/lit/'s opinion on this?

I read it recently primarily for his thoughts of tradgedy. A lot of it seems obvious, but he's the one that codified it in the first place. A bit like the three-act structure films script guy.

I'd be interested on a deeper analysis. I've always found Aristotle quite cold compared to Plato, but this was the first thing of his I'd read I found easily engaging.

does anyone here know how this work was viewed in antiquity?
did authors consciously try to adhere to it like renaissance writers did?

>>8598097
Check out Explanation & Understanding or Time & Narrative, by Ricoeur

Frye also has interesting interpretation

>>8598137
Thanks anon

>>8597890
I think a lot of the issues with the Poetics come from the fact that it is a direct response to the challenges of Plato. Instead of challenging the preconceptions that Plato has about what tragedy should do, he instead, wrongly, pretends that the accusations Plato makes are false and that theatre actually contributes to an idea of public good that Plato would have wanted it to.
All that stuff about catharsis really misses the point of ancient Greek tragedy; it's not some kind of mass therapy. And it's why he resented (openly) Euripides, one of the greatest tragedians, for fucking with the formula, and resented (less obviously) Aeschylus , due to his (Aristotle's) misunderstanding of the radical democratic context with which tragedy was irrevocably linked (or maybe not resented, but you do get the sense that Aristotle really didn't "get" any of the tragedians except from Sophocles.)

>>8598156
interesting. I've only ever encountered the catharsis idea presented as unchallenged fact.

>>8598156
The "catharsis as mass therapy" idea is actually only one interpretation among several. It's a very contentious term in a VERY contentious treatise. The Poetics is a badly fragmentary, possibly badly damaged, possibly even pseudo-Aristotelian treatise, probably a compilation of Aristotle's notes or notes taken by a student of his.

Many many things about it are completely mysterious. Catharsis is one of them.

Are you getting the Euripides/Aeschylus stuff from the Birth of Tragedy, or elsewhere? I'd be interested