A PRIMER ON ARISTOTLE?S DRAMATICS IBD

Sinopsis

This book is primarily for students and is designed to be used in tandem with the ancient Greek text or with any of the dozens of available translations generally titledáThe Poeticsáthat cost a few dollars each or that are free on the Internet. TheáPrimeráprovides the basic findings of Aristotle onáDramatic Musical Composition: The Real Role of Literature, Catharsis, Music and Dance in the POETICSá(hereafteráADMC) in less than 1/3 the number of words ofáADMC.The book has additional scholarship that goes beyondáADMC, in two appendices. The first gives the conditions for properly understanding how catharsis (and pity and fear) might have been used by Aristotle in someásub-typeáof tragedy (as listed in Chapter 18) or in comedy. The second examines the ancient evidence for how AristotleâÇÖs books were damaged because they were hidden in a trench (in Scepsis, Northwest Turkey) for decades in fear of the book-acquiring kings of Pergamon and why the catharsis-clause was wrongly interpolated by an editor after Apellicon bought the whole, damaged library and poorly restored the texts to more quickly sell the books back in Athens or in Rome. Also, Appendix 2 shows, e.g., that there is not one reference to catharsis and the so-calledáPoeticsá(which has not poem) for over 1300 years, untiláAvicenna, in Persia, but heácould not make sense of the word and ignores it in hisácommentary.áYet before Avicenna, al-FárábÄ« (872-950)áin Baghdad for the first time ever speaks of tragedy in our treatise and says its goal (correctly) is pleasure, not catharsis!Being directed to the specialists in the field,áADMCáis necessarily rigorous and lengthy and is therefore unsuitable for undergraduates or anyone else wishing a mere introduction to AristotleâÇÖsáDramatics. Scott argues that this is a better title thanáPoetics, not only becauseáthere is not one poem in the treatise but becauseáAristotle only focusses primarily on the two major dramatic musical arts of his day, tragedy and comedy, with the only other art examined, epic, being said to be a subset of tragedy. According to Chapter 6, tragedyánecessarilyáhas plot, character, reasoning, language, music-dance, and spectacle. (Plot could be accomplished with mere acting or dancing for Aristotle and is not the same as language.)By including comments on the 26 chapters of AristotleâÇÖs treatise, with the emphasis on correcting both the standard mis-interpretation of seven core Greek terms and the ten chapters that have been badly misunderstood, theáPrimeráallows the student, or even a classicist wanting an easy introduction to these issues, to grasp the basics of AristotleâÇÖs treatise in the way that he intended. For example, the core termápoiÄôsisáhas been universally translated in this context until now as 'poetry,' which was only coined by the sophist Gorgias when AristotleâÇÖs mentor Plato was a boy. For the first time ever, Scott hypothesizes that Aristotle actually employs the term as Plato himself explains via Dio