Poetics

Poetics is the branch of literary theory that studies the construction of a work: the system of means and principles of its organization at all levels — from the phonic and linguistic-stylistic to the compositional, generic, and modal. One distinguishes general (theoretical) poetics, historical poetics (the evolution of artistic forms over time), and descriptive poetics (the poetics of a particular author, work, or movement). The history of the concept opens with Aristotle's 'Poetics' — the first treatise on the laws of the art of the word, with its doctrine of mimesis, tragedy, catharsis, and plot. Historical poetics as a science was founded by Alexander Veselovsky. In the 20th century, important contributions were made by the Formalists (Boris Tomashevsky, author of 'Theory of Literature: Poetics'), the Structuralists, and Mikhail Bakhtin. Ukrainian theoretical poetics was developed by Oleksandr Potebnia ('Thought and Language') and Dmytro Chyzhevsky.