Abstract
What happens when we consider “poetics,” a term and concept well-known from Aristotle’s philosophical treatment of Greek epic and tragic drama, in the larger context of world literature as we understand it today? What would be the essential elements in the definition of poetics? What sort of critical issues it can address, and what resources it may draw on in the world’s various literary traditions? In the ancient world, East Asia and South Asia all have distinct traditions of literary expression with emphasis and critical conceptualizations rather different from those of the Greek-Roman tradition. What would the consideration of poetics in a broad cross-cultural perspective lead us to? In this presentation, these are the theoretical issues to be explored to arrive at a better understanding of poetics not only in the Western tradition, but truly of the world, with the richness of content and critical functions considered with relation to a global concept of world literature.
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Notes
Lucas (1957, p. 12).
Ibid., p. 13.
Hong (1983, pp. 85–86).
Aristotle, Poetics, ed. and trans. Stephen Halliwell, 1–141 in Aristotle, Poetics, Longinus, On the Sublime, and Demetrius, On Style, the Loeb Classical Library 199 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 31 (hereafter cited in the text).
Halliwell (1989, p. 149).
Averroes (1986, p. 66).
Ibid., pp. 13–14.
Zhang (2005, p. 110).
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, including the Letters, eds. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 832 (hereafter cited in the text).
Sidney (1970, p. 15).
Averroes (1986, p. 5).
Rajendran (2001, p. 10).
Liu (1958, 1: 1).
Shangshu zhengyi, juan 3, in Ruan (1980, 1: 131).
Pierre Somville, Poetics (C. Porter & D. Jouhaud, Trans.), pp. 301–313 in J. Brunschwig and G. E. R. Lloyd (eds.), The Greek pursuit of Knowledge (p. 303). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cassirer (1953, p. 98).
Averroes (1986, p. 69).
Mao shi zhengyi, in Ruan (1980, 1: 269–270).
Kant (1987, section 50, p. 188).
Ibid., Sect. 50, p. 188.
Gadamer (1989, p. 56).
Rajendran (2001, p. 11).
Ibid., p. 10.
Ibid., p. 12.
Yan (1983, p. 26).
Boileau (1963, p. 47).
Pope (1972, ll. 68–69).
Ibid., p. 71.
Eliot (1975, p. 38).
Frye (1957, p. 97).
Culler (1975, p. 116).
Huang (1999, p. 41).
Gervinus (1863, 1: 28).
Frye (1957, p. 38).
Ibid., p. 207.
Cao (1956, p. 27).
Qian (1986, 3: 1082).
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Zhang, L. Poetics and world literature. Neohelicon 38, 319–327 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-011-0099-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-011-0099-4