Margoliouth, D. S. The Homer of Aristotle. Oxford, 1923.
Excerpt (From Preface):
” This monograph is intended as a supplement to the writer’s addition of Aristotle’s Poetics, the results of which both for text and interpretation are here assumed. It was shown that the initial words of the Definition of Tragedy should be rendered literally the feigning of a virtuous experience, which interpreted from the author’s ethical and political theories means “Fiction about kings and queens.” And though the philosopher does not like Plato identified the Homeric style with Tragedy, he holds that in these essentials the 2 coincide; and the unity which he postulates in Tragedy is found by him to an unsurpassed extent in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The following is an attempt at working out these Puritans from hence which the treatise offers on the lines which it suggests. … It is not desirable to endeavor to demonstrate anything which is not true, and beauties which are found in sacred books are at times only apparent to members of the religious community with which such books are authoritative. There is thus a whole library of works demonstrating the miraculous eloquence of the Koran, though few Europeans ever perused more than a few pages of it. Some evidence therefore was wanted to remove the probability that Aristotle might in this matter be swayed by religious prejudice.”