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= Poetics_ =
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Introduction
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Poetics is the study or theory of poetry, specifically the study or
theory of device, structure, form, type, and effect with regards to
poetry, though usage of the term can also refer to literature broadly.
Poetics is distinguished from hermeneutics by its focus on the
synthesis of non-semantic elements in a text rather than its semantic
interpretation. Most literary criticism combines poetics and
hermeneutics in a single analysis; however, one or the other may
predominate given the text and the aims of the one doing the reading.
Western Poetics
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Generally speaking, poetics in the western tradition emerged out of
Ancient Greece. Fragments of Homer and Hesiod represent the earliest
Western treatments of poetic theory, followed later by the work of the
lyricist Pindar. The term 'poetics' derives from the Ancient Greek
ποιητικός 'poietikos' "pertaining to poetry"; also "creative" and
"productive". It stems, not surprisingly, from the word for poetry,
"poiesis" (ποίησις) meaning "the activity in which a person brings
something into being that did not exist before." Ποίησις itself
derives from the Doric word "poiéō" (ποιέω) which translates, simply,
as "to make." In the Western world, the development and evolution of
poetics featured three artistic movements concerned with poetical
composition: (1) the formalist, (2) the objectivist, and (3) the
Aristotelian.
Plato's ''Republic''
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The 'Republic' by Plato represents the first major Western work to
treat the theory of poetry. In Book III Plato defines poetry as a type
of narrative which takes one of three forms: the "simple," the
"imitative" (mimetic), or any mix of the two. In Book X, Plato argues
that poetry is too many degrees removed from the ideal form to be
anything other than deceptive and, therefore, dangerous. Only capable
of producing these ineffectual copies of copies, poets had no place in
his utopic city.
Aristotle's ''Poetics''
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Aristotle's 'Poetics' is one of the first extant philosophical
treatise to attempt a rigorous taxonomy of literature. The work was
lost to the Western world for a long time. It was available in the
Middle Ages and early Renaissance only through a Latin translation of
an Arabic commentary written by Averroes and translated by Hermannus
Alemannus in 1256. The accurate Greek-Latin translation made by
William of Moerbeke in 1278 was virtually ignored. The Arabic
translation departed widely in vocabulary from the original 'Poetics'
and it initiated a misinterpretation of Aristotelian thought that
continued through the Middle Ages.
The 'Poetics' itemized the salient genres of ancient Greek drama into
three categories (comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play) while drawing a
larger-scale distinction between drama, lyric poetry, and the epic.
Aristotle also critically revised Plato's interpretation of mimesis
which Aristotle believed represented a natural human instinct for
imitation, an instinct which could be found at the core of all poetry.
Modern poetics developed in Renaissance Italy. The need to interpret
ancient literary texts in the light of Christianity, to appraise and
assess the narratives of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, contributed
to the development of complex discourses on literary theory. Thanks
first of all to Giovanni Boccaccio's 'Genealogia Deorum Gentilium'
(1360), the literate elite gained a rich understanding of metaphorical
and figurative tropes. Giorgio Valla's 1498 Latin translation of
Aristotle's text (the first to be published) was included with the
1508 Aldine printing of the Greek original as part of an anthology of
'Rhetores graeci'. There followed an ever-expanding corpus of texts on
poetics in the later fifteenth century and throughout the sixteenth, a
phenomenon that began in Italy and spread to Spain, England, and
France. Among the most important Renaissance works on poetics are
Marco Girolamo Vida's 'De Arte Poetica' (1527) and Gian Giorgio
Trissino's 'La Poetica' (1529, expanded edition 1563). By the early
decades of the sixteenth century, vernacular versions of Aristotle's
'Poetics' appeared, culminating in Lodovico Castelvetro's Italian
editions of 1570 and 1576. Luis de Góngora (1561-1627) and Baltasar
Gracián (1601-58) brought a different kind of sophistication to
poetic. Emanuele Tesauro wrote extensively in his 'Il Cannocchiale
Aristotelico' (The Aristotelian Spyglass, 1654), on 'figure ingeniose'
and 'figure metaforiche'. During the Romantic era, poetics tended
toward expressionism and emphasized the perceiving subject.
Twentieth-century poetics returned to the Aristotelian paradigm,
followed by trends toward meta-criticality, and the establishment of a
contemporary theory of poetics. Eastern poetics developed lyric
poetry, rather than the representational mimetic poetry of the Western
world.
See also
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*Outline of poetry
*Cognitive poetics
*Descriptive poetics
*Historical poetics
*Figure of speech
*Poetry analysis
*Stylistic device
*Rhetorical device
*Meter (poetry)
*Allegory
*Allusion
*Imagery
*Musical form
*Symbolist poetry
*Sound poetry
*Refrain
*Literary theory
*History of poetry
*Poetics and Linguistics Association
*Theopoetics
Further reading
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*Olson, Charles (1950).
'[
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69406/projective-verse
Projective Verse]. New York, NY:' Poetry New York.
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* Original texts from 8 English poets before the 20th Century and from
8 20th Century Americans.
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Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetics_
