Classical thinkers employed classification as a way to define and assess the quality of poetry. Notably, the existing fragments of Aristotle’s Poetics describe three genres of poetry—the epic, the comic, and the tragic—and develop rules to distinguish the highest-quality poetry in each genre, based on the underlying purposes of the genre.[18] Later aestheticians identified three major genres: epic poetry, lyric poetry, and dramatic poetry, treating comedy and tragedy as subgenres of dramatic poetry.
John Keats
Aristotle’s work was influential throughout the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age,[19] as well as in Europe during the Renaissance.[20] Later poets and aestheticians often distinguished poetry from, and defined it in opposition to, prose, which was generally understood as writing with a proclivity to logical explication and a linear narrative structure.
