If you are looking for the beginning of the study for Aristotle’s Poetics then you can go HERE for a brief introduction. At the bottom of the introduction you will find the links to each section of the study guide as it becomes available. If you would like to see the growing list of book studies available for free on this site you can go HERE. Enjoy!
Virtues/Vices/Great Ideas: (Find these in the Text and Note them in the Margins)
Deception, Ignorance
Grammar Questions: (The Information of the Text)
According to Aristotle, what is the only thing different between Epic poetry and Tragedy in regard to “the parts” they contain?
What did Aristotle acknowledge Epic poetry is able to do “owing to the narrative form” which Tragedy is not capable of doing?
Which metre did Aristotle say best befits Epic poetry and what reasons did he give for this?
What “special merit” did Aristotle praise Homer as having in regard to the role of the poet as narrator?
What was it that Aristotle said Homer “chiefly taught other poets” to do?
What are the three objects which a poet “like a painter or any other artist” must necessarily imitate?
“Within the art of poetry itself” what are the two kinds of faults a poet might fall into?
What did Sophocles say about himself and Euripides?
Sometimes a poet writes a description that “is not true to fact.” What are three of the ways in which Aristotle said these difficulties can sometimes be resolved?
What did Glaucon accuse many critics of doing?
In summary, what did Aristotle say are the “five sources from which critical objections are drawn?”
Which art, Epic poetry or Tragedy, did Aristotle ultimately deem to be “the higher art?”
Logic Questions: (Interpreting, Comparing/Contrasting, Reasoning)
When Aristotle referred to the Iliad as “at once simple and pathetic” and the Odyssey as “complex” and “ethical,” what distinctions was he trying to make between the two stories?
Why did Aristotle think it was impossible for Tragedy to “imitate several lines of actions carried on at one and the same time” whereas Epic poetry is able to present “many events” as being “simultaneously transacted?”
When Aristotle said “Nature herself…teaches the choice of the proper measure” for various kinds of poetical works, what did he mean by that?
What did Aristotle mean when he said “the poet should speak as little as possible in his own person?” Why might he have thought this was important?
What did Aristotle mean when he said “the irrational, in which the wonderful depends for its chief effects, has wider scope in Epic poetry, because the person acting is not seen?”
When Aristotle wrote of “the secret” of telling lies skilfully, he said it depends upon “a fallacy.” What did he mean? What fallacy is this and why does it fool people in a useful way for telling stories?
When Aristotle said “the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities” what did he mean by that?
Why might Aristotle have thought that “everything irrational should, if possible, be excluded; or, at all events, it should lie outside the action of the play?”
Aristotle said “diction should be elaborated in the pauses of the action, where there is no expression of character or thought? Why do diction and action have antithetical (opposing) roles to one another?
What is the essence of the distinction which Aristotle was making between the “two kinds of faults” a poet might fall into?
Aristotle wrote “in examining whether what has been said or done by some one is poetically right or not, we must not look merely to the particular act or saying, and ask whether it is poetically good or bad. We must also consider by whom it is said or done, to whom, when, by what means, or for what end; whether, for instance, it be to secure a greater good or avert a greater evil.” What did he mean by this? What is the significance of the phrase “poetically right?”
What did Aristotle mean when, speaking of Zeuxis’ paintings being impossible, he said “Yes,...but the impossible is the higher thing; for the ideal type must surpass reality?” How does this relate back to Epic poetry and Tragedy?
Why did Aristotle think that when “things sound contradictory” the critic should examine them “by the same rules as in the dialectical refutation whether the same thing is meant, in the same relation, and in the same sense?”
When Aristotle said “Tragic art, then, as a whole, stands to Epic in the same relation as the younger to the elder actors” what did he mean?
According to your understanding, why did Aristotle deem Tragedy the higher art form over Epic poetry?
Rhetoric Questions: (The Analysis of Ideas in the Text)
Do you agree or disagree with Aristotle’s conclusion that Tragedy is a higher art form than Epic poetry? What might be the closest parallels in art today to the Greek Tragedy on the one hand and Epic poetry on the other? Do you think his criticisms and appraisals hold true in light of those modern parallels or do those modern examples require a different kind of evaluation? Explain your thoughts carefully.
When judging an art, be it theater, writing novels, producing movies, painting, etc. Should we judge the art only as an art, or also by its moral quality? In other words, can a piece of art be well made or performed in a technical sense, but be bad in a moral sense? How ought we as Christians to think about art which is excellent in a technical sense, but which is sub-par morally speaking? Ought we to be able to appreciate it in one way while chiding it in another, or ought we to reject it in total for its moral badness even when it is technically excellent? Finally, how might we distinguish art containing a scene of moral badness from being morally bad as a whole? Explain your thinking on the matter in some detail.
Theological Analysis: (Sola Scriptura)
Chapter XXV of Aristotle’s Poetics deals with poetic criticism. In the chapter he explains the various ways in which a poet might err and also the various ways in which a poet might defend what he said when someone charges him with having erred. Consider Matthew 28:1-10 and Luke 24:1-12. In what detail do these two texts seem to disagree? How might some of the things which Aristotle said in this present reading suggest a solution to this difficulty without compromising the fundamental truthfulness of both Matthew’s and Luke’s account of the resurrection of Jesus?