Aristotle’s Poetics is a treatise outlining the devices a poet should employ to achieve maximum effectiveness. He structures his arguments by chapter and breaks down the elements of a good tragedy, a specific type of poetry. He provides analytical guidelines and views poetry as an isolated art form, rooted in human nature. He states that creating poetry stems from “human nature” and that we have an “instinct for imitation” as a form of learning (60). It began with improvisation and later acquired strict stylistic forms (62).
His use of “human nature” and “instinct” imply that it is an inevitable product of the human mind; most creatures do not ignore their instincts, after all. He later even states that “poetry is the product either of a man of great natural ability or of a madman”, which further emphasizes the innate facility of its creation (79). The former has an abundant, inborn well of talent to draw from and harness instinct, whereas the latter is out of his mind and cannot help but pour out this inner urge. Poetry is thus an organic and natural product of the human mind that originates from spontaneous improvisation and later stabilizes as a common medium of expression.
He later states that the actions represented in tragedy should be able to awaken “fear and pity” (72). To awaken “fear and pity” requires having a strong emotional impact on the audience. As such, good poetry comes from within as a natural product and shapes the audience’s experience through its emotional impact. He uses first-person collective pronouns to refer to the audience, seldom explicitly mentioning it. By doing so, he demonstrates that the audience may not be at the forefront of his consideration, but rather how the poet should express imitation to it. Poetics, then, is a set of instructions on how to refine a poet’s natural inclinations to create a more impactful piece of work.