The View of Poetry in Ancient Times

Paper Summary:

This paper examines views of the ancient Greek and Roman poets and philosophers on poetry. The periods' most prominent thinkers, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Horace and Longinus are essentially analyzed through their writings, thoughts and quotes about literature in general, their views on God, forms of poetry, and the role of a poet in the society.
These philosophers and poets examined the world around them, asking questions about it, and seeking rational explanations. This was the beginning of natural philosophy, which inevitably included questions of art and poetry. The paper concludes that the early Greek and Roman philosophers' and poets' writings about art and poetry greatly affected their followers and were important in the shaping of today's poet and poetry.

From the Paper:

"Aristotle explicitly explains poetry and poet's duty explicitly in Poetics. For him, a poet's duty is not to deal with reality itself but to deal with the possibilities that are shaped within the nature of events. He differentiates between a poet from a historian. A historian naturally reflects reality itself, but a poet reflects the possibility of a probable reality. Poetry describes the general, but history reflects the only specific real events."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. Ingram Bywater. The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poetics, by Aristotle, October, 2004.
• Buck, Philo M. Jr. An Anthology of World Literature. 3rd Edition. New York: Macmillian, 1959.
• Daiches, David. Critical Approaches to Literature. Ed. Maynard Mack. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1956.
• Harland, Richard. Literary Theory from Plato to Barthes. MacMillan Press, 1999.
• Horace. The Art of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos. Project Gutenberg's The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos, by Horace, October, 2005.

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