A history of criticism and literary taste in Europe from the earliest texts to the present day. Volume 2 (of 3), From the Renaissance to the decline of eighteenth century orthodoxySaintsbury, George
History
A history of criticism and literary taste in Europe from the earliest texts to the present day. Volume 2 (of 3), From the Renaissance to the decline of eighteenth century orthodoxy
Saintsbury, George
Criticism -- History; Literature -- History and criticism; Literature, Medieval
that both of these had written in Latin.
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Footnote 49:
But most of this latter part had been written in 1548-49, and all must
have been before 1550, when Trissino died. Even this, however, leaves
a twenty years’ gap, which Trissino attributes to the composition of
his great (or at any rate large) poem on the Goths.
Footnote 50:
2 vols., Verona, 1729.
-----
Trissino does not, in his first instalment, busy himself with those
abstract discussions which were soon to furnish the staple of Italian
criticism. [Sidenote: _Division of his_ Poetic.] He adopts Aristotle’s
“Imitation” briefly without cavil or qualification; and then passes, in
his First Part or “Division,” to the question of choosing your language,
in which he generally follows Dante, but with an adaptation to the time.
It is not with him a question of _making_ an “Illustrious Vulgar
Tongue,” an “Italian,” but of calling by that name one already adopted.
In his further remarks on Diction he sometimes borrows, and often
expands or supplements, the very words of Dante at first, and then
passes to elaborate discussion, with examples, of the qualities of
speech—Clearness, Grandeur, Beauty, Swiftness. Next he deals with what
he calls the _costume_—character, _ethos_, suiting of style to
person—with truth, artifice, and what he calls the “fashions”—that is to
say, the alterations of quantity, &c., by dwelling, slurring, syncope,
and the like. The arrangement of this First Division is not very
logical; but, as we have seen, cross-division has been the curse of
rhetorical-formal discussion of the kind from a very early period to the
present day. The Second Division deals with pure prosody, the division
of feet, shortening (_rimozione_), as in _ciel_ for _cielo_, elision,
cæsura, &c.; the Third with arrangement of verses and stanzas; the
Fourth with the complete forms of Sonnet, Ballata, and Canzone, the
sub-varieties of which were detailed with great care and plentiful
examples.
Here what might more properly be called the First Part, consisting of
these four divisions, ends; the long subsequent Second Part (made up of
the Fifth and Sixth Divisions) has a separate Preface-dedication
referring to the gap. These parts are not, like the others, divided into
sections with headings; and, doubtless on the pattern if not of any one
particular treatise, of the spirit of many which had gone between, they
deal with general questions. The Imitation theory is handled at some
length, and with citation of Plato as well as of Aristotle; the kinds of
poetry are treated on a more general standard, and not with mere
reference to the rules of constructing each. The larger part of the
Fifth Division is given entirely to Tragedy: the Sixth begins with that
Heroic Poem which was so much on the mind of the country and the
century. But it ends chiefly on Figures—the formal heart of Trissino,
long-travelled as it has been, fondly turning to its old loves at the
last.
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