Overview

This book revolutionizes the 1000-year old tradition that stems from the first commentaries on the Poetics by the Arabic scholars. (No commentary exists from antiquity or Byzantine times.) Starting with those scholars, Aristotle's treatise has always been thought to be about poetic-literary theory, with tragedy being its paradigm. Scott demonstrates, however, that Aristotle (c. 384-322 BCE) employs poiesis not in the way universally assumed until now, as ""poetry,"" which the sophist Gorgias only coined in 415 BCE. Rather, Aristotle follows Diotima, who in the Symposium of Plato (c. 424-347) explains poiesis as mousike kai metra (typically ""'music' and verses"" but better ""music-dance and verses""). One reason Aristotle employs the Diotiman and not the Gorgian sense of poiesis is that not one poem exists in the so-called ""Poetics""; another reason is that the definition of tragedy includes music and dance (rhuthmos). Scott subsequently demonstrates that Aristotle considers tragedy not to be a species of literature but one of dramatic musical theater that also requires dance and spectacle. Chapter 2 includes a revised version of Scott's ""The Poetics of Performance"" (Cambridge University Press, 1999). The book also supplements his arguments of ""Purging the Poetics"" (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2003), reprinted here as Chapter 5, providing the additional reasons why Aristotle could not have written the clause with the words catharsis, pity, and fear in the definition of tragedy, as a number of internationally known ancient Greek specialists have already been accepting. As part of his reasons, Scott shows that, despite their recent, very admirable paleography, Leonardo Tarán and Dmitri Gutas too often mangle the philosophical interpretations and even some of the philology regarding the ""musical"" terms, especially when they try to sweep the problems of catharsis under the rug. Also, Tarán and Gutas never even recognize the Diotiman sense of poiesis that Aristotle uses, nor do they recognize the philosophical contradictions with keeping the katharsis-clause. All of this allows a fresh and better reading of the treatise that even with its fundamental misinterpretations has been a major part of the foundation of Western literary, dramatic and artistic theory. UPDATES & ERRATA: www.epspress.com/ADMCupdates.html Contents Volume 1 includes: Plato's meanings of poiesis as ""music-dance and verse"" and his use of rhuthmos often not as ""rhythm"" but ""dance""; the importance of dance in the state for Plato; Aristotle's agreement with his mentor on the meaning of the musical terms and the requirement of dance not only in the Poetics but in the Politics, along with the proof that Aristotle considers tragedy to be a species of dramatic ""musical"" art, not literature. 364 pages. List: Hardcover $68; Softcover $48. Volume 1 is available at www.amazon.com/dp/0999704923 Volume 2 (this book) includes the issues of catharsis, pity, and fear, and a complete rebuttal of the only attempted rigorous reply (by Stephen Halliwell in Between Ecstasy and Truth, 2011) to ""Purging the Poetics."" This volume also contains: Aristotle's response to Plato without catharsis; comedy; whether or not the principles of ""musical"" dramatic theater can be applied to art forms like literature and cinema; the history of the Poetics with regards to the two fundamental misconceptions; Bibliography; and Index for both volumes.

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There is no room for katharsis in the definition of tragedy as it occurs in chapter 6 of Aristotle's Poetics. The passage is corrupt. At least three scholars (Petrusevski, Freire, and Scott) have shown that intervention in the text is justified and necessary... I take it for granted here that katharsis in line 1449b28 cannot remain. -CLAUDIO WILLIAM VELOSO, Aristotle's Poetics without Katharsis, Fear, or Pity, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2007. Veloso is the author also of Pourquoi la Poetique d'Aristote? DIAGOGE [Why the Poetics of Aristotle? Intellectual Enjoyment] (August 2018, Vrin). Scott is the first to thoroughly counter more than two thousand years of Aristotelian hermeneutics. He does this by re-analysing, step by step and comprehensively, a vast literature and gallery of authors hitherto considered indisputable points of reference, thus...affirming the entirely new interpretation (p. 29)... Although Scott's reading is supported by a growing number of affirmations worldwide, most of the specialists, with Stephen Halliwell in the lead, insist on repeating the old, misleading interpretations (p. 33). -ANTONIO ATTISANI, Rifare il principio: Il sentiero neodrammatico, in Il Pensiero: rivista di filosofia, Volume LVIII, 2019/1. 17-41; transl. George Ulrich. Scott's book is, I think, more important than Else's (whose problems he [Scott] answers much more neatly), which was perhaps the magnum opus of the last century... Everyone claiming to be interested in what Aristotle was really up to in that book [the Poetics] needs to read this one of Scott's. -GENE FENDT, Ancient Philosophy, Volume 39, Issue 1, Spring 2019: 248-252. [(Gerald]) Else's book is Aristotle's Poetics: The Argument, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957.]

There is no room for katharsis in the definition of tragedy as it occurs in chapter 6 of Aristotle's Poetics. The passage is corrupt. At least three scholars (Petrusevski, Freire, and Scott) have shown that intervention in the text is justified and necessary... I take it for granted here that katharsis in line 1449b28 cannot remain. --CLAUDIO WILLIAM VELOSO, Aristotle's Poetics without Katharsis, Fear, or Pity, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2007. Veloso is the author also of Pourquoi la Poetique d'Aristote? DIAGOGE [Why the Poetics of Aristotle? Intellectual Enjoyment] (August 2018, Vrin). In discussing directly the views of Veloso (and indirectly of Scott), and before giving his own solution to the illegitimacy of katharsis in Poetics 6, Marwan Rashed writes about the Greek manuscripts: Aristote ne peut avoir ecrit le texte que nous avons sous les yeux ( Aristotle could not have written the text that we have before our eyes ).--MARWAN RASHED, Professor of Ancient Greek Philosophy, Universite Paris-Sorbonne Katharsis versus mimesis simulation des emotions et definition aristotelicienne de la tragedie, Litterature, No. 182, 2016. Does the katharsis phrase belong in our text at all? In a recent article, Gregory Scott argues that the phrase about katharsis may not belong in the text at all, and urges that it should be purged... Whether or not the katharsis phrase is an interpolation, it is not woven into the fabric of the book, and we had best set it to one side as we work to understand the text of the Poetics... It is tempting for modern readers to infer that the Poetics is a work of literary criticism divorced from concerns about performance. But...Aristotle's account of tragedy refers to features that tragic plays can have only in performance. So we should resist the temptation to think of the Poetics as concerned with literature narrowly conceived. --PAUL WOODRUFF, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin, Aristotle'sPoetics The Aim of Tragedy, A Companion to Aristotle, 2009. My favourite articles in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy this year are two in volume XXV: one by Gregory Scott, who cuts one Gordian knot of Aristotelian scholarship by athetizing the clause that introduces katharsis into Aristotle's definition in the Poetics... --GEORGE BOYS-STONES, Professor of Ancient Philosophy, Durham University (U.K.), Subject Reviews, Greece & Rome, Vol. 52, No. 1, The Classical Association www.classicalassociation.org, 2005.

There is no room for katharsis in the definition of tragedy as it occurs in chapter 6 of Aristotle's Poetics. The passage is corrupt. At least three scholars (Petrusevski, Freire, and Scott) have shown that intervention in the text is justified and necessary... I take it for granted here that katharsis in line 1449b28 cannot remain. --CLAUDIO WILLIAM VELOSO, Aristotle's Poetics without Katharsis, Fear, or Pity, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2007. Veloso is the author also of Pourquoi la Po tique d'Aristote? DIAGOGE [Why the Poetics of Aristotle? Intellectual Enjoyment] (August 2018, Vrin). In discussing directly the views of Veloso (and indirectly of Scott), and before giving his own solution to the illegitimacy of katharsis in Poetics 6, Marwan Rashed writes about the Greek manuscripts: Aristote ne peut avoir crit le texte que nous avons sous les yeux ( Aristotle could not have written the text that we have before our eyes ).--MARWAN RASHED, Professor of Ancient Greek Philosophy, Universit Paris-Sorbonne Katharsis versus mim sis simulation des motions et d finition aristot licienne de la trag die, Litt rature, No. 182, 2016. Does the katharsis phrase belong in our text at all? In a recent article, Gregory Scott argues that the phrase about katharsis may not belong in the text at all, and urges that it should be purged... Whether or not the katharsis phrase is an interpolation, it is not woven into the fabric of the book, and we had best set it to one side as we work to understand the text of the Poetics... It is tempting for modern readers to infer that the Poetics is a work of literary criticism divorced from concerns about performance. But...Aristotle's account of tragedy refers to features that tragic plays can have only in performance. So we should resist the temptation to think of the Poetics as concerned with literature narrowly conceived. --PAUL WOODRUFF, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin, Aristotle'sPoetics The Aim of Tragedy, A Companion to Aristotle, 2009. My favourite articles in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy this year are two in volume XXV: one by Gregory Scott, who cuts one Gordian knot of Aristotelian scholarship by athetizing the clause that introduces katharsis into Aristotle's definition in the Poetics... --GEORGE BOYS-STONES, Professor of Ancient Philosophy, Durham University (U.K.), Subject Reviews, Greece & Rome, Vol. 52, No. 1, The Classical Association www.classicalassociation.org, 2005.

""There is no room for katharsis in the definition of tragedy as it occurs in chapter 6 of Aristotle's Poetics. The passage is corrupt. At least three scholars (Petrusevski, Freire, and Scott) have shown that intervention in the text is justified and necessary... I take it for granted here that katharsis in line 1449b28 cannot remain."" -CLAUDIO WILLIAM VELOSO, ""Aristotle's Poetics without Katharsis, Fear, or Pity,"" Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2007. Veloso is the author also of Pourquoi la Poétique d'Aristote? DIAGOGE [Why the Poetics of Aristotle? Intellectual Enjoyment] (August 2018, Vrin). ""Scott is the first to thoroughly counter more than two thousand years of Aristotelian hermeneutics. He does this by re-analysing, step by step and comprehensively, a vast literature and gallery of authors hitherto considered indisputable points of reference, thus...affirming the entirely new interpretation (p. 29)... Although Scott's reading is supported by a growing number of affirmations worldwide, most of the specialists, with Stephen Halliwell in the lead, insist on repeating the old, misleading interpretations (p. 33)."" -ANTONIO ATTISANI, ""Rifare il principio: Il sentiero neodrammatico,"" in Il Pensiero: rivista di filosofia, Volume LVIII, 2019/1. 17-41; transl. George Ulrich. ""Scott's book is, I think, more important than Else's (whose problems he [Scott] answers much more neatly), which was perhaps the magnum opus of the last century... Everyone claiming to be interested in what Aristotle was really up to in that book [the Poetics] needs to read this one of Scott's."" -GENE FENDT, Ancient Philosophy, Volume 39, Issue 1, Spring 2019: 248-252. [(Gerald]) Else's book is Aristotle's Poetics: The Argument, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957.]

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