An insightful how-to guide for writing screenplays that uses Aristotle's great work as a guide. Long considered the bible for storytellers, Aristotle's Poetics is a fixture of college courses on everything from fiction writing to dramatic theory. Now Michael Tierno shows how this great work can be an invaluable resource to screenwriters or anyone interested in studying plot structure. In carefully organized chapters, Tierno breaks down the fundamentals...

Of all the writings on theory and aesthetics ancient, medieval, or modern the most important is indisputably Aristotle’s Poetics, the first philosophical treatise to propound a theory of literature. In the Poetics, Aristotle writes that he will speak of comedy but there is no further mention of comedy. Aristotle writes also that he will address catharsis and an analysis of what is funny. But he does not actually address any of those ideas. The surviving...

Epps has attempted to provide a translation of the Poetics to which all students could have access and thus gain a common terminology for this work. He has endeavored to make it clear enough that the average student with reasonable effort can understand the work without consulting aids.

Greek philosopher and scientist, Aristotle, lived in the 4th century B.C. and is thought of as one of the most important figures from classical antiquity. Aristotle was probably the most famous member of Plato's Academy in Athens, whose writings would ultimately form the first comprehensive system of Western philosophy. His writings were not constrained to simply one field of inquiry but covered such various subjects as physics, biology, metaphysics,...

Any lover of Shakespeare or the Romantic poets can concede that poetry is pleasurable. But is it good for you? Can it teach you anything? These are questions that have beguiled and engaged eminent critics for millennia, and now you can develop your own answers and options with these 24 lectures. The source of poetry's wellspring; the relationship between poetry and human progress; the possible truths (and lies) involved in the literary arts; the role...

The innovative Brazilian playwright, director and international lecturer explicates Aristotle's poetics and the philosophies of Machiavelli, Hegel and Brecht to determine the extent to which their chief components--imitation, catharsis and, ultimately, audience control--serve up to support the status quo of a society rather than facilitate change.

In this, his first book, Nietzsche developed a way of thinking about the arts that unites the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus as the central symbol of human existence. Although tragedy serves as the focus of this work, music, visual art, dance, and the other arts can also be viewed using Nietzsche's analysis and integration of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The Birth of Tragedy stands alongside Aristotle's Poetics as an essential work for all who...