Study of the Fourth Tragedy in "Poetics" by Aristotle——And the Incomplete Induction of "Poetics"

Aristotle's Poetics classified tragedies into four kinds. The fourth one is hard to identify due to the remaining three letters o s in its incomplete transcription. The previous studies usually considered o s as a part of opsis. However, this paper analyzes and infers that the fourth should properly be epeisodiod s, which can be translated as scene tragedy in Chinese according to the aesthetic resources of this kind of tragedy. Aristotle's classification of tragedies adopted incomplete induction, namely using the most representative dramas to prove his theoretical point of view, which contributed to the whole theory system of drama constructed by Poetics.