In Aristotle’s paper, “Poetics”, he mentions how poems are imitations in part one by “language, rhythm, and harmony”. As people he feels that we are drawn towards imitation. All of our art or poetry or theater is imitations of real life. Aristotle also feels that poems should be a form of tragedy rather than a comedy (the other type of narrative he provides to contradict tragedy with) or epic.
Aristotle poses a positive outlook on poetry. One of the ways I feel he does this is when he describes how poetry provides an outlook on the future and is not based on history. Tying in the poetry with tragedy, Aristotle mentions how “tragedy gives a feeling of necessity” to a poem. This helps to support his claim of using tragedy rather then other types of narrative. One part of tragedy that Aristotle tends to focus on is the fact that a poem should have a feeling of “pity and fear pleasures”. He feels as though one should feel these things when reading a poem.
In my opinion, Aristotle does provide a helpful look on art. I had never thought of looking at art as an imitation of life. A painting of a house would be an imitation of a house from physical life. This outlook helps me to also see why we may be so drawn to poetry or other forms of art; because of the possibility of what could be rather than what was or is. I had always though of art as just portraying pictures of things that they enjoy or like. As this is part of what art is, it is not fully art. I do really like Aristotle’s view of art. I also enjoy the part in where he believes that we should feel the pity and fear when reading the poem because poetry should be about emotion and conveying it in a good way.
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Barista's approach 