![]() ![]() ![]() Greek philosopher Aristotle, a pupil of Plato and the tutor of Alexander the Great, authored works on ethics, natural sciences, politics, and poetics that profoundly influenced western thought empirical observation precedes theory, and the syllogism bases logic, the essential method of rational inquiry in his system, which led him to see and to criticize metaphysical excesses. It is accompanied by an extended introduction, which discusses the key concepts in detail and includes suggestions for further reading. ![]() Malcolm Heath’s lucid English translation makes the Poetics fully accessible to the modern reader. One of the most powerful, perceptive and influential works of criticism in Western literary history, the Poetics has informed serious thinking about drama ever since. Aristotle explains how the most effective tragedies rely on complication and resolution, recognition and reversals, centring on characters of heroic stature, idealized yet true to life. Taking examples from the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, The Poetics introduces into literary criticism such central concepts as mimesis (‘imitation’), hamartia (‘error’), and katharsis (‘purification’). ![]() In his near-contemporary account of Greek tragedy, Aristotle examines the dramatic elements of plot, character, language and spectacle that combine to produce pity and fear in the audience, and asks why we derive pleasure from this apparently painful process. ‘The plot is the source and the soul of tragedy’ ![]()
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![]() The Hazel Wood is more Grimm Brothers than it is Hans Christian Anderson.Īt the heart of The Hazel Wood is a fictional book- Tales From The Hinterland-written by Alice’s grandmother. Even having read the description, I didn’t anticipate how dark The Hazel Wood would be. With that said, the books are very different. I loved Girls Made of Snow and Glass and this was recommended as an up-and-coming book for fans who enjoyed Girls. I came to The Hazel Wood with some anticipation. As one would expect, Alice promptly sets out for The Hazel Wood in search of her mother, only to find truths about herself instead. Until one day they can’t run far enough and Ella is taken, leaving no clues except the warning to “Stay Away from the Hazel Wood,” the estate of Alice’s reclusive fairytale-telling grandmother. Ellery Finch on The Tales from the Hinterlandįor as long as she can remember, Alice and her mother have been running, running from bad luck, running from recognition. ![]() She’s like a war reporter who doesn’t give a fuck. ![]() And the author’s voice –your grandmother’s voice-is perfectly pitiless. They’re set in a place that has no rules and doesn’t want any. And they don’t happen for a reason, or in threes, or in a way that looks like justice. There’s just this harsh, horrible world touched with beautiful magic, where shity things happen. ![]() ![]() Within this transitional statecalled, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardoa monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul. ![]() Together, their dialog often tells a single story. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. These sections of the book read much like a play - where one “ghost” says one thing (immediately followed by the identification of who is speaking) and then a second adds detail or opinion and so on. The bardo - a Buddhist term referring to the transitional space between death and rebirth - is populated by many deceased people from different time periods, all having conversations, arguing, and exchanging anecdotes about their lives. ![]() And, for me, the beautifully written passages featuring these two characters were my favorites–Willie trying to understand the very adult concept that he has lost his life and our former President weighed down by incomprehensible grief in the middle of a national crisis.īut as the title implies, most of the “action” takes place in the bardo, with MANY other characters. Willie’s temporary afterlife in Oak Hill has become the subject of George Saunders’s first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo (Random House), now being published after a half-dozen books of. ![]() LINCOLN IN THE BARDO takes place in 1862, the middle of the American Civil War, around the death of 11-year-old William “Willie” Lincoln, President Abraham Lincoln’s son. ![]() |