ABSTRACT
The microscopic aspect—the analysis of language, of the figures of speech, of techniques for achieving desired effects, and so forth—was relegated to rhetoric. Rhetorically oriented critics interpreted Aristotle to mean that epic and tragedy present idealized figures. The development of the theory of praise depended on the fusion of critical ideas with those of rhetoric. A more technical slant was given poetics by those critics who were concerned to reconcile it with rhetoric. To sixteenth-century commentators several key passages in the Poetics appeared to justify the theory of praise. Poetics, the art of poetry, is considered a technique and hence a part of the Organon, Its end, however, is the improvement of mankind. The efficacy of the poetry of praise depends on its ability to arouse "emulation" or "imitation." The poetry of praise depends on an emotion—the hunger for fame—but it uses this emotion to strengthen the state by inculcating virtue.
