Classical Literary Criticism

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Aristotle's Poetics has long been recognized as a seminal work of literary criticism. His analysis of tragic drama, epic poetry and stylistic devices such as metaphor, and his famous notion of the cathartic purging of the emotions, have defined a critical terminology for generations of later writers. In the Ars Poetica Horace defends the civilizing power of poetry and the fundamental importance of the principle decorum, while the anonymous author of the treatise On the Sublime (who was formerly erroneously thought to be Longinus) stresses the innate ability required to produce poetry of sublime grandeur.