1.
Poetics (Aristotle)
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Aristotles Poetics is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory in the West. This has been the view for centuries. However, recent work is now challenging whether Aristotle focuses on literary theory per se or whether he focuses instead on dramatic musical theory that only has language as one of the elements, in it, Aristotle offers an account of what he calls poetry. They are similar in the fact that they are all imitations, difference of goodness in the characters. Difference in how the narrative is presented, telling a story or acting it out, in examining its first principles, Aristotle finds two, 1) imitation and 2) genres and other concepts by which that of truth is applied/revealed in the poesis. His analysis of tragedy constitutes the core of the discussion, although Aristotles Poetics is universally acknowledged in the Western critical tradition, almost every detail about his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions. The work was lost to the Western world for a long time and it was available in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance only through a Latin translation of an Arabic version written by Averroes. Aristotles work on aesthetics consists of the Poetics, Politics and Rhetoric, the Poetics is specifically concerned with drama. At some point, Aristotles original work was divided in two, each written on a separate roll of papyrus. Only the first part – that which focuses on tragedy and epic – survive, the lost second part addressed comedy. Some scholars speculate that the Tractatus coislinianus summarises the contents of the lost second book, the table of contents page of the Poetics found in Modern Librarys Basic Works of Aristotle identifies five basic parts within it. Preliminary discourse on tragedy, epic poetry, and comedy, as the forms of imitative poetry. Definition of a tragedy, and the rules for its construction, definition and analysis into qualitative parts. Rules for the construction of a tragedy, Tragic pleasure, or catharsis experienced by fear, the characters must be four things, good, appropriate, realistic, and consistent. Discovery must occur within the plot and it is important for the poet to visualize all of the scenes when creating the plot. The poet should incorporate complication and dénouement within the story, as well as all of the elements of tragedy. The poet must express thought through the words and actions, while paying close attention to diction. Aristotle believed that all of different elements had to be present in order for the poetry to be well-done
2.
Poetry
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Poetry has a long history, dating back to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Early poems evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing, or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Sanskrit Vedas, Zoroastrian Gathas, and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Ancient attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotles Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy. Later attempts concentrated on such as repetition, verse form and rhyme. From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more generally regarded as a creative act employing language. Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory effects. The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly figures of such as metaphor, simile and metonymy create a resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm. Some poetry types are specific to cultures and genres and respond to characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. Much modern poetry reflects a critique of poetic tradition, playing with and testing, among other things, in todays increasingly globalized world, poets often adapt forms, styles and techniques from diverse cultures and languages. Some scholars believe that the art of poetry may predate literacy, others, however, suggest that poetry did not necessarily predate writing. The oldest surviving poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, comes from the 3rd millennium BCE in Sumer. An example of Egyptian epic poetry is The Story of Sinuhe, other forms of poetry developed directly from folk songs. The earliest entries in the oldest extant collection of Chinese poetry, the efforts of ancient thinkers to determine what makes poetry distinctive as a form, and what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulted in poetics—the study of the aesthetics of poetry. Some ancient societies, such as Chinas through her Shijing, developed canons of poetic works that had ritual as well as aesthetic importance, Classical thinkers employed classification as a way to define and assess the quality of poetry. Later aestheticians identified three major genres, epic poetry, lyric poetry, and dramatic poetry, treating comedy and tragedy as subgenres of dramatic poetry, Aristotles work was influential throughout the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age, as well as in Europe during the Renaissance. English Romantic poet John Keats termed this escape from logic Negative Capability and this romantic approach views form as a key element of successful poetry because form is abstract and distinct from the underlying notional logic
3.
Ancient Greek
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Ancient Greek includes the forms of Greek used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BC to the 6th century AD. It is often divided into the Archaic period, Classical period. It is antedated in the second millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Hellenistic phase is known as Koine. Koine is regarded as a historical stage of its own, although in its earliest form it closely resembled Attic Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects, Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical phases of the language, Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language, divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic, Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, some dialects are found in standardized literary forms used in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms, homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic, the origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period and they have the same general outline, but differ in some of the detail. The invasion would not be Dorian unless the invaders had some relationship to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, the Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians, each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Often non-west is called East Greek, Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric, Southern Peloponnesus Doric, and Northern Peloponnesus Doric. The Lesbian dialect was Aeolic Greek and this dialect slowly replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language, which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek, by about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosized into Medieval Greek
4.
Philosophical realism
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Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief that some aspects of reality are ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, perceptions, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc. Realism may be spoken of with respect to other minds, the past, the future, universals, mathematical entities, moral categories, the material world, and thought. Realism can also be promoted in a sense, in which case it asserts the mind-independent existence of the world. Philosophers who profess realism often claim that truth consists in a correspondence between cognitive representations and reality, realists tend to believe that whatever we believe now is only an approximation of reality but that the accuracy and fullness of understanding can be improved. In some contexts, realism is contrasted with idealism, today it is more usually contrasted with anti-realism, for example in the philosophy of science. The oldest use of the term appears in medieval scholastic interpretations and adaptations of Greek philosophy. As universals were considered by Plato to be ideal forms, this stance is also called Platonic idealism. Platos Forms include numbers and geometrical figures, making them a theory of realism, they also include the Form of the Good. Medieval realism developed out of debates over the problem of universals, universals are terms or properties that can be applied to many things, such as red, beauty, five, or dog. Realism in this context, contrasted with conceptualism and nominalism, holds that such universals really exist, independently, moderate Realism holds that they exist, but only insofar as they are instantiated in specific things, they do not exist separately from the specific thing. Conceptualism holds that they exist, but only in the mind and its roots can be found in responses to such philosophers as John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. The common sense realists found skepticism to be absurd and so contrary to experience that it had to be rejected. Naïve realism, also known as realism, is a philosophy of mind rooted in a common sense theory of perception that claims that the senses provide us with direct awareness of the external world. In contrast, some forms of idealism assert that no world exists apart from mind-dependent ideas, the naive realist view is that objects have properties, such as texture, smell, taste and colour, that are usually perceived absolutely correctly. We perceive them as they really are, scientific realism is, at the most general level, the view that the world described by science is the real world, as it is, independent of what we might take it to be. Within philosophy of science, it is framed as an answer to the question how is the success of science to be explained. The debate over what the success of science involves centers primarily on the status of unobservable entities apparently talked about by scientific theories, generally, those who are scientific realists assert that one can make reliable claims about unobservables as observables. Analytical philosophers generally have a commitment to realism, in the sense of regarding the scientific method as a reliable guide to the nature of reality
5.
Aristotelianism
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Aristotelianism is a tradition of philosophy that takes its defining inspiration from the work of Aristotle. The works of Aristotle were initially defended by the members of the Peripatetic school, and, later on, by the Neoplatonists, who produced many commentaries on Aristotles writings. Moses Maimonides adopted Aristotelianism from the Islamic scholars and based his famous Guide for the Perplexed on it, scholars such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas interpreted and systematized Aristotles works in accordance with Christian theology. Although this project was criticized by Trendelenburg and Brentano as non-Aristotelian, postmodernists, in contrast, reject Aristotelianisms claim to reveal important theoretical truths. In this, they follow Heideggers critique of Aristotle as the greatest source of the tradition of Western philosophy. Recent Aristotelian ethical and practical philosophy, such as that of Gadamer, the most famous contemporary Aristotelian philosopher is Alasdair MacIntyre. Politically and socially, it has been characterized as a newly revolutionary Aristotelianism and this may be contrasted with the more conventional, apolitical and effectively conservative uses of Aristotle by, for example, Gadamer and McDowell. Other important contemporary Aristotelian theorists include Fred D. Miller, Jr. in politics, the original followers of Aristotle were the members of the Peripatetic school. The most prominent members of the school after Aristotle were Theophrastus and Strato of Lampsacus, during the Roman era the school concentrated on preserving and defending his work. The most important figure in this regard was Alexander of Aphrodisias who commentated on Aristotles writings, in the Abbasid Empire, many foreign works were translated into Arabic, large libraries were constructed, and scholars were welcomed. Under the caliphs Harun al-Rashid and his son Al-Mamun, the House of Wisdom in Baghdad flourished, Christian scholar Hunayn ibn Ishaq was placed in charge of the translation work by the caliph. In his lifetime, Ishaq translated 116 writings, including works by Plato and Aristotle, into Syriac, al-Kindi was the first of the Muslim Peripatetic philosophers, and is known for his efforts to introduce Greek and Hellenistic philosophy to the Arab world. He incorporated Aristotelian and Neoplatonist thought into an Islamic philosophical framework and this was an important factor in the introduction and popularization of Greek philosophy in the Muslim intellectual world. The philosopher Al-Farabi had great influence on science and philosophy for several centuries and his work, aimed at synthesis of philosophy and Sufism, paved the way for the work of Avicenna. Avicenna was one of the interpreters of Aristotle. The school of thought he founded became known as Avicennism, which was built on ingredients and conceptual building blocks that are largely Aristotelian and Neoplatonist. At the western end of the Mediterranean Sea, during the reign of Al-Hakam II in Córdoba, a massive effort was undertaken. Averroes, who spent much of his life in Cordoba and Seville, was distinguished as a commentator of Aristotle
6.
Romanticism
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Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It was embodied most strongly in the arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education. It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble, Romanticism assigned a high value to the achievements of heroic individualists and artists, whose examples, it maintained, would raise the quality of society. It also promoted the individual imagination as a critical authority allowed of freedom from classical notions of form in art, there was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, a Zeitgeist, in the representation of its ideas. In the second half of the 19th century, Realism was offered as a polar opposite to Romanticism, the decline of Romanticism during this time was associated with multiple processes, including social and political changes and the spread of nationalism. Defining the nature of Romanticism may be approached from the point of the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist. The importance the Romantics placed on emotion is summed up in the remark of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich that the feeling is his law. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others believed there were laws that the imagination—at least of a good creative artist—would unconsciously follow through artistic inspiration if left alone. As well as rules, the influence of models from other works was considered to impede the creators own imagination, so that originality was essential. The concept of the genius, or artist who was able to produce his own work through this process of creation from nothingness, is key to Romanticism. This idea is called romantic originality. Not essential to Romanticism, but so widespread as to be normative, was a strong belief, however, this is particularly in the effect of nature upon the artist when he is surrounded by it, preferably alone. Romantic art addressed its audiences with what was intended to be felt as the voice of the artist. So, in literature, much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves. In both French and German the closeness of the adjective to roman, meaning the new literary form of the novel, had some effect on the sense of the word in those languages. It is only from the 1820s that Romanticism certainly knew itself by its name, the period typically called Romantic varies greatly between different countries and different artistic media or areas of thought. Margaret Drabble described it in literature as taking place roughly between 1770 and 1848, and few dates much earlier than 1770 will be found. In English literature, M. H. Abrams placed it between 1789, or 1798, this latter a very typical view, and about 1830, however, in most fields the Romantic Period is said to be over by about 1850, or earlier
7.
Expressionism
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Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, Expressionist artists sought to express the meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality. Expressionism was developed as an avant-garde style before the First World War and it remained popular during the Weimar Republic, particularly in Berlin. The style extended to a range of the arts, including expressionist architecture, painting, literature, theatre, dance, film. The term is sometimes suggestive of angst, in a general sense, painters such as Matthias Grünewald and El Greco are sometimes termed expressionist, though in practice the term is applied mainly to 20th-century works. The Expressionist emphasis on individual perspective has been characterized as a reaction to positivism, though an alternate view is that the term was coined by the Czech art historian Antonin Matějček in 1910, as the opposite of impressionism, An Expressionist wishes, above all, to express himself. Immediate perception and builds on more complex psychic structures, in 1905, a group of four German artists, led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, formed Die Brücke in the city of Dresden. This was arguably the founding organization for the German Expressionist movement, a few years later, in 1911, a like-minded group of young artists formed Der Blaue Reiter in Munich. The name came from Wassily Kandinskys Der Blaue Reiter painting of 1903, among their members were Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Paul Klee, and Auguste Macke. However, the term Expressionism did not firmly establish itself until 1913, though mainly a German artistic movement initially and most predominant in painting, poetry and the theatre between 1910–30, most precursors of the movement were not German. Expressionism is notoriously difficult to define, in part because it overlapped with other major isms of the modernist period, with Futurism, Vorticism, Cubism, Surrealism, more explicitly, that the expressionists rejected the ideology of realism. The term refers to a style in which the artist seeks to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions. It is arguable that all artists are expressive but there are examples of art production in Europe from the 15th century onward which emphasize extreme emotion. Expressionism has been likened to Baroque by critics such as art historian Michel Ragon, according to Alberto Arbasino, a difference between the two is that Expressionism doesnt shun the violently unpleasant effect, while Baroque does. Expressionism throws some terrific fuck yous, Baroque doesnt, brazil, Anita Malfatti, Cândido Portinari, Di Cavalcanti, Iberê Camargo and Lasar Segall. Estonia, Konrad Mägi, Eduard Wiiralt Finland, Tyko Sallinen, Alvar Cawén, Juho Mäkelä, there were a number of groups of expressionist painters, including Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brücke. Der Blaue Reiter was based in Munich and Die Brücke was based originally in Dresden, Die Brücke was active for a longer period than Der Blaue Reiter, which was only together for a year. The Expressionists had many influences, among them Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh and they were also aware of the work being done by the Fauves in Paris, who influenced Expressionisms tendency toward arbitrary colours and jarring compositions
