The Poetics

Abstract

This chapter introduces Aristotle’s work on aesthetics, more specifically the text Poetics. There are aspects of Aristotle’s aesthetic covered in other works, for instance the Rhetoric and the Nicomachean Ethics. The Poetics is comparatively short and fairly simple to summarize, even though its significance and consequences are quite momentous for aesthetics as well as other disciplines. Accordingly after a general introduction to the significance of the Poetics in the context of ancient Greek life, this chapter briefly outlines its principal arguments and situates it in relation to other ideas within Aristotle’s work, before consideration of the continuing relevance of the Poetics from a contemporary perspective on organizations, society and politics.