The Early Reception of Aristotelian Poetics
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Aristotle on Mim4sis
Aristotle on Mim4sis Paul Woodruff Modern readers are often dismayed to find that Aristotle classified poetry, music, and dance under a heading that is usually translated "imitation." We take some comfort in blaming this usage on Plato, who put poetry under this heading in order to condemn it, and we expect Aristotle to defend poetry by providing us with a new, more positive, and even (dare we hope?) more modern understand- ing of "imitation." The comfort begins to turn cold, however, when we find that mimEsis - the Greek word commonly translated "imitation" - has an indepen- dent life in Aristotle. It is neither a throwback to Plato nor a precursor of modern theories of fiction. It has little to do with the problem of truth in poetry, and a great deal to do with explaining the effects poetry has on its audience. Altogether, Aristotle's theory of poetry translates poorly into the idioms of modern criticism, and there is no help for this. Mimesis and its Greek cognates defy translation. Besides "imitation," we find in English such renderings as "image-making," "imitation," "representation," "reproduction," "expression," "flction," "emulation," "make-believe," and so forth, As any of these would beg important questions of interpretation, we shall have to be content with translit- eration for discussions such as this. Mimesis is the production t96s), 37, of mimematai and though "images" is almost right for mimemata, we shall leave that word in Greek as well. I shall also use the adjective mimetic for any procedure of mimesis. So stricken have we been by Plato's war on the tragedians that we keep wanting to read the Poetics as a definitive counter-offensive, and we keep trying to frame Aristotle's theory in Platonic terms, as a response to plato. -
AELIANUS TACTICUS, Translated from the Greek Into Latin By
AELIANUS TACTICUS, translated from the Greek into Latin by FRANCESCO ROBORTELLO and THEODORUS GAZA, Περὶ Στρατηγικῶν Τάξεων Ἑλληνικῶν [Latin translation: De militaribus ordinibus instituendis more græcorum and De instruendis aciebus], with a manuscript fragment of SIGEBERT OF GEMBLOUX [SIGEBERT GEMBLACENSIS], Chronica, and manuscript fragments from a Glossary and a Grammar In Latin (with some Greek), imprint on paper, with three manuscript fragments in Latin (with some Low German in one fragment) Venice, Andreas and Jacobus Spinellus, 1552 (imprint); Western Germany(?), c. 1140-60; Northwestern Germany(?), c. 1300-1350; Northwestern Germany(?), c. 1400-1450 In-4o format, preceded by one manuscript flyleaf (medieval fragment) and followed one paper flyleaf and two small manuscript flyleaves (both medieval fragments), printed [8 pp.], pp. 1-64, 73-77, [78], [24 pp.], incomplete (collation, sig. *4, A-G4, H4? [sig. H on outer sheet and sig. I ii on inner sheet, but with no disruption to pagination; a quire does appear to be lacking following this one, with loss of text], K3 [last leaf cancelled], A-C4), printed in Roman and Italic type, printer’s device on sig. K3 verso (U104 in EDIT16; see Online Resources), two engraved ornamental initials, numerous printed diagrams and tables, some of which incorporate woodcuts of soldiers alone or in formation, slight staining in the margins, some small losses to the outer edges of individual leaves, sig. K1 (pp. 73-74) is loose. Bound in sixteenth-century leather, blind-tooled with four concentric rectangular -
Aristotle and the Value of Tragedy Malcolm Heath
Aristotle and the Value of Tragedy Malcolm Heath This article explores Aristotle’s understanding of the value of tragedy. The primarily technical analyses of the Poetics are not sufficient for this purpose: they must be read in the context of Aristotle’s philosophical anthropology. An outline of Aristotle’s understanding of the structure of human motivation provides a framework within which to interpret his discussion of the uses of music, and in particular of music’s status as an intrinsically valuable component of cultivated Downloaded from leisure. Applying that model to tragedy requires an explanation of what motivates engagement with drama that evokes distressing affects. Aristotle’s account of musical katharsis, if read with sufficient attention to its structure and interpreted in the light of his analysis of pleasure, provides a solution. If the importance which Aristotle attaches to intrinsically valuable leisure activities is overlooked, it http://bjaesthetics.oxfordjournals.org/ is not possible to understand his conception of a good human life, or his aesthetics. What motivates human beings to invest time and effort in producing and consuming trag- edies? And how does that investment contribute to a characteristically human way of life? That is, what value attaches to the production and consumption of tragedies? Though Aristotle touches briefly on poetry’s roots in human nature at the beginning of Poetics 4, for the most part the existence of poetry and its diverse kinds is treated in the Poetics, not as an explanandum, but as the starting point for technical analyses of how poems, in their various kinds, are best composed. -
Epigraphical Research and Historical Scholarship, 1530-1603
Epigraphical Research and Historical Scholarship, 1530-1603 William Stenhouse University College London A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the Ph.D degree, December 2001 ProQuest Number: 10014364 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10014364 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Abstract This thesis explores the transmission of information about classical inscriptions and their use in historical scholarship between 1530 and 1603. It aims to demonstrate that antiquarians' approach to one form of material non-narrative evidence for the ancient world reveals a developed sense of history, and that this approach can be seen as part of a more general interest in expanding the subject matter of history and the range of sources with which it was examined. It examines the milieu of the men who studied inscriptions, arguing that the training and intellectual networks of these men, as well as the need to secure patronage and the constraints of printing, were determining factors in the scholarship they undertook. It then considers the first collections of inscriptions that aimed at a comprehensive survey, and the systems of classification within these collections, to show that these allowed scholars to produce lists and series of features in the ancient world; the conventions used to record inscriptions and what scholars meant by an accurate transcription; and how these conclusions can influence our attitude to men who reconstructed or forged classical material in this period. -
The Quest for a Poetics of Goodness in Plato and Aristotle La Investigación De Una Poética Del Bien En Platón Y Aristóteles
The Quest for a Poetics of Goodness in Plato and Aristotle La investigación de una poética del bien en Platón y Aristóteles Dairo Orozco*1 Pontificia Universidad Javeriana - Colombia Abstract The paper, which compares Plato and Aristotle’s different approaches towards -ar tistic activity, is divided into three parts. The first part discusses Plato’s Ion on mimesis and technē, as well as the role that poetry plays in the Republic. The second section offers an account of Aristotle’s idea of happiness as the end of action. The last section of this study deals with an attempt to reconcile Plato and Aristotle’s attitude towards mimetic art in a treatise by a Neoplatonic renaissance thinker, Torquato Tasso. Keywords: aesthetic, goodness, happiness, mimesis, poetry, techne. Resumen El artículo compara las concepciones de actividad artística en Platón y Aristóteles y se divide en tres partes. En la primera, se discuten la mimesis y la technē en el Ion de Platón, así como el papel de la poesía en la República. En la segunda, se hace un recuento de la idea de felicidad de Aristóteles como fin de la acción. En la última se discute el intento de reconciliación de las posiciones de Platón y Aristóteles reali- zado por el pensador neoplatónico renacentista, Torquato Tasso. Palabras clave: estética, bien, felicidad, mimesis, poesía, techne. Artículo recibido: 24 de septiembre del 2011; aprobado: 6 de febrero del 2012 * dairosj@gmail com ideas y valores · vol. lxi · n.o 150 • diciembre de 2012 • issn 0120-0062 (impreso) 2011-3668 (en línea) • bogotá, colombia • pp. 179 - 202 [180] DAIRO OROZCO Introduction: Making Poetry Philosophy This study aims to compare the attitudes towards artistic activity of the two major figures of Western thought: Plato and Aristotle. -
Aristotle's Poetics Is a Much-Disdained Book. So Unpoetic a Soul As Aristotle's Has No Business Speaking About Such a Topic
Aristotle's Poetics is a much-disdained book. So unpoetic a soul as Aristotle's has no business speaking about such a topic, much less telling poets how to go about their business. He reduces the drama to its language, people say, and the language itself to its least poetic element, the story, and then he encourages insensitive readers like himself to subject stories to crudely moralistic readings, that reduce tragedies to the childish proportions of Aesop-fables. Strangely, though, the Poetics itself is rarely read with the kind of sensitivity its critics claim to possess, and the thing criticized is not the book Aristotle wrote but a caricature of it. Aristotle himself respected Homer so much that he personally corrected a copy of the Iliad for his student Alexander, who carried it all over the world. In his Rhetoric (III, xvi, 9), Aristotle criticizes orators who write exclusively from the intellect, rather than from the heart, in the way Sophocles makes Antigone speak. Aristotle is often thought of as a logician, but he regularly uses the adverb logik6s, logically, as a term of reproach contrasted with phusik6s, naturally . or appropriately, to describe arguments made by others, or preliminary and inadequate arguments of his own. Those who take the trouble to look at the Poetics closely will find, I think, a book that treats its topic appropriately and naturally, and contains the reflections of a good reader and characteristically powerful thinker. The first scandal in the Poetics is the initial marking out of dramatic poetry as a form of imitation. -
*** Le Explicationes Rappresentano Il Primo Significativo Com- Mento Cinquecentesco Alla Poetica Di Aristotele Dopo La Tradu- Zi
Anno II ISSN 2421-4191 2016 DOI : 10.6092/2421-4191/2016.2.153-174 FRANCESCO ROBORTELLO IN LIBRUM ARISTOTELIS DE ARTE POETICA EXPLICATIONES Francesco Robortello (Udine 1516 - Padova 1567), allievo di Gregorio Amaseo a Padova e di Romolo Amaseo a Bologna, iniziò l’attività accademica nel 1538, a Lucca, come docente di eloquenza. Chiamato a decla- mare l’orazione inaugurale per la ripresa delle attività dello Studio pisano (1° novembre 1543), divenne nella stessa sede lettore di humanae litterae , tenendo corsi, tra l’altro, sulle opere retoriche e morali di Cicerone. Nel 1548 – anno della pubblicazione di alcune delle sue opere più significative – Robortello si trasferì a Venezia, succedendo a Giambattista Egnazio nell’insegnamento di lettere greche e latine. Proprio durante il soggiorno veneziano intensi- ficò la sua attività filologica, di cui l’edizione delle sette tragedie di Eschi- lo è uno dei risultati di maggiore rilievo. Nel 1552 a Padova ricoprì la cattedra di eloquenza greca e latina, prendendo il posto di Lazzaro Buo- namici. Risale al 1553 la nota polemica con Carlo Sigonio. Dopo un anno di insegnamento presso lo Studio di Bologna, il filologo udinese ritornò a Padova, dove morì nel 1567. MURATORI 1732; LIRUTI 1762, t. II, pp. 413-83; POMPELLA , in ROBORTELLO 1975, pp. 9-10; McCUAIG 1989, ad indicem ; BARSANTI 2000, p. 531; DONADI 2001, pp. 80-81; ZLOBEC DEL VECCHIO 2006- 2007 (per Robortello poeta); SCALON - GRIGGIO - ROZZO 2009. *** Le Explicationes rappresentano il primo significativo com- mento cinquecentesco alla Poetica di Aristotele dopo la tradu- zione latina di Alessandro Pazzi de’ Medici (ARISTOTELE 1536). -
Diegesis – Mimesis
Published on the living handbook of narratology (http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de) Diegesis – Mimesis Stephen Halliwell Created: 17. October 2012 Revised: 12. September 2013 1 Definition Diegesis (“narrative,” “narration”) and mimesis (“imitation,” “representation,” “enactment”) are a pair of Greek terms first brought together for proto- narratological purposes in a passage from Plato’s Republic (3.392c–398b). Contrary to what has become standard modern usage (section 3 below), diegesis there denotes narrative in the wider generic sense of discourse that communicates information keyed to a temporal framework (events “past, present, or future,” Republic 392d). It is subdivided at the level of discursive style or presentation (lexis ) into a tripartite typology: 1) haple diegesis, “plain” or “unmixed” diegesis, i.e. narrative in the voice of the poet (or other authorial “storyteller,” muthologos, 392d); 2) diegesis dia mimeseos, narrative “by means of mimesis,” i.e. direct speech (including drama, Republic 394b–c) in the voices of individual characters in a story; and 3) diegesis di’ amphoteron, i.e. compound narrative which combines or mixes both the previous two types, as in Homeric epic, for example. From this Platonic beginning, the terms have had a long and sometimes tangled history of usage, right up to the present day, as a pair of critical categories. 2 Explication The diegesis/mimesis complex is introduced by Socrates at Republic 392c ff. to help categorize different ways of presenting a story, especially in poetry. His aim is to sketch a basic psychology and ethics of narrative. From Republic 2.376c ff. Socrates has been concerned with the contribution of storytelling in general, poetry (the most powerful medium of verbal narrative in Greek culture) in particular, to the education of the “guardians” of the ideal city hypothesized in the dialogue. -
Hic Liber Libenter Legitur in Polonia Mapping the Popularity of the Zodiacus Vitae in Poland Between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries*
ODRODZENIE I REFORMACJA W POLSCE ■ LIX 2015 ■ PL ISSN 0029-8514 Valentina Lepri Faculty of “Artes Liberales” University of Warsaw Hic liber libenter legitur in Polonia Mapping the popularity of the Zodiacus Vitae in Poland between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries* Choć Zodiacus vitae Marcellusa Palingeniusa Stellatusa był jedną z najbar- dziej sensacyjnych publikacji XVI stulecia, jego popularność w epoce rene- sansu nie stała się jeszcze przedmiotem wszechstronnych badań naukowych. Zatem celem niniejszego artykułu jest wypełnienie przynajmniej części tej luki poprzez prezentację popularności dzieła w szesnastowiecznej Polsce, gdzie pierwszego przekładu dokonał Mikołaj Rej. Faktem jest, że wielu innych wybitnych przedstawicieli kultury polskiego renesansu interesowało się Zodiacusem, na co znajdujemy liczne odwołania do tego dzieła, zarówno w utworach poetyckich, jak i traktatach fi lozofi cznych. Ustrój ówczesnej Rzeczypospolitej oraz intensywne kontakty z niemieckimi i włoskimi uni- wersytetami dają doskonałe pole do badań pogłębiających nasze rozumienie wpływu Zodiacusa na rozwój literatury i kultury pod koniec XVI i na początku XVII stulecia. 1 Słowa kluczowe: Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus, literatura renesansowa, neoplatonizm, humanizm, renesans włoski Keywords: Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus, Renaissance literature, Neo- -platonism, Humanism, Italian Renaissance * Th is article is part of a research project dealing with the circulation of certain works of Italian philosophical culture in late-Renaissance Poland which is being carried out in liaison with Professor Danilo Facca, whom I should like to thank for his ongoing assistance. http://dx.doi.org/10.12775/OiRwP.2015.03 68 VALENTINA LEPRI All the studies dealing with the Zodiacus Vitae, and the identity of its author Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus (ca 1500 - ca 1551), make constant references to the runaway success of the book just a few years after its publication. -
Francesco Robortello (1516–1567)
Francesco Robortello (1516–1567) This book explores the intellectual world of Francesco Robortello, one of the most prominent scholars of the Italian Renaissance. From poetics to rhetoric, philology to history, topics to ethics, Robortello revolutionised the field of humanities through innovative interpretations of ancient texts and with a genius that was architectural in scope. He was highly esteemed by his contemporaries for his acute wit, but also envied and disparaged for his many qualities. In comparison with other humanists of his time such as Carlo Sigonio and Pier Vettori, Robortello had a deeply philosophical vein, one that made him unique not only to Italy, but to Europe more generally. Robortello’s role in reforming the humanities makes him a constituent part of the long-fifteenth century. Robortello’s thought, however, unlike that of other fifteenth-century humanists, sprung from and was thoroughly imbued with a systematic, Aristotelian spirit without which his philosophy would never have emerged from the tumultuous years of the mid-Cinquecento. Francesco Robortello created a system for the humanities which was unique for his century: a perfect union of humanism and philosophy. This book represents the first fully fledged monograph on this adventurous intellectual life. Marco Sgarbi is Associate Professor in the History of Philosophy at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Routledge Studies in Renaissance and Early Modern Worlds of Knowledge Series Editor: Harald E. Braun University of Liverpool This series explores Renaissance and Early Modern Worlds of Knowledge (c.1400–c.1700) in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa. The volumes published in this series study the individuals, communities and networks involved in making and communicating knowledge during the first age of globalization. -
PHL 415-201, Kirkland
Aristotle and the Philosophy of Time Sean D. Kirkland PHL 415.101 2352 N. Clifton W, 6-9 pm Office Hours: Th 3-5, & by appt. 990 W. Fullerton, 2402 [email protected] Topic We will begin the quarter with a session discussing very briefly some major moments in the philosophy of time in the Western tradition, primarily in an effort to indicate what a radically different approach to this question we find in Aristotle. That is, the history of Western philosophy has approached time either as objective or as subjective, either (ala Descartes or Newton) as a vessel (like space) in which external objects are situated and real events occur or (ala Kant or Husserl) as a structure that consciousness imposes on the content of experience. However, a discussion of Aristotle’s philosophical method, dialektikê, will indicate that his thinking does not unfold in terms of the subject-object relation, but is rather a thinking of phenomenal being. Given this, we will spend the next two sessions looking at some other proto-phenomenological approaches to time, in order to prepare ourselves (through similarities and dissimilarities) for Aristotle’s own thinking of time. We will then proceed to employ a quite unorthodox heuristic device to lay bare Aristotle’s unfamiliar conception of time, one according to which temporal beings are fundamentally tragic (in a very specific Aristotelian sense). Rather than beginning from Aristotle’s metaphysics and working our way up through the physics and then tracing the implications of the physics for ethics, politics, and poetics, we will begin from the fundamentally tragic experience of time Aristotle sets out in the Poetics. -
Pattern Poetry of Modern-Era
Barbara Milewska-Waźbinska Toil in vain or expression of emotion? Notes on pattern poetry of modern-era. 1. General aspects In the modern-era the development of forms belonging to what is called by poetics poesis artificiosa has been influenced by a few factors. One of them was a tradition that continued almost ceaselessly since the antique and that became reinforced in the Middle Ages. Turning anew ad fontes, humanists became fascinated with the exquisite forms connected with the broadly understood ars rhetorica, including the Greek visual forms (technopaegnia) and the riddles connected with them 1 (aenigmata). During the Renaissance interest in visual literary forms was sparked also by emblematics and the advent of iconology. Various experiments concerned with the way a text was written down were also affected in the modern-era by the development of Mathematics, especially combinatorics, which can be observed e.g. in the legacy of Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz. The various ways in which the modern authors have taken from the output of the antique and medieval authors of pattern poetry, assimilating their patterns, have repeatedly been of interest to such scholars as Giovanni Pozzi, Ulrich Ernst, Dick Higgins, Elizabeth Cook, or Piotr Rypson in Poland. The following work is merely an attempt at synthesizing the issue and showing the paths taken by the authors of the Latin pattern poetry in the modern era, focusing especially on what’s particular for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. To begin with, it is worth mentioning that in the Renaissance there emerges, next to the literary practices connected with patterns, theoretical thought.