Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-02T18:20:53.553Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Humanist classifications of poetry among the arts and sciences

from I - Humanist classifications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
William J. Kennedy
Edited by
Glyn P. Norton
Glyn P. Norton
Affiliation:
Williams College, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

Humanist theory classified poetry among the arts and sciences in various and sometimes conflicting ways. A given classification affirms not only the priority of some genres, styles, modes, and topics over others, but also the values of a social class or order that poetry might address. Whether for a limited constitutional or patrician republic (Florence, Venice), for a partisan and privileged nobility (the courts of Naples, Urbino, and Ferrara in Italy, or of the Sidney and Leicester circles in England), for an emergently national monarchy (the kings of France or Spain), or for an urban bourgeoisie (Lyons, Barcelona, London), humanist theory formed a canon that defines what literature is or could be among the other arts. It classified poetry chiefly in relation to rhetoric, political philosophy, and the discourse of history.

Medieval grammarians ranked poetry among the natural and moral sciences, as did the Chartrian academician John of Salisbury in his Metalogicon (c. 1160) which associates poetry with diacrisis, ‘vivid representation, graphic imagery’, so that poetry ‘would seem to image all the arts’. Republican humanists of fifteenth-century Florence, however, associated poetry with rhetoric, serving as a practical means to stimulate the intelligence, inspire learning, and persuade to civic virtue. Cristoforo Landino's dialogue on the good life, Disputationes Camaldulenses (c. 1472), for example, interprets the Aeneid as the hero's journey to a Neoplatonic summum bonum. Even though Landino allegorizes the poem in broad abstractions, he grounds its figures of virtue and vice in a historical specificity unknown to medieval commentators.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism , pp. 89 - 97
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aguzzi Barbagli, Danilo, ‘Humanism and poetics’, in Renaissance humanism: foundations, forms and legacy, ed. Rabil, A. Jr., 3 vols., Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988, vol. III.Google Scholar
Balavoine, C. and Laurens, P. (ed.), La statue et l'empreinte: la poétique de Scaliger, Paris: Vrin, 1986.Google Scholar
Bembo, Pietro, Prose della volgar lingua, Gli asolani, Rime, ed. Dionisotti, C., 2nd edn, Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1966.Google Scholar
Branca, Vittore, Poliziano e l'umanesimo della parola, Turin: Einaudi, 1983.Google Scholar
Branca, Vittore, Poliziano e l'umanesimo della parola, Turin: G. Einaudi, 1983.Google Scholar
Budé, Guillaume, Opera omnia Gulielmi Budaei; 1557; facs. reprint London: Gregg Press, 1966, 4 vols.Google Scholar
Budé, Guillaume, De philologia et de studio litterarum, intro. Buck, A. (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann, 1964)Google Scholar
Cardini, Roberto, La critica del Landino, Florence: Sansoni, 1973.Google Scholar
Castelvetro, Lodovico, Castelvetro on the art of poetry: an abridged translation of ‘Poetica d'Aristotele vulgarizzata e sposta’, trans. Bongiorno, A., Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance texts and studies, 1984.Google Scholar
Castelvetro, Lodovico, Poetica d'Aristotele vulgarizzata e sposta, ed. Romani, W., Bari: Laterza, 1978–9, 2 vols.Google Scholar
Castiglione, Baldesar, The book of the courtier, trans. Singleton, C. S., Garden City: Anchor Books, 1959.Google Scholar
Chomarat, Jacques, Grammaire et rhétorique chez Erasme, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1981, 2 vols.Google Scholar
Daniello, Bernardino, La poetica; 1536; facs. reprint Munich: W. Fink, 1968, ed. Fabian, B..Google Scholar
Dionisotti, C.Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana, Turin: Einaudi, 1977.Google Scholar
Du Bellay, Joachim, La deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse, ed. Chamard, H., Paris: Didier, 1948.Google Scholar
Du Bellay, Joachim, The defence and illustration of the French language, trans. Turquet, G. M., London: J. M. Dent, 1939.Google Scholar
du Bellay, J., OEuvres poétiques, ed. Chamard, H., 6 vols. (Paris: M. Didier, 1908–31), vol. iGoogle Scholar
Elyot, Thomas Sir, The book named the governor, ed. Lehmberg, S. E., London: Dent, 1908–9.Google Scholar
Elyot, Thomas Sir, The book named the governor, ed. Lehmberg, S. E. (London: Dent, 1907)Google Scholar
Erasmus, Desiderius, The collected works of Erasmus, ed. Thompson, C. R., et al., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974–, 86 vols.Google Scholar
Ferraro, R. M.Giudizi critici e criteri estetici nei ‘Poetices libri septem’ (1561) di Giulio Cesare Scaligero rispetto alla teoria letteraria del Rinascimento, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Fracastoro, Girolamo, Naugerius, sive de poetica dialogus, trans. Kelso, R., Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1924.Google Scholar
Frame, D.The complete essays of Montaigne, trans.(Stanford: Stanford University Press,1957)Google Scholar
Greene, Thomas M.The light in Troy: imitation and discovery in Renaissance poetry, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Huarte de San Juan, Juan, Examen de ingenios para las ciencias, ed. Torre, E., Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1976.Google Scholar
Huarte de San Juan, Juan, The examination or triall of men's wits and dispositions, trans. Carew, R., London: Adam Islip, 1594.Google Scholar
Kallendorf, Craig, In praise of Aeneas (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1989)Google Scholar
Knott, B. I., in Complete works, vol. xxviii (1986
Kristeller, Paul O. ‘The modern system of the arts’, Renaissance thought II, New York: Harper & Row, 1965.Google Scholar
La Garanderie, Marie-Madeleine, Christianisme et lettres profanes (1515–1535), Paris: Champion, 1976.Google Scholar
Landino, CristoforoScritti critici e teorici, ed. Cardini, R., Rome: Bulzoni, 1974, 2 vols.Google Scholar
Landino, Cristoforo [Christophorus Landinus], Disputationes camaldulenses, ed. Lohe, P., Florence: Sansoni, 1980.Google Scholar
McGarry, D. D.Metalogicon, trans. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955)Google Scholar
Minturno, Antonio Sebastiano, De poeta; 1559; facs. reprint Munich: W. Fink, 1970, ed. Fabian, B..Google Scholar
Minturno, Antonio Sebastiano, L'arte poetica; 1564; facs. reprint Munich: W. Fink, 1971, ed. Fabian, B..Google Scholar
Parker, Deborah, Commentary and ideology: Dante in the Renaissance, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Patrizi, Francesco, Della poetica, ed. Aguzzi-Barbagli, D., Florence: Istituto Nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento, 1969, 3 vols.Google Scholar
Poliziano, Angelo, Angeli Politiani opera; 1553; facs. reprint Turin: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1970–1, ed. Maïer, I., 3 vols.Google Scholar
Possevino, Antonio, Bibliotheca selecta de ratione studiorum, Rome, Vatican, 1593.Google Scholar
Puttenham, George (?), The arte of English poesie (1589), ed. Willcock, G. D. and Walker, A., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936.Google Scholar
Rhu, Lawrence, The genesis of Tasso's narrative theory: English translations of the early poetics and a comparative study of their significance, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Scaliger, Julius Caesar, Poetices libri septem; 1561; facs. reprint Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1987, ed. Buck, A..Google Scholar
Scaliger, Julius Caesar, Select translations from Scaliger's ‘Poetics’, trans. Padelford, F. M., New York: Henry Holt, 1905.Google Scholar
Sidney, Philip Sir, Miscellaneous prose of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Duncan-Jones, K. and Dorsten, J., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spanmüller, Jakob [Iacobus Pontanus], Poeticarum institutionum libri III, Ingolstadt: A. Sartorius, 1594.Google Scholar
Tasso, Torquato, Discourses on the heroic poem, trans. Cavalchini, M. and Samuel, I., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Tasso, Torquato, Prose, ed. Mazzali, E., Milan: R. Ricciardi, 1959.Google Scholar
Thompson, C. R. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 46–78, where the Gospels are the ‘most splendid possession’ of all (p. 71)Google Scholar
Vida, Girolamo, De arte poetica, ed. and trans. Williams, R. G., New York: Columbia University Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Viperano, Giovanni, De poetica libri tres, trans. Rollinson, P., Greenwood, SC: Koberger, 1987.Google Scholar
Vives, Juan Luis, Opera omnia; 1782–90, ed. Mayans, G.; facs. reprint London: Gregg Press, 1964, 8 vols.Google Scholar
Weinberg, Bernard, A history of literary criticism in the Italian Renaissance, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961, 2 vols.Google Scholar
Weinberg, Bernard (ed.), Trattati di poetica e retorica del Cinquecento, Bari: Laterza, 1970–4, 4 vols.Google Scholar
Wilson, Thomas, Arte of rhetorique (1553), ed. Derrick, T., The Renaissance imagination 1, New York: Garland, 1982.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×