Writers-to-be, unite! Actually, writers-who-already-are, feel free to come along, too. Philip Freeman, who holds the Fletcher Jones Chair in humanities at Pepperdine University, has issued a new and more concise translation of Aristotle’s famous work “Poetics.” Freeman’s translation is part of Princeton University Press’s ongoing Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers collection, to which the author has already contributed five translations of other classic works.
For those who have read other translations of Aristotle’s “Poetics,” they will have undoubtedly noticed the missing parts and jumbled text of the original. In his introduction, Freeman compares the original text, which Aristotle actually didn’t intend for publication, to “unpolished lecture notes.” Though Aristotle never fully completed the work (the section on comedy is lost to history), his thoughts and comparisons of the three forms of literature—comedy, tragedy, and epic—are insightful and can be considered the foundation upon which writers should base their literary projects. Fittingly, Freeman’s translation is titled “How to Tell a Story: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Storytelling for Writers and Readers.”
