Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Poetics
Tragedy is the imitation of a serious action — its proper effect is catharsis of pity and fear, achieved through the structure of plot, character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Poetics (Mature) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Both |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | None |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Poetics
The temporal unfolding of the tragic plot — beginning, middle, end, the reversal and recognition — as the structure of dramatic time.
Space
Poetics
The theatrical space of performance; the represented space of the dramatic action.
Matter
Poetics
The actors, the staging, the embodied performance as matter; the formal plot as form.
Observer
Poetics
The audience whose pity and fear are the proper objects of tragic effect; the philosophical theorist analysing the form.
Energy
Poetics
The emotional energies of pity and fear that tragedy mobilises and orders; the cathartic release that resolves them.
Information
Poetics
The discrete content of the dramatic action; the systematic taxonomic information of the Poetics itself.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The interpretation of catharsis — purgation, purification, clarification, or some combination — has been debated since the Renaissance with no settled consensus. The lost Book 2 on comedy has been the focus of much speculation (memorably in Eco's The Name of the Rose). The work's pre-modern reception sometimes treated it as a normative theory of how poetry should be written rather than as a descriptive theory of how Greek tragedy worked; modern reception (Halliwell, Heath) has substantially recovered the descriptive-analytical character.