西方文论——亚里士多德

As the greatest thinker and the most knowledgeable scholar of the ancient Greece, Aristotle is no doubt a vital figure in almost everywhere in Greek history. Although his writings cover many subjects , including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, linguistics, politics and government , Aristotle is among the most excellent philosophers all the time, and he also did incomparable contributions to ancient Greek literary theories. The most outstanding writing of him on literary theories collects in his Poetics. Aristotle's Poetics, which is particularly concerned with drama, is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory. Aristotle's original work was divided in two, but only the first part, which focuses on tragedy, survives. The lost second part addressed comedy. In the Poetics his basic standpoint is that imitation is the foundation of pleasure, which comes from all forms of art, not only poetry but also music, dancing, painting, and sculpture. Imitation is the most emphasized. It is the artists who usually help the others to understand the pleasure better in the way they find out similarities. According to Modern Library's Basic Works of Aristotle (2001), there are five basic parts within the table of contents page of the Poetics: (1) Elementary discourse on tragedy, epic poetry, and comedy, as the chief forms of imitative poetry. 2.1 Definition of a tragedy, and the rules for its construction. 2.2 Different analysis on tragedy 3. Rules for the construction of an epic: To arouse catharsis through pity and fear in the audience. The characters must be four things: good, appropriate, realistic, and consistent. Discovery must occur within the plot. It is important for the poet to visualize all of the scenes when creating the plot. The poet should incorporate Complication and Denouement within the story, as well as combine all of the elements of Tragedy. The poet must express Thought through the characters' words and actions, while paying close attention to Diction and how a character's spoken words express a specific idea. Aristotle believed that all of these different elements had to be present in order for the poetry to be well-done.4. Possible criticisms of an epic or tragedy, and the answers to them 5. Tragedy is artistically superior to epic poetry: Tragedy has everything that the Epic has, including epic meter. The reality of presentation is felt in the play as read, as well as in the play as acted. The tragic imitation requires less space for the attainment of its end. If it has more concentrated effect, it is more pleasurable than one with a large admixture of time to dilute it. There is less unity in the imitation of the epic poets and this is proved by any work of their supplies matter for several tragedies. In all these, he considers tragedy a higher form of art.

First of all, imitation is the common principle of the Poetics. Aristotle divides poetry according to whether it imitates people above or below the average state of humanity. The nature of art is just imitation, which is the base of telling apart art from crafts as well. He defines poetry as the mimetic or imitative use of language, rhythm and harmony separately or in combination. By saying poetry is mimetic, it means that it allows people to think about its subject matter as real while admitting that it is in fact imaginary. Poetry is mimetic because it creates an expression of things in the world, unlike philosophy, for example, which presents ideas. Imitation is human’s instincts, so poetry has a strong pull on us. We can not only fulfill our desire to learn about the world, but also gain aesthetic satisfaction. Owing to this, he holds that art origins from human’s instincts. All in all, the theory of Imitation, according to Aristotle, include following aspects:1) When artists are imitating the reality, they can perform it either as it is or more beautiful or more ugly. 2) There are three kinds of objects of imitation: a) things that happened or happens b) things in the legend or people believe in c) things that should happen. It is a special function of