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Medieval Poetics -[744] MEDIEVAL POETICS Meanings of M. (1985). S.C.; T.V.F.B. ploring these hidden meanings pervades the med. sense of textuality (q.v.). Lactantius and others MEDIEVAL POETICS. Like Aristotle before them had maintained earlier that the Aeneid, Book Six and Sidney after, the philosophers and poets of in particular, contained Christian allegory (q.v.), med. Europe speculated about the nature, the though for the most part this was ascribed to God's kinds, and the functions of poetry in order to purposes rather than Virgil's. In the 6th c., Ful- illuminate an art they cherished. Their claims for gentius' De continentia Vergiliana proposed that it were, for the most part, comparatively modest. Virgil hid profound philosophical truths in the The notion of a poetic imagination (q.v.) which poem and analyzed it as a vast allegory describing could supplant nature's brazen world with a gold- the three ages of man and the passage from nature en one was not given to them. Artistic originality to wisdom to felicity. (q.v.) was often equated in Platonic thought with Grammar and rhet. are the announced subjects falsification (see FICTION). Lit. was praised for its of the first two chapters ("De metris" and "De didactic efficacy, its ability to offer salutary in- poetis") of Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae (ca. 560- stances of good and evil (see DIDACTIC POETRY), 636), a conscientious but poorly informed digest but nobody imagined that it could modify the of Greco-Roman, late antique, and Patristic doc- moral sensibilities of an audience in the Aristote- trine, distantly related to Aristotelian mimetic the- lian manner. Nevertheless, many learned and en- ory, and med. Europe's most influential encyclo- gaged minds applied themselves during the Mid- pedic statement about poetry. This is a work of dle Ages to questions bearing on p. They kept the conservation rather than original thought, an ef- intellectual trad, of Cl. p. (q.v.) alive and prepared fort to preserve and order the remnants of a shat- the ground for the great theoretical undertakings tered trad. Defining a carmen as a metrical compo- of Ren. p. (q.v.). sition, Isidore offers a shaky generic classification At Byzantium, accurate and perceptive reflec- and settles, for purposes of definition, on the dis- tions on Aristotle's Poetics appear in the Suda (late tinction between poetry, history, and fable. History 10th c.). These did not, however, reach the West deals with what actually happened, poetry with until the 16th c., and indeed, an accurate text of what might have happened, fable with what could the Poetics was not available in the West until 1500 not possibly have happened. Isidore (rather in- (Gr. text 1508, trs. into Lat. 1498 and 1536, and consistently) follows Lactantius in defining the into It. 1549). The substance of Aristotle's Rhetoric, poet as one who disguises historical fact in a grace- considerably simplified, was preserved in Cicero's fully indirect, figurative manner. Not every metri- De oratore and Topica. Throughout late antiquity, cal composition is a poem. Comedy deals with rhet. had as large a role as grammar—which joyous events and private persons of low moral meant basically the study of poetry—in generating character with the aim of reprehending vice. Trag- theoretical reflections about lit. By the 4th c., edy is a mournful song which tells of the deeds and rhetoricians, teachers of the arts of persuasion, the crimes of ancient kings "while men look on." were claiming that Virgil really belonged to them It employs "fictional plots fashioned to an image and that the Aeneid was an argumentative, lawyerly of truth." In drama the characters speak and the defense of its hero's actions. This emphasis on author does not. Only the author speaks in the rhet. maintained itself into the Ren. The text on Georgics. In the Aeneid both author and characters p. best known in the Middle Ages, Horace's Ars speak. Despite its manifest inadequacies, the Ety- poetica, was regularly quoted, and in the 12th c. it mologiae remained a major source of information occasioned a certain amount of emulation, but it throughout the Middle Ages, and was cited with does not seem to have inspired much reflection. great respect into the Ren. The allegorical interp. of poetry was practiced Comparatively well informed Carolingian com- in Cl. antiquity and, following a complicated series ments on drama appear in the 8th-c. Terentian of Jewish and Christian adaptations, magisterially scholia. These contain, untypically, bits of solid applied to Scripture by Augustine. The first half information on staging and dialogue. Their moral of Augustine's De doctrina Christiana is devoted to doctrine is somewhat more inclusive than Isi- a grammatical analysis of the Bible, the second to dore's: drama instructs by offering images of both a rhetorical one. Under the heading of grammar, vice and virtue to be avoided or emulated. This he gives classic expression to the theory, devel- view made a more spectacular appearance in the oped earlier by the Egyptian schools of Scriptural distorted Lat. tr. of Averroes' commentary on Aris- exegesis, that the Old Testament was allegorical totle's Poetics made by Hermannus Alemannus in throughout and that all interpretive difficulties 1256. (The Poetics itself was tr. in 1278 by William could be resolved by an appeal to a hidden Chris- of Moerbecke, but appears to have received al- tian significance placed in the text by God (see most no notice.) Averroes had never seen a play INTERPRETATION, FOURFOLD METHOD) . Elsewhere and probably never read one. He supposed that a he grounds this view in a theory of history, assert- tragedy was a narrative poem recited in public, ing that God has installed meanings not only be- and so rigorously transposed all of Aristotle's dra- neath the words of the Old Testament but within matic terms into strictly ethical ones, beginning by the historical facts it relates. An emphasis on ex- translating tragedy as "praise" and comedy as -[744]- MEDIEVAL POETICS "blame." Tragedy imitates the deeds of virtuous before building the house. One great resource of men in order to inspire virtue in the audience. art is amplificatio (see AMPLIFICATION), the pro- (The tragic flaw is not mentioned.) Comedy imi- cess of turning a short poem into a long one and a tates evil actions in order to reprehend vice and long poem into one even longer. He has little to encourage avoidance. Averroes was read in the say about endings and nothing about middles or Middle Ages and even into the Ren., though evi- about coherent devel. in general. John of Gar- dently not very widely; the extent of his influence land's Parisiana poetria offers a list of topics along is disputed. with advice on amplifying. He recommends the In the 13th c., Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum diagrammatic aids to memory which Cicero bor- doctrinale situates Isidore's traditional claims for rowed from Aristotle and provides a diagram of his poetry next to a revolutionary one extracted from own—the so-called Wheel of Virgil—for help in Alfarabi's De divisione naturae: "Alfarabi says that finding images appropriate for each level of style, it is proper to poetry to cause by discourse some- high, middle, and low. As Bede had done long thing which is not really fair or foul to be imagined before in his De arte metrica, John offers informa- as such by an auditor so that he will believe and tion not only about Cl. meters but about contem- either shun it or accept it, since although it is porary accentual ones. These treatises were, to be certain that it is not thus in truth, still the souls of sure, written for schoolboys, but so was the logical the auditors are stirred to shun or desire the thing treatise of Peter of Spain which represented the imagined" (3.109). Imagination—imaginatio or state of the art. Despite their practical tenor, the ingenium—figures prominently elsewhere in 12th- treatises were presented and regarded as major c. Lat. speculation about the powers of the soul, statements. Other important specimens of the but Vincent's citation is the first med. European genre include Alexander of Ville Dei's Doctrinale, text to connect it with the appeal of poetry. He Matthew of Vendome's Ars versificatoria, and the does not explore the connection, however, and Laborintus of Eberhard the German. concludes by reformulating Evanthius' 4th-c. ob- The most popular format for 12th- and 13th-c. servation that tragedy begins in joy and ends in literary commentary and analysis was provided by misery, while comedy does the opposite. the accessus ad auctores. These were partly bio- He also says that Alfarabi took poetry to be the graphical, partly interpretive schoolroom intro- least reliable branch of logic, producing a simula- ductions to major authors, with antecedents in the crum of proof. Alfarabi had in fact removed poetry prologues of Servius. The richest example is the from Aristotle's class of productive arts and placed 12th-c. Dialogus super auctores of Conrad of Hir- it in the Organon, thus associating it with the schau. Among the ancients, Conrad says, seven operations and powers of the mind. This is what things were required for the sufficient discussion Aquinas, a fine poet himself, had in mind when he of a book: author and title, type of poem, intention called poetry the lowest of the sciences and when of the writer, order and number of books, and he observed that it had very little of the truth explanation. The moderns, however, favor an- about it.
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