Thus if the story adopted by the
poet has a strict unity, it must either be concisely told and appear
truncated; or, if it conforms to the Epic canon of length, it must
seem weak and watery. [Such length implies some loss of unity,] if,
I mean, the poem is constructed out of several actions, like the Iliad
and the Odyssey, which have many such parts, each with a certain
magnitude of its own. Yet these poems are as perfect as possible in
structure; each is, in the highest degree attainable, an imitation
of a single action.
If, then, tragedy is superior to epic poetry in all these
respects, and, moreover, fulfills its specific function better as an
art- for each art ought to produce, not any chance pleasure, but the
pleasure proper to it, as already stated- it plainly follows that
tragedy is the higher art, as attaining its end more perfectly.
Thus much may suffice concerning Tragic and Epic poetry in
general; their several kinds and parts, with the number of each and
their differences; the causes that make a poem good or bad; the
objections of the critics and the answers to these objections....
-THE END-
.
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