Poetics

Introduction

The Poetics is the earliest surviving work of literary theory: brief, and immeasurably influential. Aristotle treats poetry, drama and music as forms of imitation, and analyses tragedy with Sophocles' Oedipus the King as his model. Plot is the soul of tragedy and must have a beginning, a middle and an end; the hero passes from good fortune to bad through some error; and the audience, through pity and fear, undergoes a catharsis of these emotions. From the Renaissance to modern screenwriting, storytellers have searched this small book for the laws of their art.