appears in the content of classical poetic. Whereas classical rhetoric
deals with speeches which might be delivered to convict or acquit a
defendant in the law court, or to secure a certain action by the
deliberative assembly, or to adorn an occasion, classical poetic deals
with lyric, epic, and drama. It is a commonplace that classical literary
critics paid little attention to the lyric. It is less frequently realized
that they devoted almost as little space to discussion of metrics. By far
the greater bulk of classical treatises on poetic is devoted to
characterization and to the technic of plot construction, involving as it
does narrative and dramatic unity and movement as distinct from logical
unity and movement.

It is important that the modern reader bear these facts in mind; for in
the nineteenth century text-books of rhetoric came to include description
of a kind little considered by classical rhetoricians, and narrative of an
aim and scope which they excluded. Thus the modern treatise on rhetoric
deals not only with what the Greeks would recognize as rhetoric, but also
with what they would classify as poetic. Furthermore, narrative and
dramatic technic, which the classical critics considered the most
important elements in poetic, are now no longer called poetic. What the
ancients discussed in treatises on poetic, is now discussed in treatises
on the technique of the short-story, the technique of the drama, the
technique of the novel, on the one hand, and in treatises on
versification, prosody, and lyric poetry on the other. As these modern
developments were unheard of during the periods under consideration in
this study, and as the renaissance used the words rhetoric and poetic much
more in their classical senses than we do today, it must be understood
that throughout this study rhetoric will be used as meaning classical
rhetoric, and poetic as meaning classical poetic.