Selected fragments of Aristotle on literature. Edition, translation, and commentary

The aim of my dissertation project is to produce a new critical edition, with translation and commentary, of fifty fragments of the famous Peripatetic philosopher Aristotle that deal with the history of literature. These fragments come from works that are lost in their entirety, but known to us by quotations in later authors and some papyrus scraps. Although the main focus of this dissertation will be on the commentary, due attention will be paid to the edition and translation of these texts as well. According to the guidelines of the Jacoby Project (FGrHist), of which this dissertation project is part, I will study the originals of the few papyri that belong to these works, while I will rely on the apparatus criticus of the previous critical editions (mainly ROSE 1886 and GIGON 1987) for the fragments transmitted by the medieval manuscript tradition. The commentary will discuss all questions that arise from the fragments, literary and historical. The major points that will be treated there are the context of transmission of the fragments, the scope of the fragments, their reliability and authenticity, text-critical problems arising from the transmission, literary precedents and possible sources of Aristotle, his influence on later authors, the relation of the information in the fragments to Aristotle’s philosophical, poetological and rhetorical theories, and the influence of Aristotle’s fragments within the whole of the ancient transmission on ancient writers.