Aristotle as a Critic

ARISTOTLE AS A CRITIC. Aristotle (384-322 B. C. E. ), the discussion of a physician, was the student of Plato from approximately 367 B. C. until his mentors last in 348/347. After carrying on philosophical and scientific investigations elsewhere in the classical world and serving as the tutor to Alexander the Great, he returned to Athens in 335 B. C. E. to found the Lyceum, a major philosophical center, which he employ as his buns for prolific investigations into many argonas of philosophy.Aristotle is a sublime figure in ancient Hellenic philosophy, making contri scarceions to logic, metaphysics, mathematics, physics, biology, botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance and theatre. As a prolific writer and polymath, Aristotle radically change most, if not all, areas of knowledge he touched. It is no wonder that Aquinas referred to him simply as The Philosopher. In his lifetime, Aristotle wrote as many as 200 treatises, of which only 31 survive.Unfortunately for us, these full treatment are in the form of twit notes and draft disseminated multiple sclerosiss never intended for oecumenical readership, so they do not abut his reputed polished prose style which attracted many big followers, including the Roman Cicero. Aristotle was the archetypical to classify areas of tender knowledge into distinct disciplines such as mathematics, biology, and ethics. Some of these classifications are still used today. There has been long speculation that the original Poetics comprised deuce scripts, our extant Poetics and a lost bit book that supposedly dealt with comedy and catharsis.No true evidence for the existence of this second book has been adduced. Our (knowledge of the text of the Poetics depends principally on a manuscript of the tenth or ordinal century and a second manuscript dating from the fourteenth century. (not to write in notes)*. Aristotle could be considered the first popular literary critic. Unlike Plato, who all but conde mned indite verse, Aristotle breaks it down and analyses it so as to sieve the good from the bad. On a bout of subjects Aristotle developed positions that signifi derrieretly differed from those of his teacher.We very(prenominal) clear note this profound difference of flavour with Plato and, indeed, observe the overt correction of his one time master in Aristotles literary and artistic theories. Aristotelian aesthetics directly contradicts Platos disallow view of art by establishing a potent intellectual role. The principal cum of our knowledge of Aristotles aesthetic and literary opening is the Poetics, but in-chief(postnominal) supplementary tuition is found in other treatises, brinyly the Rhetoric, the Politics, and the Nicomachean Ethics.Aristotles main contribution to criticism whitethorn well be the idea that numbers is afterward all an art with an object lens of its own, that it dismiss be rationally mum and reduced to an intelligible set of rules (that is, it is an art, jibe to the definition in the Ethics). The main strike of the rules of the Poetics, however, is not with the composition of literary work it is rather with their critical evaluation. Consequently, criticism can be a science, and not a mass of random principles and intuitions. Aristotle speaks of the educative lever of visual, musical and verbal arts.Both the Rhetoric and the Poetics can be considered to be expansions of this view. We might claim that Aristotle sets writings free from Platos radical moralism and didacticism, man he still expects it to be obedient to a moral understanding of the world. For him, literature is a rational and beneficial activity, and not an irrational and dangerous one, as it was for Plato. Aristotle? s overture to literature is mainly philosophical he is much(prenominal) concerned with the personality and the structure of poetry than with its origin.The origins of poetry had been grounded on the instinct of imitation which is natural to man. The first poetical works were spontaneous improvisations. The origins of the variant genres is justified by Aristotle thus verse line soon branched into two channels, concord to the temperaments of individual poets. The more effective-minded among them represented direful actions and the doings of noble persons, while the more trivial wrote about the meaner sort of state thus, while the one type wrote hymns and anegyrics, these others began by writing invectives. (Poetics II). The development goes through serious or comic epic poems such as those written by homing pigeon to comedy and tragedy these new forms were both(prenominal) grander and more highly regarded than the earlier (Poetics II). Aristotle does not, however, resolve on whether tragedy (and by implication, literature) has already developed as far as it can but he does submit that it has come to a standstill.Aristotle makes a apprise outline of the biography of tragedy At first the poets had u sed the tetrameter because they were writing satyr-poetry, which was more closely related to the dance but once dialogue had been introduced, by its very nature it hit upon the right measure, for the iambic is of all measures the one best worthy to speech . . . . Another change was the change magnitude number of episodes, or acts. (Poetics II). Aristotle also deals presently with the rise of comedy the early history of comedy. . . s obscure, because it was not taken seriously. harlequinade had already acquired certain clear-cut forms originally there is any mention of those who are named as its poets. Nor is it known who introduced masks, or prologues, or a plurality of actors, and other things of that kind. Of Athenian poets Crates was the first to discard the lampoon strain and to adopt stories and plots of a more superior cosmopolitan nature. (Poetics II). The work of Aristotle as a in all may be considered to be an begin to develop a structural and metalinguistic app roach to literature.Although it preserves a concern with valuation, its main thrust is towards the definition of theoretical possibilities and general laws. Some critics have spoken of Aristotles sliminess of omission in relationship with words poetry and the inspirational element in literature. This is a fact. But it does not have the appearance _or_ semblance so important when we look at what Aristotle does say and the principles he establishes. We can simply recognize the aspect of criticism after Aristotles work, if we compare it to its previous state. His is the most important single contribution to criticism in the whole history of the discipline.