Shadi Bartsch
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780226241845
- eISBN:
- 9780226241982
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226241982.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Persius’ Satires have long resisted interpretation. A curious amalgam of satire and philosophy, they are couched in bizarre and violent metaphorical language and unpleasant imagery. They show little ...
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Persius’ Satires have long resisted interpretation. A curious amalgam of satire and philosophy, they are couched in bizarre and violent metaphorical language and unpleasant imagery. They show little concern for the pleasure and understanding of the reader, instead attacking all humans for falling short of Stoic moral standards and depicting their values and behaviour in mocking terms. This short study investigates the function of Persius’ primary metaphors, showing how he turns to digestion, cannibalism, and pederasty to formulate his critique of men, mores, and contemporary poetry as part of the same corrupt framework. Developing elements taken from the poetic tradition and from philosophy, he opposes his own metaphors to those that give pleasure, casting the latter, and the poetry that uses them, as unable to teach or heal the audience. It is only Persius’ own poetry, a bitter and boiled-down brew, that can make us healthier, better and more Stoic, as if it were a form of poetic medicine, a healing draught with no honey on the rim. Ultimately, however, Persius encourages us to leave behind the world of metaphor altogether, even if his metaphors are salutary and not pleasing; instead, we should concentrate on the non-emotive abstract truths of Stoic philosophy and live in a world where neither poetry, nor rich food, nor sexual charm, are put to use in the service of philosophical teaching.Less
Persius’ Satires have long resisted interpretation. A curious amalgam of satire and philosophy, they are couched in bizarre and violent metaphorical language and unpleasant imagery. They show little concern for the pleasure and understanding of the reader, instead attacking all humans for falling short of Stoic moral standards and depicting their values and behaviour in mocking terms. This short study investigates the function of Persius’ primary metaphors, showing how he turns to digestion, cannibalism, and pederasty to formulate his critique of men, mores, and contemporary poetry as part of the same corrupt framework. Developing elements taken from the poetic tradition and from philosophy, he opposes his own metaphors to those that give pleasure, casting the latter, and the poetry that uses them, as unable to teach or heal the audience. It is only Persius’ own poetry, a bitter and boiled-down brew, that can make us healthier, better and more Stoic, as if it were a form of poetic medicine, a healing draught with no honey on the rim. Ultimately, however, Persius encourages us to leave behind the world of metaphor altogether, even if his metaphors are salutary and not pleasing; instead, we should concentrate on the non-emotive abstract truths of Stoic philosophy and live in a world where neither poetry, nor rich food, nor sexual charm, are put to use in the service of philosophical teaching.
Shadi Bartsch
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780226241845
- eISBN:
- 9780226241982
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226241982.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Persius plays off the Ars Poetica of Horace, his predecessor in satire, by changing Horace’s condemnation of the badly integrated poetic corpus into a literal description of bad poetry as mutilated ...
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Persius plays off the Ars Poetica of Horace, his predecessor in satire, by changing Horace’s condemnation of the badly integrated poetic corpus into a literal description of bad poetry as mutilated bodies. Further metaphorical sleight of hand allows him to suggest that reading or reciting bad poetry (these mutilated bodies) is akin to a form of cannibalism, especially if one is “eating” the literary tradition only to “vomit it up” in a derivative form. Persius manipulates the central metaphor of digestion here to link medical injunctions against culinary missteps to the idea that listening to unhealthy forms of verse might be equally bad for one’s health. The meatiness and omophagia that are made to characterize certain poetic forms recall the meat-eating feasts of epic, a genre Persius abjures; likewise, the notion of the poet as a hungry belly is made to problematize all poetic efforts that seek profit the praise of an audience. The etymology of the word “satura” may have been “a plate of rich food,” but Persius goes against the grain in claiming that his own writing is precisely the opposite of such gastropoetic excess.Less
Persius plays off the Ars Poetica of Horace, his predecessor in satire, by changing Horace’s condemnation of the badly integrated poetic corpus into a literal description of bad poetry as mutilated bodies. Further metaphorical sleight of hand allows him to suggest that reading or reciting bad poetry (these mutilated bodies) is akin to a form of cannibalism, especially if one is “eating” the literary tradition only to “vomit it up” in a derivative form. Persius manipulates the central metaphor of digestion here to link medical injunctions against culinary missteps to the idea that listening to unhealthy forms of verse might be equally bad for one’s health. The meatiness and omophagia that are made to characterize certain poetic forms recall the meat-eating feasts of epic, a genre Persius abjures; likewise, the notion of the poet as a hungry belly is made to problematize all poetic efforts that seek profit the praise of an audience. The etymology of the word “satura” may have been “a plate of rich food,” but Persius goes against the grain in claiming that his own writing is precisely the opposite of such gastropoetic excess.
Michèle Lowrie
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199545674
- eISBN:
- 9780191719950
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199545674.003.0009
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Horace's literary epistles, contrary to their own written medium, are fascinated with performance. It is not just that the Ars Poetica is a didactic poem on how to write tragedy and Epistles 2.1 ...
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Horace's literary epistles, contrary to their own written medium, are fascinated with performance. It is not just that the Ars Poetica is a didactic poem on how to write tragedy and Epistles 2.1 focuses mostly on drama in its literary history. Horace is interested in the function of the poet in society. He claims a plenitude for choral lyric and for the archaic poet's role as a founder that is lacking for himself. Although he had already composed the Carmen saeculare by the time of the epistle, he does not line up his own epistolary oeuvre with such plenitude and rather presents the library as a place of refuge for a poet who does not want to be subject to the whims of an audience.Less
Horace's literary epistles, contrary to their own written medium, are fascinated with performance. It is not just that the Ars Poetica is a didactic poem on how to write tragedy and Epistles 2.1 focuses mostly on drama in its literary history. Horace is interested in the function of the poet in society. He claims a plenitude for choral lyric and for the archaic poet's role as a founder that is lacking for himself. Although he had already composed the Carmen saeculare by the time of the epistle, he does not line up his own epistolary oeuvre with such plenitude and rather presents the library as a place of refuge for a poet who does not want to be subject to the whims of an audience.
Edward Paleit
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199602988
- eISBN:
- 9780191744761
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199602988.003.0003
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, British and Irish History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter discusses how the reception of Aristotle’s Poetics, particularly in early sixteenth-century Italy, revived ancient concerns over Lucan’s generic status, and shows how the friction ...
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This chapter discusses how the reception of Aristotle’s Poetics, particularly in early sixteenth-century Italy, revived ancient concerns over Lucan’s generic status, and shows how the friction between the categories of ‘poetry’ and ‘history’ - however confusingly defined and understood - continued to affect English responses to the Bellum Ciuile until well into mid-seventeenth century England. Among other engagements it examines in detail the role of the poetry-history debate over Lucan in relation to Samuel Daniel’s complex and unfinished verse history The Civil Wars (ca. 1595 – 1609), Thomas Farnaby’s commentary on Lucan of 1618, and Thomas May’s responses to Lucan of the late 1620s.Less
This chapter discusses how the reception of Aristotle’s Poetics, particularly in early sixteenth-century Italy, revived ancient concerns over Lucan’s generic status, and shows how the friction between the categories of ‘poetry’ and ‘history’ - however confusingly defined and understood - continued to affect English responses to the Bellum Ciuile until well into mid-seventeenth century England. Among other engagements it examines in detail the role of the poetry-history debate over Lucan in relation to Samuel Daniel’s complex and unfinished verse history The Civil Wars (ca. 1595 – 1609), Thomas Farnaby’s commentary on Lucan of 1618, and Thomas May’s responses to Lucan of the late 1620s.
Christopher V. Trinacty
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199356560
- eISBN:
- 9780199356584
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199356560.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter addresses Senecan poetics more broadly. The analysis of intertexts from Vergil’s Georgics and Horace’s Ars Poetica shows how Seneca bases his poetics on the reception of precepts from ...
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This chapter addresses Senecan poetics more broadly. The analysis of intertexts from Vergil’s Georgics and Horace’s Ars Poetica shows how Seneca bases his poetics on the reception of precepts from the Augustan poets. Latin poets practice what they preach, often incorporating metapoetic reflection in their work. Seneca is no different, and sections from the Agamemnon (Cassandra’s speeches) and Oedipus (necromancy) offer paradigmatic moments of “writing” and “reading” in Senecan tragedy.Less
This chapter addresses Senecan poetics more broadly. The analysis of intertexts from Vergil’s Georgics and Horace’s Ars Poetica shows how Seneca bases his poetics on the reception of precepts from the Augustan poets. Latin poets practice what they preach, often incorporating metapoetic reflection in their work. Seneca is no different, and sections from the Agamemnon (Cassandra’s speeches) and Oedipus (necromancy) offer paradigmatic moments of “writing” and “reading” in Senecan tragedy.
Victoria Rimell
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- December 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198814061
- eISBN:
- 9780191851711
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198814061.003.0007
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter’s new reading of Horace’s AP teases out how this text negotiates a delicate tension and balance between Horace’s own inferior social status and superior status as older expert, and the ...
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This chapter’s new reading of Horace’s AP teases out how this text negotiates a delicate tension and balance between Horace’s own inferior social status and superior status as older expert, and the superior social status and inferior age/expertise of the young Pisones for whom he writes. It traces how the text renders productive the challenges that result from these asymmetries by modelling and performing a mode of critical thinking centred on self-critique and self-reflection. Taking into account the dimension of class difference enables a new understanding of the AP’s emphasis on coherence and its obsession with tragedy, by pointing to the challenges contained and represented in the political microcosm of the theatre where—just as in Horace’s pedagogical encounter with the Pisones—shifting power relations among an unwieldy mix of members from different classes, all jointly engaged in the performance of art and art criticism, need to be carefully negotiated.Less
This chapter’s new reading of Horace’s AP teases out how this text negotiates a delicate tension and balance between Horace’s own inferior social status and superior status as older expert, and the superior social status and inferior age/expertise of the young Pisones for whom he writes. It traces how the text renders productive the challenges that result from these asymmetries by modelling and performing a mode of critical thinking centred on self-critique and self-reflection. Taking into account the dimension of class difference enables a new understanding of the AP’s emphasis on coherence and its obsession with tragedy, by pointing to the challenges contained and represented in the political microcosm of the theatre where—just as in Horace’s pedagogical encounter with the Pisones—shifting power relations among an unwieldy mix of members from different classes, all jointly engaged in the performance of art and art criticism, need to be carefully negotiated.
Srikanth Reddy
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199791026
- eISBN:
- 9780199950287
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199791026.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter examines the place of digression in Modernist debates surrounding the theory of aesthetics in relation to American political culture. Wallace Stevens adopts digression as a governing ...
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This chapter examines the place of digression in Modernist debates surrounding the theory of aesthetics in relation to American political culture. Wallace Stevens adopts digression as a governing trope of the ars poetica in order to undo the politically “purposeful” genres of polemic and manifesto which dominate aesthetic theory in the Modernist period. In this poem, Stevens frames theoretical ratiocination within a digressive logic “in which there seems / To be an evasion, a thing not apprehended or / Not apprehended well.” The question of evasion, raised within Stevens’ lifetime through the poet’s dispute with the Marxist critic Stanley Burnshaw, marks an encounter between aestheticism and the politics of purpose in American intellectual culture of the period. At once raising and deconstructing the idea of purpose, the digressive ars poetica serves as the stage upon which Stevens mobilizes Kant’s aesthetic theory to underwrite poetic form in the Modernist lyric.Less
This chapter examines the place of digression in Modernist debates surrounding the theory of aesthetics in relation to American political culture. Wallace Stevens adopts digression as a governing trope of the ars poetica in order to undo the politically “purposeful” genres of polemic and manifesto which dominate aesthetic theory in the Modernist period. In this poem, Stevens frames theoretical ratiocination within a digressive logic “in which there seems / To be an evasion, a thing not apprehended or / Not apprehended well.” The question of evasion, raised within Stevens’ lifetime through the poet’s dispute with the Marxist critic Stanley Burnshaw, marks an encounter between aestheticism and the politics of purpose in American intellectual culture of the period. At once raising and deconstructing the idea of purpose, the digressive ars poetica serves as the stage upon which Stevens mobilizes Kant’s aesthetic theory to underwrite poetic form in the Modernist lyric.
Elliot R. Wolfson
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823224180
- eISBN:
- 9780823235377
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823224180.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter explores the veil of poetic imagination formed within the Jewish esoteric tradition known as “kabbalah”. The semantic range of the term encompasses practice and ...
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This chapter explores the veil of poetic imagination formed within the Jewish esoteric tradition known as “kabbalah”. The semantic range of the term encompasses practice and theory, in Western philosophical jargon, or in rabbinic locution, ma'aseh and Talmud, a way of doing and a way of thinking. It also discusses Ars Poetica and how the “poetic function” of language (for traditional kabbalists) deepens the fundamental dichotomy of signs and objects.Less
This chapter explores the veil of poetic imagination formed within the Jewish esoteric tradition known as “kabbalah”. The semantic range of the term encompasses practice and theory, in Western philosophical jargon, or in rabbinic locution, ma'aseh and Talmud, a way of doing and a way of thinking. It also discusses Ars Poetica and how the “poetic function” of language (for traditional kabbalists) deepens the fundamental dichotomy of signs and objects.
Adelene Buckland
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226079684
- eISBN:
- 9780226923635
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226923635.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Richard Owen's entry into the Geological Society of London sparked an interest and excitement in him. His wife, Caroline, wrote in her journal about Owen's witnessing interest of leading geologists ...
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Richard Owen's entry into the Geological Society of London sparked an interest and excitement in him. His wife, Caroline, wrote in her journal about Owen's witnessing interest of leading geologists in the game of “high jinks” as immortalized in Sir Walter Scott's Guy Mannering. The significance of this game to these men of science shows a connection between the literary culture of the nineteenth-century men of science and how it influenced the creation of new knowledge. John Playfair, professor of natural history, rewrote James Hutton's Theory of the Earth—which was the dominating thought at the time. Playfair's conception of the earth shares common process and construction with the inner workings of a poem—as is shown in Horace's Ars Poetica. This fictionalizing aspect of literary form in scientific arrangements would prove critical in the Geological Society's rejection of cosmogony and cosmology, giving literature a place in the science of geology.Less
Richard Owen's entry into the Geological Society of London sparked an interest and excitement in him. His wife, Caroline, wrote in her journal about Owen's witnessing interest of leading geologists in the game of “high jinks” as immortalized in Sir Walter Scott's Guy Mannering. The significance of this game to these men of science shows a connection between the literary culture of the nineteenth-century men of science and how it influenced the creation of new knowledge. John Playfair, professor of natural history, rewrote James Hutton's Theory of the Earth—which was the dominating thought at the time. Playfair's conception of the earth shares common process and construction with the inner workings of a poem—as is shown in Horace's Ars Poetica. This fictionalizing aspect of literary form in scientific arrangements would prove critical in the Geological Society's rejection of cosmogony and cosmology, giving literature a place in the science of geology.
