Ars poetica

Ars poetica, work by Horace, written about 19–18 bce for Piso and his sons and originally known as Epistula ad Pisones (Epistle to the Pisos). The work is an urbane, unsystematic amplification of Aristotle’s discussion of the decorum or internal propriety of each literary genre, which at Horace’s time included lyric, pastoral, satire, elegy, and epigram, as well as Aristotle’s epic, tragedy, and comedy. For example, Ars poetica elevates the Greek tradition of using narration to relate offstage events into a dictum forbidding such events as Medea’s butchering of her boys from being performed onstage. Where Aristotle had discussed tragedy as a separate genre, superior to epic poetry, Horace discusses it as a genre with a distinct style, again with considerations of decorum foremost. A comedic theme was not to be set forth in verses of tragedy; each style had to maintain the standards and follow the conventions that had been established.

Written, like Horace’s other epistles of this period, in a loose conversational frame, Ars poetica consists of 476 lines containing nearly 30 maxims for young poets. The work was prized by Neoclassicists of the 17th and 18th centuries not only for its rules but also for its humour, common sense, and appeal to educated taste.