What does Aristotle think is the difference between poetry and history?

Among all the works left by Aristotle, Poetics is famous for its conciseness and wisdom. Among them, he compared poetry with history and thought that poetry had more philosophical flavor, so it had greater intrinsic value. Maybe Aristotle's legacy still exists. The Macedonian Poetry Festival, founded in 1962, is held in the beautiful Lake Ohrid in late August every year, which is also the oldest poetry festival in the world.

Aristotle believes that poetry "describes universal things", while history "describes individual things".

Regarding the essence of art, Aristotle thinks it is imitation. Compared with history, one of the characteristics of literary parody is that it must reveal internal logic and common laws. Historians describe historical facts that have happened. The task of poetry is not to describe the accidental events that have happened, but to reveal the inherent laws of things and what should happen.

Aristotle said that the difference between poetry and history is that "one describes what has happened and the other describes what may happen." Therefore, poetry is more philosophical and meaningful than history, because poetry is universal and history is special. "(Chapter 9 of Poetics)