A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance: With special reference to the influence of Italy in the formation and development of modern classicismSpingarn, Joel Elias
Philosophy
A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance: With special reference to the influence of Italy in the formation and development of modern classicism
Spingarn, Joel Elias
Criticism; Renaissance
This conception of the position of poetry in the body of human knowledge
may be found, however, throughout the Renaissance. Thus, Robortelli, in
his commentary on Aristotle's _Poetics_ (1548), gives the usual
scholastic distinctions between the various forms of the written or
spoken word (_oratio_): the demonstrative, which deals with the true;
the dialectic, which deals with the probable; the rhetorical, with the
persuasive; and the poetic, with the false or fabulous.[40] By the term
"false" or "fabulous" is meant merely that the subject of poetry is not
actual fact, but that it deals with things as they ought to be, rather
than as they are. Varchi, in his public lectures on poetry (1553),
divides philosophy into two forms, real and rational. Real philosophy
deals with things, and includes metaphysics, ethics, physics, geometry,
and the like; while rational philosophy, which includes logic,
dialectic, rhetoric, history, poetry, and grammar, deals not with
things, but with words, and is not philosophy proper, but the instrument
of philosophy. Poetry is therefore, strictly speaking, neither an art
nor a science, but an instrument or faculty; and it is only an art in
the sense that it has been reduced to rules and precepts. It is, in
fact, a form of logic, and no man, according to Varchi, can be a poet
unless he is a logician; the better logician he is, the better poet he
will be. Logic and poetry differ, however, in their matter and their
instruments; for the subject of logic is truth, arrived at by means of
the demonstrative syllogism, while the subject of poetry is fiction or
invention, arrived at by means of that form of the syllogism known as
the example. Here the enthymeme, or example, which Aristotle has made
the instrument of rhetoric, becomes the instrument of poetry.
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