In response to criticisms that contemporaries such as Belisario Bulgarini leveled against his first effort, Mazzoni wrote the more extensive and more sophisticated On the Defense of the Comedy of Dante. In this work, before directly addressing Dante’s work, Mazzoni develops his theory of poetics, in which, drawing heavily from Plato and Aristotle, he discusses mimesis, the role of poetry, and the definition of poetry versus poetics (see Theory section, below). Though no complete English translation of Mazzoni’s text exists, excerpts from the Introduction and Summary have appeared in some anthologies, as well as in a partial translation by Robert L. Montgomery.