LiteratureBook · -335
Poetics
Aristotle
Aristotle takes tragedy apart into plot, character and the rest, argues that plot matters most, and introduces the terms still in use: mimesis, catharsis, the reversal and the recognition. Every screenwriting manual since is downstream of it.
Why you should read this
Aristotle's foundational work of literary and dramatic theory, introducing concepts like catharsis and the unities that later European drama treated as rules rather than as observations about the plays he had in front of him. Short but dense, and usually read alongside the Greek tragedies it draws its examples from.
- Field
- Literature
- Form
- Non-fiction
- Published
- 335 BCE
- Themes
- Aesthetics, Ancient GreeceLiterature
