Editing Poetry (section)

===Western traditions===
[[File:Aristoteles Louvre.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Aristotle]]]]
Classical thinkers in the [[Western culture|West]] employed classification as a way to define and assess the quality of poetry. Notably, the existing fragments of [[Aristotle]]'s [[Poetics (Aristotle)|''Poetics'']] describe three genres of poetry—the epic, the comic, and the tragic—and develop rules to distinguish the highest-quality poetry in each genre, based on the perceived underlying purposes of the genre.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Aristotle's ''Poetics'' |publisher=Penguin Books |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-14-044636-4 |editor-last=Heath |editor-first=Malcolm}}</ref> Later [[Aesthetics|aestheticians]] identified three major genres: epic poetry, [[Greek lyric|lyric poetry]], and [[Verse drama and dramatic verse|dramatic poetry]], treating [[comedy]] and [[tragedy]] as [[Genre|subgenres]] of dramatic poetry.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Frow |first=John |title=Genre |publisher=Routledge |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-415-28063-1 |edition=Reprint |pages=57–59}}</ref>
[[File:John keats.jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[John Keats]]]]
Aristotle's work was influential throughout the Middle East during the [[Islamic Golden Age]],<ref>{{cite journal |last= Boggess |first=William F. |title='Hermannus Alemannus' Latin Anthology of Arabic Poetry |journal= Journal of the American Oriental Society |year= 1968 |volume= 88 |issue= 4 |pages= 657–670 |doi= 10.2307/598112 |jstor= 598112}} {{Cite book |last=Burnett |first=Charles |title=Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages: A Festschrift for Peter Dronke |publisher=Brill Academic Publishers |year=2001 |isbn=978-90-04-11964-2 |pages=29–62 |chapter=Learned Knowledge of Arabic Poetry, Rhymed Prose, and Didactic Verse from Petrus Alfonsi to Petrarch}}</ref> as well as in Europe during the [[Renaissance]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Grendler |first=Paul F. |title=The Universities of the Italian Renaissance |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-8018-8055-1 |page=239}}</ref> Later poets and aestheticians often distinguished poetry from, and defined it in opposition to [[prose]], which they generally understood as writing with a proclivity to logical explication and a linear narrative structure.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kant |first=Immanuel |translator-last=Bernard |translator-first=J. H. |title=Critique of Judgment |publisher=Macmillan |year=1914 |page=131}} Kant argues that the nature of poetry as a self-consciously abstract and beautiful form raises it to the highest level among the verbal arts, with tone or music following it, and only after that the more logical and narrative prose.</ref>

This does not imply that poetry is illogical or lacks narration, but rather that poetry is an attempt to render the beautiful or sublime without the burden of engaging the logical or narrative thought-process. English [[Romantic poetry|Romantic]] poet [[John Keats]] termed this escape from logic "[[negative capability]]".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ou |first=Li |title=Keats and negative capability |publisher=Continuum |year=2009 |isbn=978-1-4411-4724-0 |pages=1–3}}</ref> This "romantic" approach views [[form (disambiguation)|form]] as a key element of successful poetry because form is abstract and distinct from the underlying notional logic. This approach remained influential into the 20th century.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Watten |first=Barrett |title=The constructivist moment: from material text to cultural poetics |publisher=Wesleyan University Press |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-8195-6610-2 |pages=17–19}}</ref>

During the 18th and 19th centuries, there was also substantially more interaction among the various poetic traditions, in part due to the spread of European [[colonialism]] and the attendant rise in global trade.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Abu-Mahfouz |first=Ahmad |year=2008 |title=Translation as a Blending of Cultures |journal=Journal of Translation |volume=4 |issue=1 |doi=10.54395/jot-x8fne|doi-access=free|pages=1–5}}</ref> In addition to a boom in [[translation]], during the Romantic period numerous ancient works were rediscovered.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Highet |first=Gilbert |title=The classical tradition: Greek and Roman influences on western literature |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1985 |isbn=978-0-19-500206-5 |edition=Reissued |pages=355, 360, 479}}</ref>