POETRY ACCORDING TO ARISTOTLE
Introductory Note. This instructive Essay on poetry forms one of the series titled Critical and Historical Essays. Cardinal Newman's own gifts and tastes for music and poetry render his appreciation of these arts keen, delicate, and true.
200 to 203. Nature and office of poetry. A profound and beautiful definition of poetry and of the poetical mind.
203: 1. (a) Iliad. (c) Choëphoræ. (a) Epic of the Fall of Troy by Homer. (b) A tragedy by Æschylus, so named from the chorus that bear offerings to the tomb of Agamemnon.
203: 26. (a) Empedocles. (b) Oppian. (a) A Sicilian; haughty, passionate; proclaimed himself a god; plunged into the crater of Mt. Etna. (b) A Greek poet of Cilicia; lived in the second century.
208: 15. The Divine vengeance. Does not the same criticism apply to Milton's Satan, a majestic spirit, punished beyond his due, and therefore worthy our admiration and pity? Compare Dante and Milton in their conception of Lucifer.
210: 17. Eloquence mistaken for poetry. A finely distinguished truth, which explains why much rhetoric, even declamation, passes in our day for poetry.
215: 16. Conditions of the poetical mind. Mark the line drawn between the sources of true poetry and the actual practices of the poet. Compare with the theory of Wordsworth, to find likenesses on this point.