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Literary Criticism and Theories
Notes
6 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY
an enlightened selfishness. The doing of a kind deed is not an act of self-sacrifice but of self-
preservation. For a man is not an individual self but a social self. Moreover, every good deed is a
profitable investment. It is bound, sooner or later, to be returned with interest. “The ideal man,
therefore, is altruistic because he is wise......He never feels malice and always forgets injuries......In
short, he is a good friend to others, because he is his own best friend.”
His Works
The more important works of Aristotle are :
1. 158 Constitutions (including 2. Dialogues.
the Constitutions of Athens).
3. On Monarchy. 4. Alexander.
5. The Custom of Barbarians. 6. Natural History.
7. Organon, or The Instrument 8. On the Soul.
of Correct Thinking.
9. Rhetoric. 10. Logic.
11. Educational Ethics. 12. Nicomachean Ethics.
13. Physics. 14. Metaphysics.
15. Politics. 16. Poetics.
Aristotle wrote about four hundred volumes in all. These volumes covered practically every phase
of human knowledge and human activity. But many of them have been lost. Thus it is supposed
that he wrote a dialogue on The Poet, and that The Poetics had a second part. But these works have
not come down to us.
1.2 Aristotle’s Poetics—An Introduction
The Poetics must have been penned by Aristotle after he settled as teacher and investigator in
Athens about 335 B.C., and before he left Athens in 324 B.C. It is a short treatise of twenty-six
chapters and forty-five pages, neither exhaustive and comprehensive, nor yet a coherent study of
the subject with which it deals. It does not seem to be a work intended for publication. It does not
say much about Comedy, touches rather briefly on the epic, and the renowned concept of ’Catharsis’
has not been fully developed or explained. It is a lopsided work, concerned mainly with Greek
philosopher’s theory of tragedy.
Its Six Parts
It is divisible into the following six parts :
1. Chapters I—V contain introductory remarks on poetry, and its classification into different
kinds, including tragedy and comedy. Imitation is said to be the basic principle common to all
arts.
2. The next fourteen chapters VI—XIX are devoted to Tragedy, a definition is given, and its
formative elements are discussed.
3. The next three chapters XX—XXII are devoted to a discussion of poetic diction.
4. Chapter XXIII deals with Narrative Poetry and Tragedy.
5. The epic is treated in brief and compared with tragedy in Chapters XXIV and XXVI.
6. Chapter XXV examines the objections of critics against poetry. The objections are also answered.
Its Plan
Commenting on the scheme and plan of the Poetics, Abercrombie writes that the subject matter of
the Poetics, as the book has come down to us, is not merely restricted to Greek literature, but to
certain kinds of Greek literature. These are four in number ; and Aristotle groups them in pairs,
according to their historical and aesthetic connections. He supposes poetry to begin in two kinds,