Aristotle

I was able to identify with Aristotle's writings much easier than Plato's. For me, the appeal of Aristotle begins with his scientific approach to the subject at hand. The categorization he uses makes Poetics read like a kind of instruction manual to poetry. He goes as far as to break down how a vowel and consonant are made and even defines an utterance. I had never even thought about what an utterance really is until I read this. He goes to talk about names. This where he really gets nerdy and explains what a metaphor is by using taxonomy to break down the parts. In this he basically explains how phrases that are (usually) more dramatic sounding are used in place of the boring literal phrases. He moves on up the food chain until he gets to a debate between tragedies and epics. So to make a long entry short, Aristotle begins with the smallest part of the whole and works his way to the larger animals, explaining everything that he will be discussing later in detail up front so that as the reader moves along in the writings they have already been versed in what they are up against. With this, Poetics a shining example of how to phrase an argument.

What stood out to me most in this selection was Aristotle's praise of Homer for being "well aware of what he himself should do" (110). As far back as middle school, whether it was writing a story or a research paper, I was always told by my English teachers to show what I mean rather than tell. I was oblivious to where this had come from and ignored my teachers' advice, out of complete and utter ignorance (and probably some arrogance too), until my final year of high school when Mrs. Leighton told me where this advice had come from and that she and the other teachers were not just full crap.