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A Primer on Aristotle's DRAMATICS (also known as the POETICS)

This page is periodically updated and also provides Errata. In addition, the page gives information on, for example, reviews or other publications related to the Primer.

The layout follows this order:

Errata (by page number)
Reviews of A Primer on Aristotle's DRAMATICS
Related publications
Replies, Reviews and Comments on Related Publications
Related Links

Errata

For first copies printed:

pp. 19, 35, 61, 178, 198, 225, 242, 244, 249, 275, 307, and 350: tragoidos should be tragōidia.

p. 307: oidos should be aoidē/oidē.

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Reviews of A Primer on Aristotle's DRAMATICS

Forthcoming, as a publication officially announces any, or as submitted directly to us at info@EPSpress.com.

See Previous Testimonials for testimonials pertaining to the publications from Cambridge and Oxford University Presses that form the basis of the related Aristotle on Dramatic Musical Composition: The Real Role of Literature, Catharsis, Music and Dance in the POETICS, which is the version of this Primer for specialists.

Similarly, see Book Review for excerpts of a Book Review of Aristotle on Dramatic Musical Composition from the journal Ancient Philosophy, Volume 39, Issue 1, Spring 2019, Pages 248-252; DOI: 10.5840/ancientphil201939117.

Related publications (in chronological order)

This list does not attempt to cover the vast literature on the Dramatics aka Poetics. Rather it only notes the works that take a new approach to understanding Aristotle's treatise, whether concerning (i) catharsis as the (wrongly interpolated) goal of tragedy or (ii) the nature of tragedy as mere literature versus tragedy as a fully performed art requiring music, dance and spectacle in addition to speech.

Smerdel, Anton. Aristotelova Katarsa (Skopje: Južna Srbija) 1937.

Petruševski, M. D. “La Définition de la Tragédie Chez Aristote et la Catharsis,” L'Annuaire de la Faculté de Philosophie de l'Université de Skopje, 1 (Skopje, Macedonia) 1948.

Petruševski, M. D. “Pathēmatōn Katharsin ou bien Pragmatōn Systasin?,” Ziva antika/Antiquite vivante (Skopje: Societe d'etudes classiques Ziva Antika) 1954.

Freire, António. “A Catarse Tragica em Aristoteles,” Euphrosyne, 3 (Lisbon, Portugal: Universidade de Lisboa/ Centro de Estudos Clássicos) 1969.

Brunius, Teddy. “Catharsis,” in Dictionary of the History of Ideas, 4 vols., ed. Philip P. Wiener (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons) 1973.

Scott, Gregory. Unearthing Aristotle's Dramatics: Why There is No Theory of Literature in the Poetics (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto) 1992.

Scott, Gregory. "The Poetics of Performance: The Necessity of Performance, Spectacle, Music, and Dance in Aristotelian Tragedy," Performance and Authenticity in the Arts (Cambridge Series on Philosophy and the Arts) eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 1999. 15-48. (This is revised and included in Aristotle on Dramatic Musical Composition Chapter 2; see below.)

Scott, Gregory. "Purging the Poetics," Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Vol. 25, 2003 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). 233-264. (This is reprinted in Aristotle on Dramatic Musical Composition as Chapter 5; see below.)

Veloso, Cláudio William. "Aristotle's Poetics without Katharsis, Fear, or Pity," Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Vol. 33, 2007 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). 255-84.

Scott, Gregory. Aristotle's Favorite Tragedy: Oedipus or Cresphontes? (New York: CreateSpace/Amazon) 2016; 2nd edition (New York: ExistencePS Press) 2018.

Rashed, Marwan. "Katharsis versus mimèsis: simulation des émotions et définition aristotélicienne de la tragédie," Littérature, Vol. 182, No. 2, 2016. 60-77.

Veloso, Cláudio William. Pourquoi la Poétique d'Aristote? DIAGOGE (Paris: Vrin) 2018.

Scott, Gregory. Aristotle on Dramatic Musical Composition: The Real Role of Literature, Catharsis, Music and Dance in the POETICS (New York: CreateSpace/Amazon) 2016; 2nd edition (New York: ExistencePS Press) 2018.

Replies, Reviews and Comments on Related Publications (in chronological order)

(Unless noted, comments are by G. Scott)

3/1/19: Malcolm Heath on tragedy as a poem for Aristotle and his publisher's new emphasis on the theater. Click HeathAsAnonymousC

3/19/19: After publication of A Primer, it came to my attention that F.H. Sandbach has argued that, for the Stoics, Aristotle was not rejected but largely unknown (Aristotle and the Stoics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). This adds weight to the history as given by Posidonius, Strabo, and Plutarch, which is discussed in detail in Appendix 2 of A Primer. The three ancients recount how Aristotle's and Theophrastus's libraries were bequeathed to Neleus and were damaged by moisture and moths because of being kept in a trench to hide them from the book-acquiring kings of Pergamum. Apellicon is said to have purchased them and filled in gaps too hastily and with too little concern for philosophy before selling the restored copies in Athens (which is when the earlier Peripatetics finally got to see many of the treatises that did not have multiple copies already in existence). I calculated in Appendix 2 (espec. pp. 254-5) that Apellicon could have made the restored copies available no earlier than around 130 BCE. This supports Sandbach's position, and vice-versa, when one considers that there are three major periods of Stoicism (cf. Stoicism), the first being from 300 BCE to about 207 BCE, when Chrysippus, the third head of the school died. The second major period began at the end of second century BCE, with Posidonius and others, but it is only at this point that the restored copies of Aristotle's works become readily available. This whole history helps explain why "we only possess Aristotle's work [The Dramatics] in a mutilated and hopelessly corrupt condition," as E. Zeller once phrased it (cf. A Primer, p. 263). [GS]

12/18/20: The following adds to the importance of Scepsis at Aristotle's time. Werner Jaeger, one of the seminal interpreters in the 20th century of Aristotle, discusses both Aristotle and Xenocrates leaving Athens about 347, after Speusippus inherited the leadership of the Academy following the death of his relative Plato, and writes:

They went to Asia Minor in the conviction that Speusippus had inherited merely the office and not the spirit.. For the next few years the scene of their activity was Assos on the coast of the Troad, where they worked in common with two other Platonists, Erastus and Coriscus from Scepsis... (Aristotle: Fundamental of the History of his Development, translated with the author's corrections and additions by Richard Robinson, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968, first publ. 1934, p. 111).

Clearly, there was a significant philosophical subculture in Scepsis before Neleus returned there with the libraries of both Aristotle and Theophrastus.

Comments on Loren D. Marsh, “The Plot Within: MEGETHOS AND MĒKOS In Aristotle's POETICS,” American Journal of Philology 136 (2015) 577-606. Click Marsh on “Size”

Forthcoming: Comments on Malcolm Heath, “Aristotle on the best kind of tragic plot: re-reading Poetics 13-14,” in R. Polansky and W. Wians (eds.), Reading Aristotle: Exposition and Argument, 334-351 (Leiden: Brill, 2017). Click Heath on the discrepancy between the best types of tragedy

Comments on G.R.F. Ferrari, “Aristotle on Musical Catharsis and the Pleasure of a Good Story,” Phronesis 64 (2019) 117-171. Click Ferrari and a desperate attempt to save catharsis?

Comments on Alberto Rigolio, “Aristotle's 'Poetics' in Syriac and Arabic translations: readings of tragedy,” in Khristianskii Vostok 6 (2013) 140-49. Click How dramatic theory becomes literary theory in the Syriac and Arabic translations