In the Poetics, Aristotle defines poetry fundamentally as mimesis (imitation).

He famously argues against Plato's view that poetry is merely a pale, deceptive shadow of reality. Instead, Aristotle claims that mimesis is a natural, healthy human instinct from childhood, and that poetry imitates universal truths. While Aristotle wrote a separate, brilliant treatise on Rhetoric (the art of persuasion), his defense of the value of poetry in the Poetics rests squarely on the concept of imitation (mimesis) and the emotional catharsis it produces, completely distinct from the persuasive goals of rhetoric.

In An Apology for Poetry (c. 1580), Sir Philip Sidney categorizes poets into three specific groups:

1. Religious: Those who imitate the "inconceivable excellencies of God" (e.g., King David in the Psalms).
2. Philosophical: Those who deal with natural, moral, or astronomical matters (e.g., Lucretius).
3. Imaginative (The "Right" Poets): Those who do not merely copy what is, but invent what should be, using their imagination to "teach and delight." Sidney considers this third group the true essence of poesy.

In Leviathan (1651), Thomas Hobbes states that Geometry is "the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind."

Hobbes was obsessed with the deductive certainty of Euclidean geometry. He believed that if political philosophy and morality could be structured exactly like a geometric proof—starting with undeniable, universally agreed-upon definitions of human nature and deducing logical conclusions from them—all political conflict and civil war could be avoided.

Matching classical and Renaissance/Restoration critical texts:

A. Horace — (III) Ars Poetica. The foundational Roman text on poetry advocating for decorum and unity.

B. John Dryden — (IV) Of Dramatic Poesy. The famous 1668 dialogue comparing ancient, French, and English theater.

C. Samuel Daniel — (I) A Defence of Rhyme (1603). Written in response to Thomas Campion's attack on English rhyme.

D. Ben Jonson — (II) Timber: or, Discoveries. His posthumously published collection of critical notes and thoughts on literature.

The chronological order spanning the 17th to 19th centuries:

• (A) The Advancement of Learning (1605): Francis Bacon's philosophical defense of empirical science.
• (D) The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779-1781): Samuel Johnson's massive biographical and critical work.
• (C) On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History (1841): Thomas Carlyle's lectures on the "Great Man" theory of history.
• (B) On the Origin of Species (1859): Charles Darwin's groundbreaking text on evolutionary biology.

The chronological sequence of these major English critical texts:

• (B) A Defence of Rhyme (1603): Samuel Daniel (Early Jacobean).
• (C) Life of Cowley (1779): Written by Samuel Johnson, part of his Lives of the Poets. This is famous for containing his critique of the "Metaphysical" poets.
• (A) Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800): William Wordsworth's manifesto of English Romanticism.
• (D) The Frontiers of Criticism (1956): T.S. Eliot's late lecture reflecting on the state of modern literary criticism.

Identifying classical and Renaissance attitudes toward English rhyme:

• (B) Horace: Like most ancient Greek and Roman poets, Horace wrote in quantitative meter (based on syllable length). Ancient classical poetry did not use end-rhyme.
• (D) Philip Sidney: In his Apology for Poetry, Sidney explicitly states that "apparelled verse [is] but an ornament and no cause to Poetry, since there have been many most excellent poets that never versified." He argued that moral imagination and invention make a poet, not the mechanical act of rhyming.

Why C is wrong: Samuel Daniel famously wrote A Defence of Rhyme, fiercely arguing that rhyme is integral to the natural rhythm of English poetry.

This severe critique of blank verse is famously delivered by Dr. Samuel Johnson in his "Life of Milton" (part of Lives of the Poets).

Despite recognizing the towering genius of Milton's Paradise Lost, Johnson was a strict Neoclassicist who believed that English poetry fundamentally required rhyme to sound pleasing. He argued that unrhymed blank verse tires the ear, lacking the natural flow of prose while simultaneously lacking the musical satisfaction ("melody of numbers") provided by rhyming couplets.

Matching classic essayists to their famous works:

A. George Orwell — (II) "Why I Write" (1946). He famously states that true writing requires a fusion of political purpose and artistic purpose.

B. Michel de Montaigne — (IV) "Of Cannibals" (1580). A foundational essay questioning whether indigenous tribes are truly more "savage" than civilized Europeans.

C. Charles Lamb — (I) "On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century" (1822). (From Essays of Elia) Defending Restoration comedy as a fairy-tale land exempt from strict moral judgment.

D. Jonathan Swift — (III) "A Modest Proposal" (1729). The legendary satirical essay suggesting the Irish eat their babies to solve poverty.

In his famous 1823 essay "My First Acquaintance with Poets," William Hazlitt refers to Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Hazlitt recounts meeting Coleridge in 1798 when Hazlitt was a young, struggling, inarticulate man. Hearing Coleridge preach a sermon completely electrified him. Hazlitt describes Coleridge's mind and conversational abilities as overwhelmingly brilliant, stating he was the only man he had ever met who truly embodied pure "genius."

This bold rejection of Realism is the core thesis of Oscar Wilde's aesthetic manifesto, "The Decay of Lying" (1889).

Written as a Socratic dialogue, the character Vivian argues that the Victorian obsession with boring, gritty Realism is destroying art. Wilde posits that "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life," and that true art is the telling of beautiful, imaginative lies. Therefore, trying to meticulously copy reality (Realism) is an artistic failure.

In the final paragraph of his famous essay "Style" (1888), Walter Pater distinguishes between "good art" and "great art."

He argues that while "good art" depends purely on perfect form and style, it only becomes "great art" if it also possesses a profound, noble subject matter devoted to the "increase of men's happiness" or the "glory of God." He explicitly lists Dante's The Divine Comedy, Milton's Paradise Lost, the English Bible, and Victor Hugo's Les Misérables as the ultimate examples of this "great art."

The chronological coinage/emergence of these major theoretical terms is:

• (B) Stream of Consciousness (1890): Coined by the American psychologist William James in his Principles of Psychology.
• (D) Defamiliarization / Ostranenie (1917): Coined by the Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky in his essay "Art as Technique."
• (C) Practical Criticism (1929): Coined by I.A. Richards as the title of his groundbreaking book analyzing student responses to anonymous poems.
• (A) Heresy of Paraphrase (1947): Coined by the New Critic Cleanth Brooks in his book The Well Wrought Urn.

In his highly influential 1921 essay "The Metaphysical Poets", T.S. Eliot argues that the 17th-century English metaphysical poets possessed a "unified sensibility" (thought and feeling combined) that was later lost by the heavily intellectual Milton and Dryden.

Eliot argues that this unity of intellect and raw emotion was not totally lost in European literature, stating that "the greatest of [the French masters], Racine and Baudelaire, have a much closer affinity with the metaphysical poets than has Dryden or Milton." He viewed Baudelaire, in particular, as the model of the modern, unified poetic mind.