Review of Poetics (ca. 355 BCE)

Text

Aristotle (writer).

This review refers to the first of the original’s two books. The second book is lost.

A normative literary theory, principally of tragedy.

This is more readable and more important than the technical argumentation of Philebus (ca. 360–347 BCE), which featured a smaller set of opinions on theatre, attributed to a guy who didn’t write. Because it survived the Dark Ages and contains a lot of good ideas with the bad, Aristotle’s personal opinions on the theatre are one of the most influential things ever written. In the category of non-religious, non-fiction texts you can still read, I don’t think there’s any competition.

References here: Whisper of the Heart (1995), A Memory of Light (2013).

text non-fiction