...electronic transmission, in any way. THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE trans. S. H. Butcher, the Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series, Jim Manis, Faculty Editor, Hazleton, PA 18201-1291 is a Portable Document File produced as part of an ongoing student publication project to bring classical works of literature, in English, to free and easy access of those wishing to make use of them. Cover Design: Jim Manis Copyright © 2000 The Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University is an equal opportunity university. THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE Analysis of Contents A TRANSLATION BY S. H. BUTCHER I ‘Imitation’ the common principle of the Arts of Poetry. II The Objects of Imitation. III The Manner of Imitation. IV The Origin and Development of Poetry. V Definition of the Ludicrous, and a brief sketch of the rise of Comedy. VI Definition of Tragedy. VII The Plot must be a Whole. VIII The Plot must be a Unity. IX (Plot continued.) Dramatic Unity. X (Plot continued.) Definitions of Simple and Complex Plots. XI (Plot continued.) Reversal of the Situation, Recognition, and Tragic or disastrous Incident defined and explained. XII The ‘quantitative parts’ of Tragedy defined. XIII (Plot continued.) What...
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...Assignment 10: Personal Response to Poetry The Shadow by Hilda Morley The narrator reflects on the impermanence of all things in life. She seems to realize all of a sudden, that life was slipping by and she had not done anything significant or contributed anything of value to this humanity or to impact the world at large. While dwelling on such thoughts, she reflects on the life of another friend, Lawrence who was dying at the young age of 44.She seems quite astonished that Lawrence was leaving behind more than what would be expected of a man his age. He was leaving behind him novels, stories and poems while she being so much older than him had so little to show for all her living. She thinks to herself that her life had certainly not been a dull one and so many things had been “brewing” in her life, which she should have documented to the best of her ability. She reveals that she had been quite shy and timid at one time to even think of doing what she now thought was possible for her. The narrator goes on to describe in such beautiful detail the nature that surrounds the place where she lives. She describes the trees with their leaves of different shapes and sizes and colors of green, she describes the hills and the beginnings of mountains, she talks about the clouds little and big, and the yellow moon with the mist around it. While she thus describes this she sees a bird that flies against the sun so swiftly and disappears into the sky hardly...
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...What Did You Do With Your Idle Time Manuel Bendana ENG 125 Introduction to Literature Prof. Benjamin Mirov November 5, 2012 Billy Collin’s poem, “You, Reader,” is a humor-filled narrative that catches the reader’s attention and illustrates how two strangers are interlaced with one another all while showing how idle time can be used productively. While reading the poem, it can also be noted that time and what you choose to do with it is a constant theme. The persona in this poem, who happens to be the speaker, expresses how he is linked to the reader. The main link between the reader and the author is the poem itself in its literal sense. Grabbing the Reader’s Attention The poem begins with an attention-grabbing dramatic monologue; “I wonder how you are going to feel when you find out that I wrote this instead if you” (as cited in Clugston, 2010, section 12.1). This very first line comes off as arrogant and cocky, in result creating dramatic tension between the speaker and the reader. The persona grabs the reader’s attention by using detailed imagery about the particular day that he sat down to write the poem. The narrator paints a picture by describing the environment that he was in while writing the poem. He remembers to, “mention with a pen the rain soaked windows, the ivy-wallpaper” (as cited in Clugston, 2010, section 12.1). The scenery in this...
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...Christele Goupy English 1900 Analysis of a Poem Anne Bradstreet: “To my Dear and Loving Husband” The poem “To my Dear and Loving Husband” by Anne Bradstreet is about love, precisely as it relates to the title – the speaker’s affection and deep true love for her husband. Throughout the poem, the speaker uses strong imagery and figurative language to describe the strength and power of her love which is unusual given the nature of the speaker who identifies herself as a devout Puritan. The speaker was living in her own world of love and nothing matters much more than her husband. The poem does not reflect at all the speaker’s Puritan values, which entails the implication that the speaker might not practice her Puritanism faithfully. Puritans were allowed to love one another provided that their love advocated purity and Christianity. The poem illustrates the first person point of view: that of the lyric “I”, who is closely involved in the feelings developed in the poem. The speaker adopted the tone of a young lover expressing her affection and devotion for her husband, the principal subject...
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...Why the period of American history from is 1919-1940 called the Harlem Renaissance? What makes it significant to African –American culture? What was the “common source” that inspired black artists during this period? The Harlem Renaissance was first named the movement. It was named Harlem because of its location (Harlem, New York). It was the hub of were black people could express their creativity involving the arts. Blues, Jazz, poetry and art were the main focus during that period. In addition, they also was allowed to express their social views about race or taboo without repercussion from white society. This time period is where the great poets such as Langston Hughes and author Zora Hurston could freely express themselves. Their common ground was to boldly create expressive art without boundaries exemplyfing their social conditions with dignity and humility despite their struggles. What is your favorite poem by Langton Hughes? My favorite poem is called I, Too. Langston sends a strong message to white America. He is saying, I laugh at you for separating yourself from me because of the color of my skin. I too am an American. How dare you send me to the back because of my skin tone, I will not go. I will stand strong were you can see me. I am beautiful and I will stand her and not be moveable so you can see just how beautiful my blackness is. You see, I am an American just like you. This poem is powerful. Langston Hughes was a power poet that was not afraid...
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...The poem represents the central character Aunt Jennifer as a timid and passive woman who is being suffocated by her marriage she is stuck in. While the poem also goes on to talk about “Find even the ivory needle hard to pull/The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band” (Nelson line 6-7) the idea of male dominance upon her life and all of her Uncle’s ideals being presses against her, especially in the time this was wrote during. The weight of the band is the idea of promise to marry a man and stay within the marriage through sickness and health which is oppression. The tone set by the poem is mostly bleak and dreary and in the end causes her to wish to be dead to escape from her current life. The item as a green topaz is a symbol of how she is a rare gem that is only valued for their worth. While continued protected by her survival of pain to prove her innocence, the painting she has created and the tigers within them “The tigers in the panel that she made / Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid” (Nelson line 11-12) represent her pride that she has, and also will continue to go on until she has died without fear knowing what will become to her is only death. The author uses words like terrified and mastered to depict her submissive nature. This is directly contrasted with her panel, which will go on as a symbol of independence and fortitude. The final stanza contains imagery that reflects back on the first two stanzas. The reference of the hands symbolizes Aunt Jennifer as a...
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...William Carlos Williams and His Imagist Poetry Modernism and Imagism, two movements in literature ,which were developed in the 20th century .At the beginning of the decade ,modernism was a revolution of style .Crime, depression, and materialism filled this era. Musician, artists,and writers broke away from technique to create a new art.Also, imagism brought fragmental and chaotic life where nobody felt secure and happy.After that,modernism was related with decent and realistic art form.The modernist artists like Edwin Dickinson and a painter Arthur Dove looked for an object of inspiration ,individual vision and the value of immediate observation where they emphasized on surroundings around them in everyday life.Some modernists were supported by photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz who obtained the power to change the drift of American art. Moreover,art,drawing and painting were based on subjects describing actual world ideas.Also, modernism was a variety of ‘’-ism’’ such as Fauvism,Cubism,Dadaism and Futurism to break away the previous rules of orientations,color,and writing in order to their own visions. Some time after modernism,the imagist poets began to gain importance.They wrote short poems that their work would be rich and direct.They focused on individual...
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...On William Shakespeare’s "Let me not to the marriage of true minds" by Michelle Sayles "Let me not to the marriage of true minds" struck me like someone standing on a soapbox screaming out his beliefs. Shakespeare is making a declaration of his thoughts on love, and I happen to agree with him. Love cannot be shaken by adversity nor changed by time. True love is constant: “it is an ever-fixed mark”. Though this poem is short in length it is full of emotion. Shakespeare makes it known in the first line that he will not come between two people who are in love. He believes that love is strong enough to endure temptation and not waver. If love is altered by another, a “remover” of love, it was not love. Time is love’s most powerful adversary, and this is demonstrated by the capitalization of the word making it a living breathing enemy of love. However powerful Time is, Shakespeare is certain that love is still stronger. “Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks/ Within his bending sickle’s compass come.” The reference to the sickle shows just how much of a threat Shakespeare views Time. Like Death, Time too carries his sickle waiting to steal love that is based on the loveliness of youth. But of course true love cannot be fooled by Time. Love cannot be measured in “brief hours and weeks”; love is eternal; it “bears it out even to the edge of doom.” The structure of the poem lends to the fluidity. There is a primary rhyme that is dominant with stronger...
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...Hunter Tutin Professor Pierce ENC 1102-20469 10 April 2012 Leda and the Swan By: William Butler Yeats A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop? Leda and the Swan Ever since the introduction of mythology in the early centuries of our worlds existence, people have been intrigued by the concept of Gods and Goddesses of Rome and ancient Greece. In William Butler Yeats’ sonnet, Leda and the Swan, he writes about Leda having sexual intercourse with the almighty god, Zeus whom in which has taken the form of a Swan. While Yeats’ sonnet is a traditional Shakespearean piece of history, the concept of God and humans interacting...
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...DAFFODILS STUDENT COPY 2012 Daffodils By William Wordsworth Note: This is reference and a training purpose copy only, any copy made or selling this work to public will be liable for penalty and subjected copyright policy. INDEX 1) Poem- Daffodils 2) Questions and Answers 3) Summary 4) Explanation Poem I wandered lonely as a Cloud That floats on high o'er vales and Hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden Daffodils; Beside the Lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A Poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the Daffodils. Questions and Answers 1) What was the poet doing when he saw the daffodils? Answer: The poet was walking around through the hills and valleys, but he felt all lonely and mopey. Suddenly, as he passed the lake, he noticed a big group of yellow daffodils waving in the breeze. 2) What does the poet compare himself with? “I wandered lonely as a Cloud...
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...How does Cope so powerfully convey her feeling about the past in this poem? Wendy Cope is a very sarcastic and ironic and sarcastic poet and her poems often express different messages and feelings through her poems. She does this though her descriptive techniques her prevailing language and her ability to create a setting. This essay will look at how Cope powerfully conveys her feelings in the poem “On finding an Old Photograph.” In the poem Wendy effectively builds a picture for the reader to give them an insight on what the picture is like. She often does this by using onamatipia; “women dressed in white blouses that brush the grass.” The onamatipia occurs on the word ‘brush’ this helps make the poem all the more real for the reader. “In an apple orchard, sunlight patching his stylish bags;” this quote sets the place for the photograph again expanding on the ambience of the setting. Wendy moves on to mention the time and location, “Yalding, 1912”, the fact that this photo was taken in ‘1912’ is interesting because it is the year that the Titanic sank and this sets a bad tone for the poem, it implies to the reader that there are no good memories coming from this photograph. The descriptive techniques really do send across powerful feelings to the reader. Cope has written the poem in a very mysterious manner, it is made to clear to the reader that the poem is about her father as it mentions this is the first line of the first stanza but it is never clear who “a child with...
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...English Speech – Assessment Task ------------------------------------------------- Using your exert as a basis for your personal interpretation, discuss the distinctive features of the text that allow it to be valued by a contemporary audience. You will need to refer to other sections of your text to validate your discussion. Good morning teachers and classmates, the dramatic reading I will be doing today is of Gwen Harwood’s Poem, “Mother Who Gave Me Life” <Read “Mother Who Gave Me Life” (MWGML)> Throughout this poem I think Gwen Harwood explores a universal theme of loss as a distinctive feature throughout her poems, in particular loss of loved ones, which can be valued by contemporary audiences today due to it being an issue that is faced by everybody in their life at some point. When a loved one is no longer part of an individual’s life, one may experience grief and as a result realise the role and importance of that loved one. From my perspective, Harwood presents the concept of loss of loved ones through MWGML with the euphemism “You left the world so”, which highlights that her mother was not only a loss to her life but also a loss to the world, suggesting that she had great value and respect for her mother. There is a similar significance placed on her mother’s life that is stressed with the use of alliteration in “lived nearly thirty thousand days”. This presents the idea that she lived daily as a mother contributing to the lives of her children. Harwood...
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...write a poem vividly. Although both poets use personification methods in both poems, such as borrowing the images of the bird to write a poem as an example, but actually the use of such methods have different deeply meaning in the two poems. And that is the topic I write this essay, what are the similarities and differences between how they use images of birds to express their verses? How they have been very successful in using the personification methods to write a poem completely and deeply. First of all, about two poets, they are very famous poet and professional in the field of modern poems in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, both began writing poetry when they were very young. (Write something about Emily Dickinson Early Life and Career). Mary Oliver, since she started writing about modern poetry, she had a...
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...The Tyger, written in 1974, is one of both simplicity and mystery. Within this poem written by old English William Blake, there are 13 full questions within this short 24 line work. Though many literary analysts have attempted to forge a meaning from this work, not one theme has a more correct stance than any of the others. One clear symbol within the piece is the Tyger, who represents some form of evil entity, quite possibly Satan himself. One possibility for the theme is that the poet is questioning why God would create such an evil being. This can be exemplified in the first stanza and last stanzas, where the word “could” is changed to “dare”, implying a fear of such haunting creature. The questions themselves can be considered sound devices, as they cause the piece to be written in a fragment-type state, as the only constant in this piece is its meter. The poem has a great flow, with there being approximately two strong syllables per line, for example, in line 13: "What the hammer? What the chain?”, where the two heavy syllables are “hammer” and “chain”. This creates a sense of strength halfway through each line, and at the end of each, and gives it a great sense of metric value. There are very few metric variations within the piece, with the only apparent one being the variation in line 19: “Did he smile his work to see? “. This gives the work a sense of superficiality and lack of depth due to its consistency. At some points in the poem it takes on a hymn-like quality...
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...Sometime in our lives we have to make momentous decisions. We either have made a propitious selection or regret our decisions. The poem, "The Road Not Taken" written by Robert Frost is how a road chosen by a traveler had an impact in his life. Through his poem, Frost have shown that the decisions we make should be chosen carefully because not only will it affect our choices in the future, but there is no going back.Throughout the poem, Frost has addressed the idea of making decisions in a melancholic manner. The first stanza revealed the situation: the speaker came across a fork in a road and has to decide which road to take, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood," (1). The line, "And sorry I could not travel both," (2) apprises that he wants to take both roads, however, since it is not possible he decides to make a choice— the other road. "Oh, I marked the first for another day!" (13). His dream of taking the other road someday is crushed by reality. "Yet knowing how way leads on to way/I doubted if I should ever come back," (14-15). This reveals that the decision he had made has already affected the decisions in the future as well. We do not know if the speaker will regret his decision, however, he does tell us that he will be "telling this with a sigh," (16). The sigh can be the cause of happiness or grief by taking the "less traveled by road," (19). However, rather good or bad, it already "made all the difference," (20), therefore, he will have to accept his decision.In addition...
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