LARGE-PAPER COPY ARISTOTLE.

Αριστοτελους περι ποιητικης: Aristotelis de poetica liber ex versione Theodori Goulstoni. Lectionis varietatem e codd. IV. Bibliothecae Mediceae, verborum indicem et observationes suas adjunxit T. Winstanley…

Large-paper issue of the first Winstanley edition, handsomely bound. The first work published by the Oxford historian and classicist Thomas Winstanley (1749–1823), subsequently Camden Professor of History and Laudian Professor of Arabic, this edition of Aristotle’s De poetica was based on the 1623 version by the physician Theodore Goulston (1575–1632), and remained a much used text at Oxford over the following century. Aristotle’s notion of ‘mimesis’, the view that art imitates nature, prevailed for over two centuries over the conflicting theory that stressed the creativity of the poet. In the last third of the eighteenth century the debate about mimesis in literature, visual arts, and music became exceptionally productive, culminating in the Romantic revolution.