poétique

Poétique is the branch of literary theory concerned with the principles and craft of poetry and, more broadly, of literature. In French usage, poétique denotes both the art of poetry and the theoretical study of poetic composition, while in English-language scholarship "poetics" is the analogous term. The term derives from Greek poietes, "maker" or "poietikos," and has been used since antiquity to describe the methods by which texts produce meaning and affect.

Historically, the French term gained prominence with Boileau's Art poétique (1674), which systematized classical rules of verse and decorum. In antiquity and medieval and early modern theory, Aristotle's Poetics and Horace's Ars Poetica articulated the relation of form, imitation, and pleasure. Over the centuries, poetics expanded to become a field that analyzes meter, analogy, imagery, narration, genre, and the functions of language.

In practice, poetics informs both close reading and the design of texts. It engages questions of how form shapes content, how rhetorical devices produce effects, and how cultural and historical contexts condition reception. Modern poetics intersects with formalism, narratology, semiotics, and psychoanalytic or cognitive approaches, while post-structural and postmodern theories critique rigid rules and emphasize plurality, intertextuality, and the material conditions of writing.

Today, "poetics" is used across arts to describe systematic investigations of how aesthetic works operate—poetics of poetry, drama, film, visual art, and digital media—often focusing on the production of meaning, emotion, and interpretation rather than prescriptive rules.