ENGL 497Senior Seminar
Prof. G. Steinberg
You may focus on chapters 1-9, 13-16, and 22-25 of the Poetics, although you should read the entire assignment.
Aristotle agrees with Plato that literature is imitation. But Aristotle comes to a very different conclusion about its value. Why? What is different about the way Aristotle understands the world and literature from the way Plato understood those things?
What does literature imitate, according to Aristotle? To what purpose? What impact does it have? How is its object of imitation, its purpose, and its impact different for Aristotle from what it was for Plato?
What does Aristotle find of value in literature that Plato didn't see or didn't value?
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