ABSTRACT
It was in this context that the Arabic theorists approached Aristotle's Poetics, engaging in an early and still exemplary form of cross-cultural literary and theoretical synthesis. It was in this context that they formulated their theories of takhyil or 'imaginative representation' and of the 'poetic syllogism'. The Arabic theorists - alFarabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, and so on - came to Aristotle's Poetics with a specific set of concerns in mind. They read Aristotle in light of those concerns. But this prior orientation did not inhibit the generalizability of their work, as they shaped Aristotle's ideas into a new theory of literature and ethics. Despite some obvious interpretive errors, this theory is, on the whole, no less faithful to Aristotle than were the various European writings of the Middle Ages. More importantly, it is, I believe, a more sophisticated, more illuminating, and more accurate theory of literary ethics - or, rather, of one part of literary ethics - than theories promulgated in Europe at the same time and later. However, it is a theory which, despite its elaboration over several centuries, is not only incomplete, but in effect stagnant - unavoidably so, for its development stopped at the point where it ran up against the inadequacies of the psychology of its time.
