Aristotle’s term “imitation”; Plato was the first to use the word in relation to poetry, but Aristotle in a specific sense breathed again. Imitation is no longer considered poetic imitation, but is considered an act of imaginative creation in which the poet drew his material from the world of phenomena, it is something new. In the opinion of Aristotle, the principle of imitation linking poetry with other arts and is the common basis of all the arts. It is different to the category of fine arts from the other arts. Although Plato equates poetry with painting, Aristotle compares with the music. It is not a representation of slaves in the appearance of things, but it becomes a representation of the passions and emotions of men who are imitated by the music. Aristotle and his theory expanded the reach of imitation. The poet does not imitate the surface of things, but actually integrated into the interior. In the first chapter of the Poetics, Aristotle says:
“Epic poetry and Tragedy, Comedy also and Dithyrambic poetry, as also the music of the flute and the lyre in most of their forms, are in their general conception modes of imitation. They differ however, from one another in three respects – their medium, the objects and the manner or mode of imitation, being in each case distinct.”
Tool for the poet and painter are different. A imitates, through form and color, and the other through language, rhythm and harmony. Musician imitates, through rhythm and harmony. So, poetry is closer to the music. In addition, the way a poet can not only be storytelling, as epic or a description of the activities through the drama of the genre. The poem is a dramatic distinction between tragedy and comedy in the same way that mimics the human being better or worse.
Aristotle says that the poetic imitation objects are “men in action”. The poet represents the greatest men of them. He can make men better in real life is based on documentation submitted by the history and legend, and no living person. The poet selects and organizes the material and creates a reality. He brings order out of chaos. Irrational or accidental erasure and attention has been focused on solid and significant. So it gives a true ideal of its kind. His mind is not tied to reality:
“It is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened but what may happen – according to the laws of probability or necessity.”
The story tells us what really happened, the poetry of what can happen. Poetry tends to express the universal, the particular story. So, he shows the superiority of poetry over history. Poet, freed from the tyranny of facts, it will take a larger view of things or a general, in particular, represents the universal, and then shares the philosopher want the ultimate truth. He so identified with poetry, philosophy, and shows that both is means to a higher truth. The word “universal” Aristotle means:
“How can a person of a certain nature or type of will, on a particular occasion, to speak or act according to the law of probability or necessity.”
The poet continues to increase, especially public. He examines in particular, and discovers the principles of general application. She exceeds the boundaries of life without violating the essential laws of human nature. Elsewhere, Aristotle says, “Art imitates nature”. By Nature, did not mean that the outside world was created things, but the “creative force, generating principle of the universe”. Art produces mainly within the process, the physical energy to process, acts, events, and a situation which is included to the extent that arise from within, an act of will, or do some activity of thought or feeling. She makes men, “as they should be”.
The poet imitates the nature of the creative process, but the objects are the “men in action”. Now the ‘action’ may be ‘external’ or ‘internal’. The operation of the soul may be caused by what happens to a man. This brings the human experience, emotions and passions in a poetic imitation. According Aristotle’s theory, moral properties, the properties, the nature of permanent, temporary feelings of the mind and feelings are all the elements of action, and imitation in a poetic way. Poetry can imitate men better or worse than they are in real life, or to emulate as they really are. The tragedy and the epic men represent a heroic scale, better than what they are, and the comedy of men is a smaller type, are the worst … what Aristotle discuss a third option means that poetry is not meant to photographic realism in this context, RA Scott-James points out that:
“Aristotle knew nothing of the “realistic” or “fleshy” school of fiction – the school of Zola or of Gissing.”
Abercrombie, however, Aristotle defends not to discuss the third alternative. He said:
“It can only imagine life as it is, but the interesting thing is to imagine life as it could be, and is, therefore, that the impulse and imagination to inspire poetry.”
Aristotle in his theory of imitation answers responsibility of Plato that poetry is an imitation of the “ghost shadows”, three times removed from the truth, and the poet seduces us with lies. Plato condemns poetry, which of course poets has no idea of the truth. The phenomenal world is not reality, but a copy of reality in the mind of the Supreme Court. The poet imitates the objects and phenomena in the world that are shaded and unreal. Poetry is “the mother of lies”.
“Objects which in them we view with pain, we are happy to contemplate when reproduced with fidelity minutes, as the forms of the vilest animals and cadavers”.
The real and the ideal point of view of Aristotle, not opposite, the ideal is real, and deprived of the possibility of an accident, purified form of reality. And this is all the greater the ‘reality’ that must be poetic imitation. The idealization is obtained through the sale of real everything is accidental, transitory and, in particular. Poetry imitates it an ideal and universal, “an idealized representation of a character, emotion, and action – in mind manifest” as poetic truth is therefore higher than the historical truth. Poetry is more philosophical, to promote a better understanding of philosophy itself.
So Aristotle with success and, finally, set aside the equivalent of Plato, and if the defense of poetry, which has since been in use for the lovers of poetry as a justification for the Muse. It breathes new life and soul of the concept of poetic imitation, and has shown that it is a reality, the creative process.