A theoretical and critical treatise on art (and mainly literature), among those that exerted the greatest influence on human thought and among the most discussed of all time. The topics related to poetry and the famous definition of tragedy.

Aristotle, the son of the physician Nicomachus, was born in Stagira in 384 BC. There is little information about the early years of his life. At the age of seventeen, he went to Athens to study at the Platonic Academy. He stayed there for twenty years, from 367 to 348 BC, when Plato died. Then Aristotle left for Assos in Troas, and after a three-year stay there, he went to Lesbos and then to Macedonia, where he took on the education of the royal heir Alexander.

When his student ascended to the throne, Aristotle settled in Athens and founded his own school, the Lyceum. After Alexander's death (323 BC), the philosopher's stay in Athens became difficult. He was forced to flee to Chalcis, his mother's homeland, where he died in 322.

A universal spirit, Aristotle created a vast and valuable philosophical and scientific work. Epistemology, logic, theology, physics, biology, psychology, ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics are the main fields of knowledge he explored and studied.

The Alexandrian Hermippus counted Aristotle's works at 400. To this day, lists have survived that include 143 titles of his works. Diogenes Laertius estimated the number of lines in the Aristotelian writings at 440,000. The influence of his work on the shaping of global thought was for centuries, and remains, strong.

[Excerpt from the publisher's or edition's presentation text]