Aristotle on Dramatic Musical Composition: The Real Role of Literature, Catharsis, Music and Dance in the POETICS (Edition 2)

Description: Scott not only solves the problem of catharsis in the definition of tragedy but demonstrates that Aristotle considers tragedy to be a species of dramatic musical theater rather than of literature.

Review Quotes:

"There is no room for katharsis in the definition of tragedy as it occurs in chapter 6 of Aristotle's Poetics. The passage is corrupt. At least three scholars (Petrusevski, Freire, and Scott) have shown that intervention in the text is justified and necessary... I take it for granted here that katharsis in line 1449b28 cannot remain." -CLAUDIO WILLIAM VELOSO, "Aristotle's Poetics without Katharsis, Fear, or Pity," Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2007. Veloso is the author also of Pourquoi la Poétique d'Aristote? DIAGOGE [Why the Poetics of Aristotle? Intellectual Enjoyment] (August 2018, Vrin).

"Scott is the first to thoroughly counter more than two thousand years of Aristotelian hermeneutics. He does this by re-analysing, step by step and comprehensively, a vast literature and gallery of authors hitherto considered indisputable points of reference, thus...affirming the entirely new interpretation (p. 29)... Although Scott's reading is supported by a growing number of affirmations worldwide, most of the specialists, with Stephen Halliwell in the lead, insist on repeating the old, misleading interpretations (p. 33)." -ANTONIO ATTISANI, "Rifare il principio: Il sentiero neodrammatico," in Il Pensiero: rivista di filosofia, Volume LVIII, 2019/1. 17-41; transl. George Ulrich.

"Scott's book is, I think, more important than Else's (whose problems he [Scott] answers much more neatly), which was perhaps the magnum opus of the last century... Everyone claiming to be interested in what Aristotle was really up to in that book [the Poetics] needs to read this one of Scott's." -GENE FENDT, Ancient Philosophy, Volume 39, Issue 1, Spring 2019: 248-252. [(Gerald]) Else's book is Aristotle's Poetics: The Argument, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957.]