User:Chloe T.

From RhetorClick

I'm Chloe, and I'm currently an undergrad at St. Edward's University pursuing BAs in English Writing and Rhetoric as well as Mathematics.

Here is a link to an online version of Aristotle's Poetics. There are only 26 surviving chapters of the poetics, and they focus mainly on epics and tragedies (his work on comedy has sadly been lost). Aristotle distinguishes between rhetoric and poetry, claiming that "Socratic dialogues" cannot rightly be compared with poetry, because their only real connection is that they both use language. He goes on to say, rather beautifully, that it's "not the [use of language] that makes the poet, but the verse that entitles them all to the name."

Aristotle, student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great, was a Greek philosopher from 384-322 BCE. Aristotle wrote books on politics, ethics, physics, metaphysics, logic, poetry, and, most importantly for our purposes, rhetoric. Aristotle's Rhetoric is one of the most recent documents that treats the subject as a legitimate discipline and art, or in Aristotle's words, a "techne." Aristotle also provided the world's first definition of rhetoric as "the art of persuasion." [edit]