A history of criticism and literary taste in Europe, from the earliest texts to the present day. Volume 1 (of 3), Classical and mediæval criticismSaintsbury, George
History
A history of criticism and literary taste in Europe, from the earliest texts to the present day. Volume 1 (of 3), Classical and mediæval criticism
Saintsbury, George
Criticism -- History; Literature -- History and criticism; Literature, Medieval
In Ep. 24 there is a playful and pleasant discourse on the sense of the
epithet γλυκὺς given by the poets and others to figs and honey, but it
is only a trifle; and in 34, to Iamblichus, it is noteworthy how
entirely the philosophic interest of literature overshadows, or rather
how completely it blocks out, the literary whole. In 42, on education,
and literature as its instrument, the old Plutarchian view[185] is
refurbished, almost without alteration, and with only a fling or two at
the Galilæans as an addition; while in 55 Eumenius and Pharianus are
explicitly adjured “not to despise” logic, rhetoric, poetics, to study
mathematics “more carefully,” but to give their whole mind to the
understanding of the dogmas of Aristotle and Plato. This is to be “the
real business, the foundation and the structure and the roof,” the rest
are πάρεργα. The assertion is of course the reverse of original; but at
this juncture it is all the more valuable to us, as a sort of summary
and clincher at once of a large and important part of ancient opinion.
In the borrower of it, as in those from whom it was borrowed, literary
criticism, to full purpose and with full freedom, simply could not
exist.
Footnote 183:
Ibid., p. 434.
Footnote 184:
πρὶν ἀναπαύσασθαι.
Footnote 185:
See next chapter.
CHAPTER V.
DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS, PLUTARCH, LUCIAN, LONGINUS.
DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS—HIS WORKS—THE ‘RHETORIC’—THE
‘COMPOSITION’—CENSURES AND COMMENTARIES ON ORATORS, ETC.—THE MINOR
WORKS—THE JUDGMENT OF THUCYDIDES—GENERAL CRITICAL
VALUE—PLUTARCH—THE ‘LIVES’ QUITE BARREN FOR US—THE ‘MORALIA’ AT
FIRST SIGHT PROMISING—EXAMINATION OF THIS PROMISE—THE
“EDUCATION”—THE PAPERS ON “READING”—THE ‘LIVES OF THE ORATORS’—THE
‘MALIGNITY OF HERODOTUS’—THE “COMPARISON OF ARISTOPHANES AND
MENANDER”—THE ‘ROMAN QUESTIONS’—THE ‘SYMPOSIACS’—LUCIAN—THE ‘HOW
TO WRITE HISTORY’—THE ‘LEXIPHANES’—OTHER PIECES: THE ‘PROMETHEUS
ES’—WORKS TOUCHING RHETORIC—HIS CRITICAL LIMITATIONS—LONGINUS: THE
DIFFICULTIES RAISED—“SUBLIMITY”—QUALITY AND CONTENTS OF THE
TREATISE—PRELIMINARY RETROSPECT—DETAILED CRITICISM: THE
OPENING—THE STRICTURE ON THE ‘ORITHYIA’—“FRIGIDITY”—THE “MAIDENS
IN THE EYES”—THE CANON “QUOD SEMPER”—THE SOURCES OF
SUBLIMITY—LONGINUS ON HOMER—ON SAPPHO—“AMPLIFICATION”—“IMAGES”—THE
FIGURES—“FAULTLESSNESS”—HYPERBOLES—“HARMONY”—THE
CONCLUSION—MODERNITY OF THE TREATISE, OR RATHER SEMPITERNITY.
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