Aristotle's Poetics

Martha Husain is an associate professor of philosophy at Brock
University in St. Catharines, Ontario.

The bulk of this book is divided into translation with facing commentary
and meta-reflection on how to translate. The division between
translation and reflection on translation is useful for the purposes of
scholarly analysis, whether or not one agrees with George Whalley’s
meta-approach. Particularly commendable features of Whalley’s approach
include his provocative new numbering by topical sections, his attempt
to distil the essential argument of the text, his clear understanding of
the materiality of works of art, his understanding that katharsis
pertains to the action, and his careful link with the scholarly
text-establishment work of the 1960s.

Particularly troubling are his profuse use of indicators and
bracketings on the basis of exegetical rather than textual arguments;
his failure to approach the Poetics from within the Aristotelian corpus;
his inferences to Aristotle’s mind; his interpretation of the Poetics
as an esthetics; his assimilation of poiesis to praxis, disregarding
Aristotle’s clear differentiation of the two in Met. IX. 6 and E.N.
VI. 4,5,6; his misleading etymological emphasis, which neglects the
technical precision of Aristotle’s philosophical terms; and, in this
reviewer’s opinion, the indefensible Coleridge-Aristotle axis.

Still, despite its being dated, the book is welcome. Its meta-level
emphasis allows reasoned agreement and disagreement. And it is clearly a
labor of love, which is a rarity in philosophy.