Poetics (Unabridged and Annotated)

Aristotle's Poetics is the oldest surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory.
In it, Aristotle offers an account of what he calls "poetry" (a term which in Greek literally means "making" and in this context includes dramaâ??comedy, tragedy, and the satyr playâ??as well as lyric poetry and epic poetry). They are similar in the fact that they are all imitations but different in the three ways that Aristotle describes:

Differences i...