Aristotle’s "Poetics" as Object of Fiction

What is it about?

The four fictions here discussed reveal the significance of Aristotle's "Poetics" as an archetype in the collective imaginary of literary criticism, and beyond: one could speak of a totemic text – or, for some other readers, such as Umberto Eco’s blind librarian, of a taboo. Borges’ short story "Averroes’ Search" (1947) and Eco’s novel "The Name of the Rose" (1980) both explore the impediments to the understanding of the "Poetics" in the Middle Ages – in order ultimately to reflect on our contemporary reception of the treatise, from a post-modern perspective in Borges, and a cognitive one in Eco. The next two examples are images that illustrate opposite polarities in the early modern reception of the Poetics. Rembrandt’s "Aristotle with the Bust of Homer" (1653) can be read as an emblem of a problematic reception: dressed as an Italian Renaissance scholar, Aristotle appears to be puzzled by Homer, just as Italian Renaissance critics were somewhat puzzled by Aristotle’s "Poetics". In contrast, Jan van den Avelen’s frontispiece for Dacier’s "Poëtique d’Aristote" (1692) exemplifies the totemic nature of the text for late 17th-century neoclassicism: the engraving replicates the iconographic formula of Moses receiving the Tables of the Law, making Aristotle the prophet of a revealed truth – a model soon to be secularized by Lessing. All these fictional “emplotments” of the Poetics thus offer several forms of mise an abyme of its receptions and their interrelations, from the Middle Ages to the contemporary era.

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Photo by Giammarco Boscaro on Unsplash

Photo by Giammarco Boscaro on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Aristotle’s “Poetics” has entered the pantheon of literary theory as a founding landmark, and its complex and controversial afterlife provides an exemplary case for reception studies. These studies tend to focus on scholarly readers and explore the critical metanarratives in which classical works are embedded ; however, the fate of the “Poetics” extends far beyond the confines of academia. Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco have made the book itself, and the processes of its reception, the subject of fictional narratives ; and Rembrandt’s famous painting of “Aristotle with the Bust of Homer” can also be read as the unfolding of a story about the ”Poetics”. Although Rembrandt probably had no direct knowledge of Aristotle’s text, his powerful image highlights conflicting trends in the reception of the Poetics. Considering the fictional afterlife of the “Poetics” helps to understand how the reception of the ”Poetics” in different (though sometimes overlapping) communities – scholars on the one hand, artists working for the general public on the other – is interrelated, and why Aristotle’s treatise mattered – and still matters – as a cultural artefact.

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