The book has been translated into Persian by Ali-Akbar Masum-Beigi.

The ideas Aristotle outlined in his “Poetics” have formed the foundation for the whole history of Western critical theory. No work has had a greater influence upon the literature of centuries - neither has any been so profoundly, so perversely misunderstood.

Mystified, moralized, and recruited into the cause of this or that literary culture with all the interpretations, Aristotle has far too infrequently been permitted to speak for himself. If the prescriptive rigidities of the Renaissance went entirely against the grain of his open, accepting empiricism, the psychologizing mania of the modern age has yielded no truer a reflection of his thought.

McLeish’s introduction cuts through centuries of accreted obscurity to reveal the forthright, astonishingly original book that Aristotle actually wrote. The philosopher who emerges proves more “modern” than any of his interpreters.

McLeish studied classics and music at Worcester College, Oxford. After starting as a schoolteacher, he became a full-time translator, author, and dramatist, and in time the most widely respected and prolific translator of drama in Britain.

His output included all 47 of the surviving classical Greek plays, most of Ibsen and Feydeau, as well as individual plays by Plautus, Moliere, Jarry, Strindberg, Horvath, and Labiche. 

His original plays and translations have been widely performed, most notably by England’s National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Source: Tehran Times