Aristotle's Poetics combines a complete translation of the Poetics with a running commentary, printed on facing pages, that keeps the reader in continuous contact with the linguistic and critical subtleties of the original while highlighting crucial issues for students of literature and literary theory. Whalley's unconventional interpretation emphasizes Aristotle's treatment of art as dynamic process rather than finished product. The volume includes two essays by Whalley in which he outlines his method and purpose. He identifies a deep congruence between Aristotle's understanding of mimesis and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's view of imagination. Whalley's new translation makes a major contribution to the study of not only the Poetics and tragedy but all literature and aesthetics.

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"Whalley has produced precisely the kind of volume that is needed if the Poetics is to be successfully and seriously taught at the college level. This is the only edition of the Poetics that can truly claim to introduce adequately to a reader with no knowledge of Greek the problems and issues posed by the language of Aristotle's arguments. No current edition in use at the college level brings its readers to the same level of understanding of Aristotle's text that Whalley achieves in his translation and especially in his presentation of classical scholarship through the notes prepared for this edition." David Ferris, Department of Comparative Literature, Queens College and the Graduate School, City University of New York