The Poetics offers an analysis of how poetry, and particularly Greek tragedy, functions. Written in the 300s BCE, it analyzes the dramatists who had been famous in and before Aristotle's lifetime and explores what Aristotle considers to be the appropriate structure of a tragedy, the growth of the genre from epic poetry, and what makes a tragedy skillful and moving.
The book has had tremendous influence in the centuries since it first appeared, and it is still considered to be a fundamental text for storytellers, aestheticians, and narrative theorists. This unit should take the opportunity to help students apply Aristotle's principles to contemporary texts in order to analyze both his...
