In it, Aristotle offers an account of what he calls "poetry" (a term which in Greek literally means "making" and in this context includes drama - comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play - as well as lyric poetry and epic poetry). They are similar in the fact that they are all imitations but different in the three ways that Aristotle describes: 1. Differences in music rhythm, harmony, meter and melody. 2. Difference of goodness in the characters. 3. Difference in how the narrative is presented: telling a story or acting it out. In examining its "first principles," Aristotle finds two: 1) imitation and 2) genres and other concepts by which that of truth is applied/revealed in the poesis. His analysis of tragedy constitutes the core of the discussion. Although Aristotle's Poetics is universally acknowledged in the Western critical tradition, "almost every detail about his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions."

The Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies is a two-volume reference book containing some 600 entries on all aspects of Italian literary culture. It includes analytical essays on authors and works, from the most important figures of Italian literature to little known authors and works that are influential to the field. The Encyclopedia is distinguished by substantial articles on critics, themes, genres, schools, historical surveys, and other topics related to the overall subject of Italian literary studies. The Encyclopedia also includes writers and subjects of contemporary interest, such as those relating to journalism, film, media, children's literature, food and vernacular literatures. Entries consist of an essay on the topic and a bibliographic portion listing works for further reading, and, in the case of entries on individuals, a brief biographical paragraph and list of works by the person. It will be useful to people without specialized knowledge of Italian literature as well as to scholars.

The 'rediscovery' in sixteenth-century Italy of Aristotle's Poetics marks a crucial moment in the development of Western thought about literature, for the flood of new and controversial works that accompanied this event laid the foundations of modern literary criticism and theory. This is a study of the main literary theories of the late Italian Renaissance that seek to define a poetics of dialogue. The author contends that dialogue - among the most popular of all prose forms in Italy to develop a new theory of literature, because it seems to subvert the conventional Renaissance understanding of what is 'literary' and what is not. With its close ties to dialectic and to Platonic philosophy on the one hand, and its equally vital links to imaginative fiction on the other, dialogue in the Renaissance stands at the crossroads of the discourses of cognition and fiction. Writing the Scene of Speaking examines the different solutions offered by sixteenth-century Italian theorists to the problem posed by the hybrid textuality of dialogue, and sets them in the context of a culture in a dramatic state of transition.

This anthology of literary criticism is no simple collection of fragments from great critics. It is, in a way, a documentary history of literary taste, or better, a documentary history of the taste of literary critics ... It contains material that is inaccessible in many university libraries and an index which ties together the various selections and gives the book a unity which most anthologies unfortunately lack ..." [Cover].

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Focusing, framing, scanning—the language of film—and Gombrich's studies in the psychology of perception are used by John Bender to isolate pictorial effects and devices in literature. The theory that he proposes, grounded in his analysis of Spenser, "the painter of poets," discriminates between the descriptive and the pictorial in poetry. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In The Age of Criticism five key concepts of the literary criticism synthesized in the late Renaissance in Italy are examined in depth to show how the shape of literary attitudes in the whole modern world was considerably influenced and determined by sixteenth-century Italian philosophers and literary theorists. The five concepts examined are: poetry as imitation; poetry as a concrete-universal; poetry as a purgation; the poetic imagination; and the conflict between poetry as art and poetry as furor. For the sake of emphasizing the unity of the development of literary theory, the concern is almost entirely with the Italian writers of the period between 1540 and 1613, but the ultimate significance of their work lies in their contribution to the development of the culture of the West in modern times. Sperone Speroni, Ludovico Castelvetro, Francesco Patrizi, Giacopo Mazzoni, Torquato Tasso, and Paolo Beni emerge as literary critics of major importance.