the lost second book of aristotle's poetics

Recommended., Walter Watson brings a deep perspective steeped in Aristotle's entire philosophy to the study of Aristotle's view of comedy and laughter. This book should appeal to Aristotle scholars and to those interested in aesthetics more generally. Even if readers find something here and there to disbelieve, they are unlikely to find anything anywhere in this book that they do not admire., serves as a reliable guide to readers unfamiliar with Aristotle's thought. Readers will be especially grateful for his illuminating notes on such central-and vexed-issues in Poetics I as catharsis and the ends of tragedy and Watson uses Poetics II to shine a welcome light on final cause, spectacle, didacticism, and the different senses of poetry. Even anti-Aristotelians will appreciate the book, if only in finding new sources of thought in their disagreements., Here, Walter Watson makes the strongest possible claim, asserting that the Tractatus Coislinianus is a true and reliable summary of the lost second book of the Poetics. Nyone interested in the first great work of literary theory will find The Lost Second Book of Aristotle's Poetics accessible as well as valuable. Here, at last, Aristotle's lost second book is found again. Finally, more than two millennia after it was first written, and after five hundred years of scrutiny, Aristotle's Poetics is more complete than ever before. Watson renders lucid and complete explanations of Aristotle's ideas about catharsis, comedy, and a summary account of the different types of poetry, ideas that influenced not only Cicero's theory of the ridiculous, but also Freud's theory of jokes, humor, and the comic. Based on Richard Janko's philological reconstruction of the epitome, a summary first recovered in 1839 and hotly contested thereafter, Watson mounts a compelling philosophical argument that places the statements of this summary of the Aristotelian text in their true context. Here, Walter Watson offers a new interpretation of the lost second book of Aristotle's Poetics. But he does not actually address any of those ideas. Aristotle writes also that he will address catharsis and an analysis of what is funny. In the Poetics, Aristotle writes that he will speak of comedy-but there is no further mention of comedy. Of all the writings on theory and aesthetics-ancient, medieval, or modern-the most important is indisputably Aristotle's Poetics, the first philosophical treatise to propound a theory of literature.

The lost second book of aristotle's poetics