers, I take it, if this can be proved.' Aristotle certainly knew the passage, and it looks as if his treatise on poetry was an answer to Plato's challenge. Few of the great works of ancient Greek literature are easy reading. They nearly all need study and comment, and at times help from a good teacher, before they yield up their secret. And the Poetics cannot be accounted an exception. For one thing the treatise is fragmentary. It originally consisted of two books, one dealing with Tragedy and Epic, the other with Comedy and other subjects. We possess only the first. For another, even the book we have seems to be unrevised and unfinished. The style, though luminous, vivid, and in its broader division systematic, is not that of a book intended for publication. Like most of Aristotle's extant writing, it suggests the MS. of an experienced lecturer, full of jottings and adscripts, with occasional phrases written carefully out, but never revised as a whole for the general reader. Even to accomplished scholars the meaning is often obscure, as may be seen by a comparison of the three editions recently published in England, all the work of savants of the first eminence, or, still more strikingly, by a study of the long series of misunderstandings and overstatements and corrections which form the history of the Poetics since the Renaissance.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Shipping:
US$ 2.64
Within U.S.A.
Shipping:
US$ 2.64
Within U.S.A.
Seller: GreatBookPrices, Columbia, MD, U.S.A.
Condition: As New. Unread book in perfect condition. Seller Inventory # 34786814
Quantity: 5 available
Seller: GreatBookPrices, Columbia, MD, U.S.A.
Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 34786814-n
Quantity: 5 available
Seller: booksXpress, Bayonne, NJ, U.S.A.
Soft Cover. Condition: new. Seller Inventory # 9781544603292
Quantity: 1 available
Seller: THE SAINT BOOKSTORE, Southport, United Kingdom
Paperback / softback. Condition: New. New copy - Usually dispatched within 4 working days. Seller Inventory # B9781544603292
Quantity: Over 20 available
Seller: THE SAINT BOOKSTORE, Southport, United Kingdom
Paperback / softback. Condition: New. This item is printed on demand. New copy - Usually dispatched within 5-9 working days. Seller Inventory # C9781544603292
Quantity: Over 20 available
Seller: GreatBookPricesUK, Castle Donington, DERBY, United Kingdom
Condition: As New. Unread book in perfect condition. Seller Inventory # 34786814
Quantity: 5 available
Seller: GreatBookPricesUK, Castle Donington, DERBY, United Kingdom
Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 34786814-n
Quantity: 5 available