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Full Idea
Poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.
Gist of Idea
Poetry is more philosophic than history, as it concerns universals, not particulars
Source
Aristotle (The Poetics [c.347 BCE], 1451b05)
Book Ref
Aristotle: 'The Basic Works of Aristotle', ed/tr. McKeon,Richard [Modern Library Classics 2001], p.1464
A Reaction
Hm. Characters in great novels achieve universality by being representated very particularly. Great depth of mind seems required to be a poet, but less so for a historian (though there is, I presume, no upward limit on the possible level of thought).
| 16565 | Without the surface decoration, poetry shows only appearances and nothing of what is real [Plato] |
| 16566 | Poetry is more philosophic than history, as it concerns universals, not particulars [Aristotle] |
| 20873 | Tragedies are versified sufferings of people impressed by externals [Epictetus] |
| 23364 | Homer wrote to show that the most blessed men can be ruined by poor judgement [Epictetus] |
| 22030 | For poets free choice is supreme [Schlegel,F] |
| 22341 | Literature is the most important aspect of culture, because it teaches understanding of living [Murdoch] |
| 21939 | The author function of any text is a plurality of selves [Foucault, by Gutting] |
| 9814 | All great poetry is engaged in rivalry with mathematics [Badiou] |
| 21007 | Storytelling is never neutral; some features of the world must be emphasised [Nussbaum] |
| 20454 | Wallace Stevens is the greatest philosophical poet of the twentieth century in English [Critchley] |
| 20927 | The hermeneutic circle is between the reader's self-understanding, and the world of the text [Zimmermann,J] |