د "شعر" د بڼو تر مېنځ توپير

The Polish historian of aesthetics, [[Władysław Tatarkiewicz]], in a paper on "The Concept of Poetry," traces the evolution of what is in fact ''two [[concept]]s of poetry''. Tatarkiewicz points out that the term is applied to two distinct things that, as the poet [[Paul Valéry]] observes, "at a certain point find union. Poetry [...] is an art based on ''language.'' But poetry also has a more general meaning [...] that is difficult to define because it is less determinate: poetry expresses a certain ''[[mind|state of mind]].''" ."<ref name="Concept13">[[Władysław Tatarkiewicz]], "The Concept of Poetry," ''Dialectics and Humanism'', vol. II, no. 2 (spring 1975).</ref>

 

[[Image:Aristoteles Louvre.jpg|thumb|100px|[[Aristotle]].]]

Classical thinkers employed classification as a way to define and assess the quality of poetry. Notably, the existing fragments of [[Aristotle]]'s ''[[Poetics (Aristotle)|Poetics]]'' describe [[Poetics#The three genres of poetry|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.<ref>Heath (ed), ''Aristotle's Poetics'', 1997.</ref> Later [[aesthetician]]s identified three major genres: [[epic poetry]], [[lyric poetry]] and [[dramatic poetry]], treating [[comedy]] and [[tragedy]] as [[subgenre]]s of dramatic poetry.