Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- READING AND INTERPRETATION: AN EMERGING DISCOURSE OF POETICS
- 1 Theories of language
- 2 Renaissance exegesis
- 3 Evangelism and Erasmus
- 4 The assimilation of Aristotle's Poetics in sixteenth-century Italy
- 5 Horace in the sixteenth century: commentators into critics
- 6 Cicero and Quintilian
- POETICS
- THEORIES OF PROSE FICTION
- CONTEXTS OF CRITICISM: METROPOLITAN CULTURE AND SOCIO-LITERARY ENVIRONMENTS
- VOICES OF DISSENT
- STRUCTURES OF THOUGHT
- NEOCLASSICAL ISSUES: BEAUTY, JUDGEMENT, PERSUASION, POLEMICS
- A SURVEY OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
5 - Horace in the sixteenth century: commentators into critics
from READING AND INTERPRETATION: AN EMERGING DISCOURSE OF POETICS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
By
Edited by
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- READING AND INTERPRETATION: AN EMERGING DISCOURSE OF POETICS
- 1 Theories of language
- 2 Renaissance exegesis
- 3 Evangelism and Erasmus
- 4 The assimilation of Aristotle's Poetics in sixteenth-century Italy
- 5 Horace in the sixteenth century: commentators into critics
- 6 Cicero and Quintilian
- POETICS
- THEORIES OF PROSE FICTION
- CONTEXTS OF CRITICISM: METROPOLITAN CULTURE AND SOCIO-LITERARY ENVIRONMENTS
- VOICES OF DISSENT
- STRUCTURES OF THOUGHT
- NEOCLASSICAL ISSUES: BEAUTY, JUDGEMENT, PERSUASION, POLEMICS
- A SURVEY OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
The first instinct of the humanist interested in formulating a theory of discourse was to go back (as for so much else) to an ancient prototype. As far as poetics was concerned, by far the most influential, as well as the most comprehensive, prototype was the Ars poetica of Horace, in which the humanists had an authoritative text on poetic composition to set beside the old and the newly discovered rhetorical treatises of Cicero. Although widely available in the late Middle Ages, the Ars poetica entered the age of print without much medieval impedimenta but with two sets of mainly explanatory annotations of respectable antiquity – one by Porphyrion from the third or fourth century, the other attributed to Acro and dating from the fifth century. These were frequently reprinted and they set a trend towards a prescriptive reading of Horace's poetics. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries commentaries proliferated. It was primarily in commentaries on texts that humanist scholars evolved, applied, and propagated the modes of reading which underlay the theory and practice of literary composition that they promoted so effectively. It follows that the commentaries they wrote on this, the very model of critical theory, are an integral part of the history of criticism, although the present survey cannot pretend to be more than a superficial sampling of this important material.
The first humanist commentary was published at Florence in 1482 and is the work of Cristoforo Landino (Christophorus Landinus) far better known as the author of the Neoplatonic interpretation of the Aeneid contained in his Disputationes Camaldulenses (?1480).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism , pp. 66 - 76Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
References
, ‘Humanism and poetics’, in Renaissance humanism, foundations, forms and legacy, ed. , 3 vols., Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988, vol. III,[see esp. pp. 103–7 on Horace].Google Scholar
, Poetics with the Tractatus coislinianus, reconstruction of Poetics II, and the fragments of the On poets, trans. , Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987.Google Scholar
, Francis Bacon, ed. , The Oxford Authors, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
, The works of Francis Bacon, ed. , , and , London: Longmans, 1857–74, 14 vols. [Facs. reprint Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann Holzboog, 1989].Google Scholar
Rhetorica Marci Tullii Ciceronis cum commento M.T.C. Rhetoricorum libri quatuor, Lyons: J. Crepin, 1531 [Vatican Library Bibl. Apost. Vat. Popag. 111.151; contains Bade's commentary on the Ad Herennium].Google Scholar
[Iodocus Badius Ascensius], Quinti Horatii Flacci de arte poetica opusculum ab Ascensio familiariter expositum, Paris: T. Kerver, 1500.Google Scholar
Humanists and holy writ: New Testament scholarship in the Renaissance, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Biblia complutense, 6 vols., Alcalá: Arnão Guillen de Brocar, 1514–17.
, Genealogie deorum gentilium libri, ed. , Bari: Scrittori d'Italia 200–1, 1951, 2 vols. [Preface, Books 14–15 trans. and ed. , Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1930].Google Scholar
, ‘The chimera and the spirit: Luther's grammar of the will’, in The Martin Luther quincentennial, ed. , Detroit: Wayne State University Press for Michigan Germanic studies, 1985.Google Scholar
, Erasmus on language and method in theology, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971.Google Scholar
, Rhetoric and reform: Erasmus' civil dispute with Luther, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
‘Lorenzo Valla, “Repastinatio, liber primus”: retorica e linguaggio’, in Lorenzo Valla e l'umanesimo italiano, ed. and , Padua: Antenore, 1986.Google Scholar
, The cornucopian text: problems of writing in the French Renaissance, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.Google Scholar
, Poetic and legal fiction in the Aristotelian tradition, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Authorizing words: speech, writing, and print in the English Renaissance, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
, Ecclesiastes sive concionator evangelicus (1535), in Opera omnia emendatiora et auctiora, ed. , vol. V, Leiden: Petrus Vander Aa, 1703–6, 10 tomes in 11 vols.Google Scholar
, The handbook of the Christian soldier (Enchiridion militis christiani), in The collected works of Erasmus, ed. , vol. LXVI, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988.Google Scholar
, Opera omnia emendatiora et auctiora, ed. , Leiden: Petrus Vander Aa, 1703–6, 10 tomes in 11 vols.Google Scholar
, M. Tullii Ciceronis De oratore ad Quintem fratrem dialogi tres, Paris: M. Vascosan, 1540.Google Scholar
, Formacion de la teoria literaria moderna: la topica horaciana en Europa, Madrid: CUPSA, 1977–80, 2 vols.Google Scholar
, and , ‘Protestantism and literacy in early modern Germany’, Past and present 104 (1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Lettera sulla tragedia (1543), in Trattati di poetica e retorica del '500, ed. , Bari: Laterza, 1970, vol. I.Google Scholar
, Joseph Scaliger: a study in the history of classical scholarship, Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1983–93, 2 vols.Google Scholar
, Marvels and commonplaces: Renaissance literary criticism, New York: Random House, 1968.Google Scholar
, The age of criticism: the late Renaissance in Italy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962.Google Scholar
The fusion of Horatian and Aristotelian literary criticism 1531–1555, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1946.Google Scholar
Foundations of modern historical scholarship: language, law, and history in the French Renaissance, New York: Columbia University Press, 1970.Google Scholar
, and , The idea of the Renaissance, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
, Universal language schemes in England and France 1600–1800, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975.Google Scholar
, Q. Horatii Ars poetica ad P. Rami Dialecticam et Rhetoricam resoluta, Basle: S. Henricpetrus, n. d. (Preface dated 1583).
, ‘History of semantics’, in The encyclopaedia of philosophy, ed. , vol. VII, New York: Macmillan & The Free Press, 1967.Google Scholar
The structure of scientific revolutions, 2nd edn, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.Google Scholar
[Dionysius Lambinus], Q. Horatius Flaccus … opera D. Lambini emendatus, Lyons: J. de Tournes, 1561.Google Scholar
[Christophorus Landinus], Opera Horatii cum commentario Christophori Landini, Florence: A. Miscominus, 1482.Google Scholar
, and , In Aristotelis librum De poetica communes explanationes; 1550; reprint Munich: W. Fink, 1964.Google Scholar
‘Le postille di Lorenzo Valla all' Institutio oratoria di Quintiliano’, in Lorenzo Valla e l'umanesimo italiano, ed. and , Parma, Atti del convegno internazionale di studi umanistici, 1984, Padua: Antenore, 1986.Google Scholar
, and (ed.), Les commentaires et la naissance de la critique littéraire. France/Italie (XIVe–XVIe siècles), Paris: Aux Amateurs de Livres, 1990.Google Scholar
Rhétorique et poétique au XVIe siècle en France. Du Bellay, Ramus et les autres, Leiden: Brill, 1986.Google Scholar
and Medieval literary theory and criticism c. 1100– c. 1375: the commentary-tradition, Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
, George of Trebizond: a biography and a study of his rhetoric and logic, Leiden: Brill, 1976.Google Scholar
(ed.), Collectanea Trapezuntiana: texts, documents, and bibliographies of George of Trebizond, Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies/Renaissance Society of America, 1984.Google Scholar
, Essais, ed. and , Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1965 (see esp. bk. I, 25; I, 26; III, 5; III, 13).Google Scholar
, The complete works of Montaigne: Essays, Travel Journal, Letters, trans. , Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967.Google Scholar
, Poetry and fable: studies in mythological narrative in sixteenth-century France, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Die Antike Kunstprosa vom VI Jahrhundert v.Chr. bis in die Zeit der Renaissance; 1909; reprint Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1974, with , Nota di Aggiornamento, Padua: Salerno Editrice, 1986, 2 vols.Google Scholar
[Omnibonus Leonicenus], In Marci Tullii oratorem … commentarium, Venice: A. Torresanus and B. de Blavis, 1485.Google Scholar
Ovide moralisé en prose (texte du quinzième siècle), ed. , Amsterdam: North-Holland Pub. Co., 1954.Google Scholar
Grammatical theory in Western Europe, 1500–1700: the Latin tradition, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976.Google Scholar
[Aulus Janus Parrhasius], Q. Horatii Flacci Ars poetica, cum trium doctissimorum commentariis A. Jani Parrhasii, Acronis, Porphyrionis, Paris: R. Estienne, 1533. First (posthumous) edition of Parrasio, Naples: B. Martirano, 1531.Google Scholar
and (ed.), Commentary as cultural artifact, The south Atlantic quarterly 91, 4 (1992).
, Œuvres complètes, ed. , Paris: Gallimard, 1959 (see esp. Gargantua, Prologue; Third and Fourth Books).Google Scholar
, De re comica, published with Riccoboni's commentary and translation of Aristotle's Rhetoric, Venice: P. Meiettus, 1579,[Work actually appeared in 1585].Google Scholar
, Explicationes de satyra, de epigrammate, de comoedia, de elegia (1548), in Trattati di poetica e retorica del Cinquecento, ed. , Bari: Laterza, 1970, vol. 1.Google Scholar
, In librum Aristotelis De arte poetica explicationes, Florence: L. Torrentinus, 1548 [Reprint Munich: W. Fink, 1968.].Google Scholar
, ‘Ancient genre theory: a mirage’, Yearbook of comparative and general literature 34 (1985).Google Scholar
, Erasmus' annotations on the New Testament: from philologist to theologian, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le scoperte dei codici latini e greci ne' secoli XIV e XV: nuove ricerche col riassunto filologico dei due volumi, Florence: Sansoni, 1905–14, 2 vols.Google Scholar
[Franciscus Sanctius], De auctoribus interpretandis sive de exercitatione praecepta (composed 1556), in Opera omnia, 4 vols., Geneva: Frères de Tournes, 1766, vol. 11.Google Scholar
The classical theory of composition from its origins to the present: a historical survey, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972.Google Scholar
, Poetices libri septem; 1561; facs. reprint Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1987, ed. .Google Scholar
, The survival of the pagan gods: the mythological tradition and its place in Renaissance humanism and art, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961.Google Scholar
[Ioannes Sturmius], Commentarii in artem poeticam Horatii confecti ex scholiis Io. Sturmii. Nunc primum editi, opera et studio Ioannis Lobarti Borussi, Strasburg: N. Wyriot, 1576.Google Scholar
The Cambridge history of Renaissance philosophy, ed. , et al., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
‘Observations on the reception of Aristotle's Poetics in the Latin West’, Studies in the Renaissance 15 (1968).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘The meaning of Horace's “Ut pictura poesis”’, The Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld institutes 36 (1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, La quinta e la sesta divisione della Poetica (c. 1549), in Trattati di poetica e retorica del Cinquecento, ed. , Bari: Laterza, 1970, vol. II.Google Scholar
, In M. Fabii Quintiliani de Institutione oratoria libros XII … commentarii, Paris: T. Richardus, 1554.Google Scholar
, ‘Aristotele e le “Poetiche” del Cinquecento’, Dizionario critico della letteratura italiana, ed. , Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1974.Google Scholar
, The treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine, trans. , New Haven: Yale University Press, 1922.Google Scholar
, Les sources italiennes de la ‘Deffense et illustration de la langue françoise’ de Joachim du Bellay, Paris: Champion, 1908.Google Scholar
, Language and meaning in the Renaissance, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, A history of literary criticism in the Italian Renaissance, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961, 2 vols. [See esp. vol. I, pp. 71–249 on readings of Aristotle and Horace].Google Scholar
, An essay towards a real character and a philosophical language, London: S. Gellibrand and J. Martin, 1668.Google Scholar
- 5
- Cited by