MLLL 4063 / 5063 2008:
Early Literary Criticism
(U of Oklahoma, Fall 2008)

Prof. A. Robert Lauer

Notes for the course based on
Adams, Hazard & Leroy Searle, eds. Critical Theory since Plato.  3rd. ed.  Australia; [Boston, Mass.] United States: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2005.  ISBN: 0155055046.

INTRODUCTION:

• The Early Period: From Plato (400s bC) to 1870. 
• The main themes in the history of Western civilization from Plato to Kant.
• The vigorous and dynamic quality of imaginative thinking.
• The history of literary criticism and theory has always been intertwined with that of philosophy.
• The relation of rhetorical theory to poetics (for the first time).
• Chronological, not topical, ordering.

The history of Western criticism begins with a quarrel over the word imitatio (mimesis).

The history of philosophy and of literary thought can be divided into four major phases:

1. The Ontological (spans 2000 years: Plato-Renaissance: 400s bC-16th Cen): addresses the nature of Being (for Plato, Being’s location is in the eternal ideas of forms) and verisimilitude.
2. The Epsitemological (spans 300 years: Descartes, Locke: 17th. Cen.-20th Cen): addresses the question of knowing (what and how we know), obviously a prior question to that of Being.  René Descartes: cogito ergo sum; Francis Bacon’s experimentalism; John Locke’s empiricism: secondary (subjective) experiences and primary (objective) qualities of experiences (ascertainable and real through measurement). Knowledge became identical with the results of the scientific method.  Immanuel Kant’s “subjective universality” in his theory of aesthetics.
3. The Linguistic (spans 200 years: late 19th Cen.-1960s): Man is a linguistic or symbol-making animal (and literature is composed of language [and rhetoric helps one to employ language for specific ends or effects]).  Can what we call knowing occur apart from language or other symbols like mathematics? Language plays a role in the way reality appears to us.  No longer did language imitate some prior entity or idea; language makes those entities or at least establishes the limits within which these entities exist for us.  Thinkers like Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques Derrida have studied language as a system or structure.  Deconstruction is a critique of the structuralist position (wherein what matters is not substance but sets of pure relations among things; these relations or the “difference” between things became real, not the things themselves.  Language was merely a system of differences, each linguistic unit definable in terms of its difference from all the other units in the system, not in terms of its relation to an object beyond it) by alleging there is no “center” or grounding point on which to anchor thought; hence, meaning has no origin.  Meaning is an infinite regression and interpretation, a philosophical impossibility, and which produced irresolvable contradictions or aporias.  Deconstruction was the culmination in theory of the Linguistic mode.
4. The Phase of Political Moralism (since the 1960s): the phase of political and cultural critique.  A Marxist-derived social criticism.  Critiques of colonialism and racism.  Feminism and queer theory: gender theories.  Grounded on a certain set of moral principles connected with theories of power; set to bring about social change.  Here, literary texts are studied almost exclusively as documents for social analysis.

PLATO (c. 427-c. 347 BC):

He was a student of Socrates and founder of the Academy in Athens.  He is the major figure in the history of Western philosophy.  He is the earliest of thinkers to discuss poetry at length.  He writes dialogues in dramatic form.  He bequeaths to literary criticism the theory of imitation or mimesis, dominant in literary criticism until well into the 18th century.  Plato has Socrates locate reality in what he calls the ideas or forms rather than in the world of appearances or phenomena experienced through the senses.  Objects we perceive are merely copies of their ideas.  It is only by means of our rational power exercised in dialectical search than can advance us toward truth.  In the Phaedrus he states there is the divine madness of the poet, who becomes inspired when he imitates appearances (thusly being twice removed from reality).  The poet is to be exiled from the Republic, although he can redeem himself by singing the praises of the gods and famous statesmen.  Rhetoricians and sophists are sinister creatures because they deliberately delude and gain illicit power over their listeners.

Besides imitation (as connected with the theory of forms), imitation in a technical sense is in the Republic (composed in 373 BC):

1. A “pure imitative form” (as in drama), where the poet has others speak; 
2. Pure narrative (where the poet speaks always in his own voice); and 
3. A mixture of the two (as in epic).

1. Icastic (an imitation with the aim of making a likeness) and
2. Phantastic (an imitation of imagined things or the making of mere appearances).

Plato is the founder of moralistic and didactic criticism.  He separates content from form, privileging content.

The Cratylus (from Plato’s Middle Period) treats the elusiveness of language. 

ION (390 BC, an early dialogue): Socrates and Ion (dialogists). 
     Socrates assumes Ion, as a rhapsode, knows Homer’s works well and, hence, is able to interpret him.  But Ion claims he only knows Homer well, not others.  Socrates claims Ion knows Homer’s works without art or knowledge then, for as a rhapsode he would know the rules of art.  Ion says he loves to hear wise men talk (11).  Socrates says poets are wise; men like Socrates only speak the truth.  Socrates says Ion is divinely inspired; he lacks art.  The Muse inspires men.  Good poets compose not by art but by divine inspiration and possession.  Poets are not in their right minds when they compose.  There is no invention in poets until they are divinely inspired.  If Ion could speak about all poets then he would have learned art by rules, but since he only claims to know Homer he must be divinely inspired.  God (like Bacchus) uses him as he would a diviner or prophet.  Socrates says that the spectator is the last of the rings which receive the power of the original magnet from one another (12). The rhapsode and the actor are intermediate links.  The poet is the first of them (the birth of reception theory).  Socrates says that he who has no knowledge of a particular art will have no judgment of the sayings and doings of that art (hence, a carpenter, a general, a charioteer, a medic, would know Homer’s art better than the rhapsode).  Socrates calls Ion a deceiver (15) for claiming he knows Homer’s works.  He is like Proteus and takes many shapes.  He has no knowledge.  He is only a simulacrum (Baudrillard).  Either he is dishonest or divinely inspired.  Ion chooses the latter.

REPUBLIC (373 BC):  A disquisition on justice, which is either a) what is to the advantage of the powerful [Thrasymachus] or b) [Socrates] related to the good, and the ideal statem the Republic.
     BOOK TWO: Socrates & Adeimantus:  A disquisition on the education of the heroes: 1) gymnastics for the body and 2) music (poetry/literature) for the soul.  Literature (for children) must be good, not bad.  Therefore, censors should accept the former and reject the latter (16).  There are two types of lie: 1) the good lie (on behalf of the preservation of the state [apology of propaganda]) and 2) the bad lie (which constitutes an erroneous representation of the nature of gods and heroes).  Stories of pity and lamentation, of quarrels, or of the nasty doings of the gods, should be excised or passed over in silence.  Even if we attribute an allegorical meaning to them (17), they should not be admitted into the State, for a young person cannot judge what is allegorical and what is literal.  The tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts (17). 
     God is always to be represented as he truly is (truly good).  Evil should not be attributed to God (17).  God cannot change (he cannot take other forms).  Mothers should not tell scary stories to children, for fear of making them into cowards (19).  A good lie is a form of medicine (19), not harmful but healthy.  The superhuman and divine is absolutely incapable of falsehood.  God is perfectly simple and good in word and deed.  He does not deceive by sign, word, dream, or vision (19).  The gods are not magicians who deceive mankind by transforming themselves.  The teachers and guardians of the young must be true worshippers of the gods themselves (they must be moral themselves) [20].
     BOOK THREE:  Socrates, Adeimantus, Glaucon:  Such (above) are the principles of theology: some tales are to be told, others not, so that youth honor the gods and their parents.
     Also, the tales about the miseries of the dead must be expunged so that soldiers will not fear death and would choose death in battle rather than defeat and slavery.  These stories must be excised not because they are unpoetic or unattractive but because the more poetic and charming they are the less they are meant to be for young boys and men who are raised to be free rather than slaves.  They should not fear death.  It’s not that those passages don’t have a use of some kind, but there is the danger that the nerves of the guardians would be rendered too excitable and effeminate by them.   The weeping and wailing of famous men should also be excised, for the good man will not consider death terrible.  This stuff is meant for (some) women and baser men.
     Men should be raised to feel shame and self-control (22); they should not whine and lament.  Guardians should not laugh excessively either.  Nor should the gods be shown as capable of great laughter.  Truth should be highly valued instead.  Only the guardians of the state should have the privilege of lying for the sake of the public good.   Youths should be temperate, that is, obey their commanders and exercise self-control in sensual pleasures (22).  Youth should hear tales of endurance by famous men.   They should not be raised to be receivers of gifts or have them love money (23).  Hero worship (24).  Tales of cowardice or vice engender laxity of morals.  Poets must not tell youth that the wicked are happy and the good miserable, or that injustice is profitable when undetected (socialist realism?). 
     The above constituted the subject (content) of poetry.  Now the style (24).  All mythology and poetry is a narration of events, either past, present, or future.  There is simply narration (drama) or a union of the two (epic).  When the poet is the only speaker, that is the dithyramb.  The combination of both (the poet speaks, then the characters) is the epic (25).  Should tragedy and comedy be admitted in the state?  Youth should imitate early on only those characters who are courageous, temperate, holy, and free; they should avoid illiberality or baseness, for fear they would become that way, for imitation grows into habits and become a second nature, affecting body, voice, and mind (a theory of education and morality here) [26].  Good men should not imitate women or sickness, love, or labor.  They should not represent slaves, male or female.  They should not represent bad men, or cowards, or the mad, or the bad.  They should not imitate artificers or other workers.  They should not imitate the neighing of horses, the barking of dogs, or other animals.  They should not copy the actions or speech of madmen.  He should use the same style and keep within the limits of a single harmony and make use of nearly the same rhythm (26). 
     Music (27) has three parts: words, melody, and rhythm.  Notes of sorrow should be elided and not allowed to the youth, even to women of character.  Sensuous harmonies, and ones suggesting softness, drunkenness, and indolence, are unbecoming of our guardians.  Military music is fine (27).  Simple (harp, lyre = Apollo) music; no flutes (Marsyas).  Keep melody simple.  Rhythms should be simple and suggest courage and harmony; adapt the music to words of the same spirit (not the words to the melody) [Wagner’s music].  Eliminate rhythms expressive of meanness, insolence, fury, or other unworthiness.  Good rhythm and harmony are regulated by the words (not the words by them).  Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity (28).  [The beautiful for Socrates is what is mathematically proportionate].  Ugliness and discord and inharmonious motion are allied to ill words and ill nature, as grace and harmony are the twin sisters of goodness and virtue (29). 
     The above rules affect other arts like architecture and sculpture.  Mora deformity should be excised.  It corrupts.  Our youth should dwell in the land of health, amid fair sights and sounds, and receive the good in everything, and beauty, that should flow into the eye and ear, and draw the soul into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of reason.  Musical training is essential, for it imparts grace and predisposes the soul to the good and the beautiful.  Youth must learn to hate the bad (the ugly, the infirm) early on.  A musical education is essential (29).
     BOOK X: Socrates, Glaucon: The rule about poetry (30).  Theory of imitation (what things have in common with an innate idea).  Artificers do not make ideas; they copy them.  There are three objects of imitation (a bed): the idea of bed made by God, the work of a carpenter, and the work of a painter (a semblance of existence).  God made one real (not particular) bed in nature out of choice or necessity.  The artifice makes a particular bed.  The painter makes a semblance only.  The artist (poet) is therefore thrice removed from the truth.  The poet cannot compose well unless he knows his subject.  He deals with appearances only and not realities (31).  The poet is like a painter: he can only copy images of virtue but can never reach the truth. 
     There are three arts concerned with all things: a) one which uses, b) one which makes, and c) one which imitates.  Imitation is only a kind of play or sport.  The poet does not appeal to reason but to the senses and passions (what is easily imitated) [35].  His creations have an inferior degree of truth.  He impairs reason (trompe l’oeil).  It stirs the emotions instead of controlling them.  Poetry feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up.  Homer is great but we should only admit in the state hymns to the gods and praises of famous men.  Law and reason must reign, not pleasure and pain (35).  We are aware of poetry charms, but we should not betray truth (36).  Poetry has no use, only delight.  Justice and virtue might suffer on account of the delight of poetry. 

PHAEDRUS: Socrates and Phaedrus.  There are two types of madness: 1) One produced by human infirmity and 2) A divine release of the soul from yoke of custom and convention: a) prophetic (inspired by Apollo), b) initiatory (Dionysus), c) poetic (the Muses), and d) erotic (Aphrodite and Venus), the best kind of madness (36).  Poetic madness gives not truth but the semblance of truth (37).  Writing is like painting.  Once something is painted or written, it remains silent. 

SOPHIST: Theaetetus & Socrates.  The sophist (rhetorician) has a sort of conjectural or apparent knowledge only of all things, which is not the truth (38).  He is a magician and mimic (39).  There are two divisions to the imitative art: 1) the icastic (the art of likeness-making) and 2) the phantastic (the art of making things that do not exist).  Phantastic art produces an appearance and not an image (i.e., a statue that is placed atop a building and must be designed disproportionately to be seen proportionately by those below).  Neither of them has being, though.

PHILEBUS: Protarchus, Philebus, Socrates. 

CRATYLUS: Socrates, Hermogenes, Cratylus. Does the correct name indicate the nature of the thing?  Names are given in order to instruct.  Naming is an art.  The legislators make the names (41).  The right assignment of names is truth; the wrong assignment, falsehood (42).  But is there a right or wrong assignment of verbs and sentences?  Do appropriate letters and syllables produce a god image, a name?  Would the subtraction or addition of letters or syllables make up a good or bad name?  Is the legislator, like other artists, then good and bad?  Can one name be correctly and another incorrectly given?  But if so, shouldn’t names correspond to the objects represented by them?    Maybe only the general character of the thing described should be retained?  So the, a name is not the expression of a thing in letters or syllables?  Is a name a representation of a thing?  Are nouns primitive or derived?  Are primitive nouns first nouns and representations of things?  Is Hermogenes correct when he says that names are conventional and have no meaning to those who have agreed about them?  Is convention the only principle? (43). Is representation by likeness sufficient?  Do some words express motion, hardness, smoothness, softness, and the like (onomatopoeia).  Do we understand words by custom only?  Is custom convention?  So then the correctness of a name turns out to be merely a convention (i.e., not truth)? [44].   Is the signification of words given by custom and not by likeness?  Custom and convention are supposed to contribute to the indication of our thoughts?  It would be wonderful to use likeness to justify the appropriateness of language, but it seems custom rules [44].  The first legislator named things according to his conception of things.  But could he have been wrong in his conception of things? (Ontological crisis here).  Custom could then be based on an error (not truth).  All things seem to be in motion (Heraclitus).  If not static, how can word define them? (i.e., words must change too).  The first givers of names had to have been legislators.  Did they know the things that they named? (a computer mouse) [45]. Are things to be known by names only? (46). Were there legislators before names?  A power more than human must have given things their first name (God?).  But can the gods contradict themselves and give erroneous names?  How could things be known without names?  [Derrida: there is no source or origin, only infinite regress and “difference”] {46}. Socrates claims real existence is beyond comprehension (beyond the dialectical method, beyond ontology).  The knowledge of things is not to be derived from names.  But then, can there be any absolute beauty or good?  Especially if things are in flux?  How can a real thing be in s state of transition?  If everything is in a state of flux, can there be real knowledge?  Socrates asks Cratylus to think like a man and when he has found the truth to come back to tell it to him.

ARISTOTLE (384-322 B.C):
     Aristotle was a student of Plato’s during Philip II of Macedon’s reign (Philip was the father of Alexander the Great), founder of the Lyceum (or Peripatetic School [Aristotle walked while he taught] of philosophy).  Aristotle’s Poetics is the most influential treatise on poetry in the Western world.  It was lost and became available again to Europe during the Renaissance.  His Poetics is a treatise on the art of making (while his Rhetoric is a practical art).  Aristotle differs with Plato with respect to the latter’s theory of (immutable) forms.  He denies the being of ideas apart from things.  Things have a purpose (telos) in an ever changing universe.  Reality is the process in which a form is manifested from matter by nature.  The poet is an imitator and maker.  In imitation the poet discovers the ultimate form of an action.  Literary art is an improvement on nature, for the poet brings about to completion what nature, operating with its own principles, is still developing.

PHYSICS: Book 2, Chapter 8:
     Nature acts for the sake of something (it has a purpose).  The same is true with the parts of nature (our teeth come out of necessity, etc.).  Art completes what nature cannot bring to a finish and partly imitates her.  Artificial and natural products are for the sake of an end.  Nature means two things: 1) the matter and 2) the form; the form is the end of matter.  The form, therefore, must be the cause.  When an event takes place, it is not incidental or by chance.  Purpose is always present in art or nature, even if we do not observe it.

METAPHYSICS: Book A (1), Chapters 1-2:
     All men by nature desire to know.  We delight in what we take in with our senses, especially sight.  By nature animals are born with the faculty of sensation, and from sensation memory is produced.  Animals live by appearances and memories, but man also by art and reasoning.  Memory produces experience.  Science and art come to men through experience.  Experience made art (inexperience luck).  Art arises when from many notions gained by experience one universal judgment about a class of objects is produced.  Experience is knowledge of individuals, art of universals.  Artists can teach (because they have theory and know the why of things), while men of experience cannot (they know the know-how, but not the why).  When at leisure, man produces knowledge (especially not of a useful kind [theoretical knowledge, not practical]).  Wisdom deals with first causes and the principles of things.

POETICS (330 BC):
     The 1) means, the 2) difference in the objects, and the 3) manner of their imitation (of epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry, and other modes of imitation).  The means are rhythm, language, and harmony.  The objects the imitator represents are actions, with agents who are either good or bad.  Manner, as when one narrates or dramatizes.
     Drama comes from “dran” (to act), comae is hamlets (where first performed).
The origin of poetry: imitation is natural to man from childhood.  He is the most imitative creature in the world and learns first by imitation. It is also natural for all to delight in works of imitation.  We delight even in the painful and the grotesque because we learn something from it. To be learning something (gathering the meaning of things) is the greatest of all pleasures.  Imitation, a sense of harmony, and rhythm, are natural to us. 
     Poetry broke into two kinds: Tragedy (for the grave and noble) and Comedy (for the mean and ignoble).  They began in improvisations (of dithyrambs for the former; phallic songs for the latter). Aeschylus increased the number of actors to two.  Sophocles added a third actor.  Tragedy requires magnitude, a tone of dignity, an iambic (not trochaic [associated with satyr plays and dancing]) meter, and a plurality of episodes or acts.
     Comedy deals with imitations of men worse than the average; the Ridiculous is a species of the Ugly [not productive of pain or harm], e.g., a mask, and, at one time, invective.
 Epic is narrative, action without a fixed limit of time.  Tragedy should keep as far as possible within a single circuit of the sun [alleged unity of time].
 Definition of Tragedy: A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious and has magnitude, complete in itself, in language with pleasurable accessories (with rhythm and harmony of song), in a dramatic (not narrative) form, with incidents arousing pity and fear, to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.
     Melody and Diction are the means.  The subject represented is an action, and the action requires agents (Character and Thought [what agents say]).  The action is represented in the play by the Fable or Plot.
     There are six parts to every tragedy: 1) Fable or Plot, 2) Characters, 3) Diction, 4) Thought, 5) Spectacle, and 6) Melody. 
     The most important element of the six is the incidents of the story (Plot).  Tragedy is an imitation not of persons but of action and life, of happiness and misery.  All human happiness or misery takes the form of action.  Character gives us qualities, but it is in our actions (in what we do) that we are happy.  The Fable or Plot is the end and purpose of the tragedy.  A tragedy is impossible without action.  The tragedies of most of the moderns are characterless.  The most powerful elements of attraction in Tragedy, the Peripeties (peripeteia) and Discoveries (anagnorisis), are parts of the Plot.  Characters come second (after Plot).  Third is Thought (the speeches, the province of Politics and Rhetoric).    Character in a play is that which reveals the moral purpose of the agents. The fourth element is the Diction (the expression of their thoughts in words).  The Melody is the greatest of the pleasurable accessories of Tragedy.  The Spectacle, though an attraction, is the least artistic (a matter for the customier).  “The tragic effect is quite possible without a public performance and actors” [apparently, for Aristotle, the play-text, not the performance-text, is what matters].
     A story or plot must be of some length but of a length to be taken in by the memory [alleged unity of action], a length which allows of the hero passing by a series of possible or necessary stages from misfortune to happiness, or from happiness to misfortune.
     The poet’s function is to describe not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen, i.e., what is possible as being probable or necessary.  That is the difference between a poet and a historian.  The historian describes the thing that has been, the poet a kind of thing that might be.  Hence, poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals whereas those of history are singulars.  By a universal statement is meant one as to what such or such a kind of man will probably or necessarily say or do.  Tragedy adheres to historic names, for what convinces is the possible.  Comedy uses common names. But one must not aim at a rigid adherence to the traditional stories of tragedy. 
     Plots may be simple or episodic.  The episodic are the worst (improbable and unnecessary).  Tragedy is an imitation of a complete action and of incidents arousing pity and fear.  When they occur unexpectedly and in conjunction, they are most effective (the marvelous [the appearance of a design and not merely of chance] is at work).  Plots are either simple of complex.  A plot is simple if it lacks a Peripety or a Discovery; complex if it involves one or the other or both.  A Peripety is a change from one state to its opposite.  A Discovery is a change from ignorance to knowledge.  The finest form of Discovery is one attended by Peripeties.  A Discovery with a Peripety will arouse pity and fear and it will serve to bring about the happy or unhappy ending.  The Plot, hence, consists of five parts: Peripety, Discovery, Suffering, Pity, and Fear.
     A Tragedy has the following parts:

1. Prologue: all that precedes the Parode (first statement) of the chorus.
2. Choral Portion: Parode (first statement of the chorus) & Stasimon (a song of the chorus).
3. Episode: all that comes in between two choral songs.
4. Choral Portion: Parode (first statement of the chorus) & Stasimon (a song of the chorus).
5. Exode: all that follows after the last choral song.
6. [Commos or lamentation exists only in some, not all, works]

1.  Complex Tragedy (with Peripety and Discovery [Oedipus]), 
2.  The Tragedy of Suffering [The Trojan Women], 
3.  The Tragedy of Character [Sophocles’Ajax?]. and 
4.  The Tragedy of Spectacle [one with scenes of the Netherworld].

RHETORIC:
     Book I: Rhetoric is the art of persuasion and may be divided into political (deliberative), forensic (legal), and epideictic (ceremonial).  Wondering implies the desire for learning, so that the object of wonder is an object of desire, while in learning one is brought into one’s natural condition.  Since learning and wondering are pleasant, acts of imitation must be pleasant, even if the object imitated is not itself pleasant; for it is not the object itself which here gives delight.  The spectator draws inferences and thus learns something fresh.  Dramatic turns of fortune and hairbreadth escapes from perils are pleasant, because we feel all such things are wonderful.  It is pleasant to complete what is defective, for the whole thing thereupon becomes our own work.  It is pleasant to be thought wise, for wisdom secures us power over others, and most of us are ambitious. Amusements and relaxation are pleasant activities, and ludicrous things.  Unpleasant things are the opposite of the pleasant. 
     Book III: In making a speech, one must study three points: 

1. the means of producing persuasion, 
2. the style or language to be used (clear and simple), and 
3. the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech (orderly). 

1. by working on the emotions of the judges, 
2. by giving them the right impression of the speakers’ character, and 
3. by proving the truth of the statements made.

MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO (106-43 BC): (Trajan)
     Cicero was a politician, an orator, and the greatest of Latin prose stylists in the Roman Golden Age (the Republican period).  Philosophically he was a Stoic (moderation in all things).  He supported Pompey (vs. Julius Caesar, Dictator Perpetuus of Rome) and was present at Julius Caesar’s assassination (in 44 BC).  Cicero was subsequently persecuted and assassinated by Marc Antony.  His important rhetorical works are: De Oratore (On the Orator) [55 BC], Brutus (46 BC), and Orator (46 BC).  For Cicero, the orator is a philosopher.   Cicero’s style was highly ornate, unlike that of the Attic group, who preferred plainness and lucidity.

BRUTUS (46 BC):
     The orator who is approved by the multitude must inevitably be approved by the expert.   An orator should effect three things: 

1.  instruct his listener, 
2.  give him pleasure, and 
3.  stir his emotions. 

QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS (HORACE) [65-8 BC]:
     Horace, son of a freedman, was a Roman poet during the period subsequent to Julius Caesar’s death.  He served in the army and was later amnestied by Augustus (first emperor of Rome).  He is famous for his Odes (ode 1.11 containes the famous line “carpe diem,” [“seize the day”]), epodes (his second epode contains the famous line “Beatus ille” [“Fortunate he . . .”]), and his letter in verse to the Piso family, the Ars poetica (Art of Poetry > Epistle to the Pisos).  Therein he explains that a poem is like a painting, “ut pictura poesis” (it may be viewed from many angles, as one does a painting) and should delight as well as instruct. 

ART OF POETRY (20 BC):
     A work of art should have 1) simplicity and 2) unity.  It should say only what is necessary and the material should be well arranged.  Foreign words should be used sparingly.  The form of poetry should be adjusted to the speaker.  Hence, kings should express themselves in dactylic hexameters (the heroic verse).  Verses of unequal length are good for elegies.  Anger should be expressed in iambs (although tragedy and comedy have adopted this meter, the iambic, for dialogue).  “Let each style keep the place to which it belongs.” [theory of decorum].  Thyestes’s banquet (of his sons) [Seneca’s Thyestes] cannot be expressed in ordinary language.  Comedy cannot be expressed tragically (i.e., by using dactylic hexameters).  Poems should be beautiful but also affecting.  If the words of a speaker are inappropriate to a situation, Romans of all classes (popular and aristocratic) will simply laugh.  Follow tradition (theory of imitation) or, if you invent, be consistent.  Present what is fitting to the various natures and ages.  Events are either acted upon the stage or narrated (styles: dramatic and epic).  Use a deus ex machina figure sparingly (only when strictly necessary).  Tragedy scorns any temptation to babble light verses.  Study the Greek masterpieces day and night (theory of imitation > as influence), but also draw experiences from life.  Wisdom is the source and fountain of all good writing.
     The aim of the poet is to 1) inform or 2) delight (dulce et utile) or to combine together pleasure and applicability to life.  When instructing, be brief in what you say so that your readers may grasp it quickly and retain it faithfully.  Fiction invented in order to please should remain close to reality.  Faults in a predominantly beautiful poem must be forgiven.  It’s a case of carelessness or human frailty. 
 Poetry is like a painting (ut pictura poesis) and pleases from the angle you view it.
 When you write something, show it to Maecius (a strict critic) first and then keep it in a closet for 9 years. 
 A praiseworthy poem is the product of Nature and conscious Art, for the value of study without native ability (or genius without training) is useless: they depend on each other.

STRABO (64-63 BC-after 21 AD):
     Strabo was born in Anatolia (Turkey), a province of the Roman Empire (Caesar Augustus reigned at that time).  He was a Stoic and a defender of Roman imperialism.  He studied geography and philosophy in Rome.  He traveled to Egypt and Ethiopia.  In Strabo’s Geography (Geographica) he contradicts Eratosthenes, who regarded poets merely as entertainers, by claiming poets were wise teachers.  Poetry delights and teaches.  Strabo sees Homer as an authority on geography, although not in all sciences necessarily.  Homer on purpose mixed fact with fiction to delight and instruct better.  Myths provide insight into the emotional nature of the reasoning animal.

GEOGRAPHY (7-20 AD):
     Eratostheness contends that the aim of every poet is to entertain, not to instruct.  The ancients assert, on the contrary, that poetry is a kind of elementary philosophy.  The wise man alone is a poet.  That is why in Greece children are educated by means of poetry from the beginning (for the sake of moral discipline, not for the sake of entertainment).  These studies discipline and correct the character.  Poets are disciplinarians in morality. 
     Homer was an expert in geography and other sciences, although he might not have been an expert in all things.  Rhetoric is wisdom applied to discourse.  In order to be a good poet one has to be a good man (and have life experiences). 
     Poetry is the source and origin of style (ornate, rhetorical style), for when poetry was recited it employed the assistance of song.  The fact that non-metrical discourse is termed “pedestrian” suggests its descent from a height to the ground.  Homer does not deal wholly in marvels, but for our instruction  he also uses allegory or revises myths.
Man is eager to learn, and his fondness for tales is a prelude to this quality.  Fondness for tales grabs our attention.  Myth is a new language that tells one of things not as they are but of a different set of things.  And what is new is pleasing, and so is what one did not know before.  This is what makes men eager to learn.  If you then add the marvelous and the portentous, you increase the pleasure, and pleasure acts like a charm to incite to learning.  Philosophy is for the few, but poetry is more useful to the people at large and can draw full houses.

PUBLIUS CORNELIUS TACITUS (c. AD 55-c. 117):
     Tacitus was born in Gallia Narborensis or Hispania and was probably of aristocratic descent.  He is one of the most important historians of the Roman Silver Age.  He is known for his Annals (the history of Rome from the death of Augustus to that of Nero: 14-68 AD), his Histories (from the death of Nero to the death of Domitian: 68-96 AD), and his Germania.  He also composed a Dialogue on Oratory (De oratoribus) [c. 77-100 AD], where he defends poetry and the older rhetoric.

DIALOGUE ON ORATORY (c. AD 77-100):
     Aper dialogues with Maternus and states that there is something sacred and august about every department of literary expression.  However, Aper wants Maternus to leave the lecture-hall and get to the forum and “to the real contests of actions-at-law” (concern for utility.  Maternus replies that he owes his fame to his poetry, not his speeches (poetry, not rhetoric: the superfluous arts, not the useful ones).  He prefers peace, bliss, the quiet life, seclusion, serenity, the groves, and the woods of the poet; not the bustle of the city, numerous clients, accused persons waiting in line, shabbily dressed and with tearful faces, and the unrest, fear, and anxiety of the orator’s (rhetor’s) career.  Poetry is the language of the oracles; rhetoric the product of a depraved condition of society.  The Golden Age knew nothing of accusations or accusers.  He prefers to praise those who do well (a poetic activity) than to defend evil-doers (the province of forensic rhetoric) [Cf. Horace’s “Beatus ille . . .” & Kant’s purposelessness of art].

PSEUDO-LONGINUS (First Century AD):
     The author of On the Sublime (Peri hupsos) is unknown; however, it was long attributed to Dionysius Cassius Longinus, a third century AD Greek philosopher.  “Pseudo-Longinus” poses the issue of how poetic inspiration is best expressed.  He uses the rhetorical devices, but not for gain (to persuade) but demonstrate how the sublime is reached in expression, in part by intuition, in part by imitation and emulation of great writers (theory of imitation, as influence).  The sublime has the power to transport us.  Five elements help to create elevated language, the first two being innate (poetic, inspired), the last three acquired (artistic, rhetorical, studied, imitated): 

1. The innate power of the author to form great conceptions, 
2. Vehemence and inspired passion, 
3. The due formation of figures, 
4. Noble diction, and 
5. Dignified and elevated composition.  Truth and the real are to be preferred to the fabulous.  Grandeur with some faults is preferable to moderate, correct success.  The “sublime” was a hit in the 18th century (Addison, Kant, Burke, Schopenhauer), with its interest on the effects of nature and art on the perceiving mind (an early form of Rezeptionaesthetik).  For Pseudo-Longinus, sublimity is in the author and his expression.

1. A Statement of the subject and 
2. A Methodology to attain one’s ends. 

1. The power of forming Great Conceptions (innate), 
2. Vehement and Inspired Passion (innate), 
3. The due formation of Figures of thought and expression (artistic), 
4. Noble Diction (choice of words, use of metaphors, elaboration of language) [artistic], and 
5. A dignified and elevated Composition (artistic). 

PLUTARCH (c. AD 46-c.120):
     Plutarch’s most famous work is his Parallel Lives, in which he compares the lives of the noble Greeks and Romans.  His Moralia is a collection of 78 essays that deal with education, ethics, metaphysics, and philosophy.  He admired Plato and was influenced by Aristotle.  He attacked the Epicureans [hedonists] and the Stoics [impassive people].  For Plutarch, poetry, which contains the good and the bad, is part of a youth’s ethical training and a good preparation for future philosophical studies. Youths should discern the good from the bad and not be gullible.  Plutarch distinguishes between imitating something beautiful (or ugly) and imitating something beautifully (Formalism).

MORALIA: “How the Young Man Should Study Poetry”:
In the art of poetry there is much that is pleasant and nourishing for the mind of a youth, and much that is disturbing and misleading.  Their judgment should be guarded so that they are not carried away by pleasure.  Philosophy should be introduced and blended with poetry (e.g., myths and fables).  Learning will then be light and agreeable for the young.  Hence, poetry should not be avoided by those intending to pursue philosophy.  Poetry should serve as an introductory exercise in philosophy.  Poetry that contains nothing profitable should be combated.  Poets tell many lies intentionally to give pleasure and gratify the ear.  It shuns truth if it is disagreeable or painful.  But truth does not deviate from its course (i.e., it does not hide its painful aspects by means of pretty language).  The art of poetry is not concerned with the truth.  A youth must distinguish between the subject of imitation (content) and the way it is imitated (form).  When poetic art is divorced from truth, it employs variety and diversity.  One should cherish the belief that poetry is an imitation of character and lives, and of men who are not perfect or spotless, but who change their ways to the better.  One must not admire anything (one reads); otherwise one would become gullible.  The combination of philosophical content in artistic form can train a youth to later accept harsh philosophical truth without fear or suspicion.  They will be less confused and disquieted upon hearing at the lectures of the philosophers that “Death is nothing to us.” “The young man has need of good pilotage in the manner of reading.”  Familiarity with philosophical themes at an early age will prepare him to deal with philosophy at a later age [cf. old and modern cartoons or fairy tales]. 

FLAVIUS PHILOSTRATUS (c. 170-c. 245):
     Philostratus came from the island of Lemnos (near Athens), entered the Syrian court presided then by Empress Julia Domna [wife of Roman emperor Septimius Severus], and later lived in Athens, where he composed the Lives of the Sophists (230-238).  He held Roman citizenship.  Sophists were influential as educators.  Philosophers seek knowledge (arrived at dialectically); Sophists proceed from assumed knowledge and, in the “Second Sophistic” period use rhetoric, oratory, and improvisation to deal with any topic (not just philosophical topics, the province of the older rhetors).  In his Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Philostratus suggests that the mind of someone looking at an object produces an imitation.  Hence, any theory of art must take into consideration the activity of the beholder (Reception Aesthetics).

LIVES OF THE SOPHISTS (230-238):
     Book I:  The ancient sophistic art was philosophic rhetoric.  The sophist of the old school assumes knowledge of that whereof he speaks.  The method of the philosophers resembles the prophetic art of the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, and the Indians.  The sophistic method resembles the prophetic art of soothsayers and oracles.  The ancient sophistic propounded philosophical themes like justice, courage, etc.  The new or Second sophistic sketched the types of the poor man and the rich, the princes and tyrants, and handled arguments that are concerned with definite and special themes.  Gorgias founded the art of extempore oratory. He would discuss any theme and claim omniscience.  The Athenians shut them out of the law-courts, afraid they could defeat a just argument by an unjust, since sophists used their power to warp men’s judgments.  Even the word “sophist” became suspect in the eyes of the jury.  The men of former days applied the name “sophist” not only to orators whose surpassing eloquence won them a brilliant reputation, but also to philosophers who expounded their theories with ease and fluency.

PLOTINUS (205-c. 262):
     The philosopher Plotinus was a native of Egypt and was probably of Roman descent.  He studied philosophy in Alexandria at age 28.  In the year 244, in Rome, he founded a school of Neo-Platonism.  His Enneads (6 sets of 9 essays each) were edited and arranged by his pupil Porphyry, who wrote a biography of him.  For Plotinus, the world is an “emanation” from the ultimate idea or One (also called the First), and everything seeks to return to It.  The One expresses itself in a Triad: 1) the Intellectual Principle or Being (the realm of Ouranus [the sky god, son and husband of Gaia, earth; hides his children in Tartaros]]), 2) The Reason-Principle or the higher reasoning soul (the realm of Kronos [a Titan, later king of the gods; he castrates Ouranos on his mother Gaia’s suggestion]; he likes to eat his children [Saturn]), and 3) the Vegetal Lower-Acting Soul, or Third (the realm of Zeus [dethrones Kronos with mother Rheia’s help and fights the Titans for supremacy; he establishes Olympus with his brothers and sisters]).  The more beautiful a thing is the closer it is to the One, identified with pure light.  The further away from the One, the more it is embedded in darkness and matter.  Art (as in the case of sculpture), is the freeing of form or idea from matter, a bringing of the Idea to some degree of light.  The beauty of the work of art is not in the material or the object but in the Idea or form that the artist imposes on his materials.  The Idea comes from or through the artist’s mind and is derived from intellect and ultimately from connection with the One.  The Idea is imposed on the mass of exterior matter.  In this process the indivisible One is exhibited in diversity.  Hence, the artist for Plotinus is a creator of valuable spiritual insight by virtue of his attention to form.  Art for Plotinus, however, is never a perfect incarnation of beauty, which never fully appears, for art always remains to some extent material.

ENNEADS (written in 260, ordered, edited, and published by Porphyry in 300-305):
     BEAUTY: Beauty addresses itself to 1) sight, although there is a beauty in 2) sounds (words, music, melodies, cadencies) and a beauty 2) above the realm of sense.  There must be One Principle from which all take their grace.  Beauty (as sight) appeals to symmetry of parts towards a whole; what is symmetrical and patterned is beautiful.  Beauty is a compound, but composed of beautiful details.  Symmetry owes its beauty to a remoter principle.  This Principle bestows beauty on material things. The Soul recognizes it, its knowledge, welcomes it, and comes into unison with it (like a mystic union of the finite and the infinite).
     The Soul, by its nature and affiliation to the noblest Existents in the hierarchy of Being, thrills when it sees anything of that kin (anything beautiful, patterned, symmetrical).  All the loveliness in the world comes by communion in Ideal-Form.  All shapelessness, as long as it remains outside Reason and Idea, is ugly and separated from the Divine-Thought.  This is the Absolute-Ugly.  What is ugly has not been mastered by pattern, by Reason.  Matter has not yielded to Ideal-Form.
     When Ideal-Form enters matter, it maintains a co-operation of the diversity of parts into the creation of a (patterned) whole. This is harmonious coherence.  The material thing becomes beautiful by communicating in the thought (Reason, Logos) that flows from the Divine.  Fragments are gathered into unity and presented to the Idea-Principle to become beautiful (patterned, “whole”).
     Lovers are those who feel the keener wound and feel love outside of sense (that is, they apprehend the pattern of Ideal-Form).  Souls under the spell of love want to free themselves from the material world and fly upward, as in a Dionysian frenzy.  One admires loftiness of spirit, righteousness of life, disciplined purity, courage, gravity, modesty, and god-like Intellection.  On the other hand, the ugly Soul is dissolute and unrighteous, lustful, torn by internal discord, envious and cowardly, thinking only of the perishable and the base, perverse in all its impulses, living a life of abandonment to bodily sensation and delighting in its deformity.  It seeks the outer, the lower, the dark; it is sunk in manifest death.  It is occupied only in Matter (it cannot transcend to Spirit).  A Soul becomes ugly through a fall, a descent into body, into Matter, in the same way that gold is degraded when it is mixed with earthly particles.  One needs moral discipline, purification, disdain of the material, to become intellectual.
     Intellection is the Soul’s beauty (what one strives for).When the Soul becomes a good and beautiful thing it becomes like God, for from the Divine comes all the Beauty and all the Good in beings.  Beauty is the Authentic-Existents; Ugly is primal evil.
     Beauty is the Good.  The Good must be posed as the First.  Directly deriving from this First is the Intellectual-Principle, which is pre-eminently the manifestation of Beauty.  We must ascend towards the Good, the Apart, the Unmingled, the Pure, that from Which all things depend: the Source of Life and the Intellection and of Being.
     The graceful shapes of the body are merely copies.  To commune with those shadows would be tantamount to Narcissus falling unto death in pursuit of his own reflected image.  One must transcend form to reach the Fatherland, which is There (not Here). 
     The Soul must be trained to appreciate noble pursuits, works of beauty, and the souls of those who have shaped these beautiful forms.  One must withdraw into oneself and look for this inner beauty.  “Never cease chiseling your statue” (p. 132) until you see the perfect goodness.  A Soul tainted with vice has diminished vision of the Beautiful.  One must become god-like to see God and Beauty.  The Soul then “ascends” first to the Intellectual-Principle, the Intellectual-Cosmos, where one becomes cognizant of forms, ideas, beauty. Divine contemplation.
     ON THE INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY: Beauty exists not in matter but in the art of the artist, where the Form truly is.  Hence, matter only participates in Beauty but cannot ever be Beauty itself (Pheidias’ statue of Zeus).  Every primal cause is more powerful than its effects.  Beauty lies in the wisdom of the maker of a beautiful object (is it a “gift” or does one discipline oneself to achieve this artistry?). 

1. OURANOS: The Absolute or One [realm of the Intellectual Principle]
2. KRONOS: The Intellectual-Principle. The Titan dethroned by Zeus [realm of the Reason-Principle]
3. ZEUS: The All-Soul.  Soul also has beauty but is less beautiful than Intellect [realm of the Vegetal or lower acting Soul]
4. We ourselves possess beauty when we are true to our own being; our ugliness is in going over to another order; our self-knowledge, that is to say, is our beauty; in self-ignorance we are ugly.

SAINT AUGUSTINE (354-430):

     Saint Augustine is a Doctor of the Church (one of 33 in all), a Saint, and a figure respected even among the Reformed religions (by Lutherans and Calvinists).  He was born in Africa, in present day Algeria, the son of a catholic mother, Saint Monica, and Patricius, a pagan father.  He also wrote The Confessions, known as the first Western autobiography, as well as The City of God, written after the Vandals sacked Christian Rome, and wherein St. Augustine makes a case for Christianity being not of this world (spiritual instead of earthly).  He also elaborated a theory of signs and allegory to interpret Scripture that was later followed by St. Thomas Aquinas and secular writers like Dante.  For St. Augustine, signs are things used to signify something (like the Cross would be a sign for the Resurrection) and words serve to signify (the word “cross” signifies the Cross).  A sign is important because it points to something else (ultimately the Trinity for St. Augustine).  The sign is thus not valuable as pleasurable in itself but only in its movement of signification towards God (in the same way that matter for the Platonic pagans is not valuable or pleasurable in itself, even when it takes a definite form [the statue of Zeus, for instance]; what matters is the Form it points out to [or God, for Christians]).  Allegory in the Middle Ages hides, then yields, a depth of intellectual beauty.  Also, what is discovered with difficulty gives pleasure, according to St. Augustine.  St. Augustine’s distinction between the natural and the conventional sign leads in language theory to the arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign (as in Saussure).

ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE (396-426):
     BOOK ONE:  Things are learned by signs.  A thing is that which is not used to signify something else, like wood, stone, cattle, etc.  But some things are used as signs of other things (like the beast that Abraham sacrificed instead of his son Isaac, which is a pre-figuration of Christ [the “lamb” of God]).  There are other signs whose whole use is in signifying, like words, for no one uses words except for the purpose of signifying something.  Signs are things used to signify something.  Thus, every sign is also a thing (for what is not a thing is nothing at all); but not every thing is also a sign.
     Some things are to be enjoyed; others to be used.  The things to be enjoyed are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (the Trinity).  In the Father is unity, in the Son equality, and in the Holy Spirit a concord of unity and equality; and these three qualities are all one because of the Father, all equal because of the Son, and all united because of the Holy Spirit.  One may fail to understand Scripture and thus be deceived, although Scripture does not lie.  All knowledge and prophecy struggle for three things: a) Faith, b) Hope, and c) Charity (the theological Gifts of the Holy Spirit).  Between temporal and eternal things there is a difference: 1) a temporal thing is loved more before one has it, and it begins to grow worthless when one gains it, for it does not satisfy the soul; 2) eternal things are more ardently loved when acquired than when merely desired.
     BOOK TWO: Things signify nothing beyond themselves.  Signs have value beyond themselves since they signify something else.  A sign is a thing that causes us to think of something beyond the impression the thing itself makes upon the senses (e.g., a cross, a six-pointed star, and a crescent are things that stand as signs of the three Semitic and monotheistic religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam).  Among signs, some are 1) natural, others 2) conventional.  A sign is natural when it unwillingly or unintentionally signifies something else (like smoke, which signifies fire).   Conventional signs are those which living creatures show to one another for the purpose of conveying something.  In this way, the person who makes the sign conveys to another the action of the mind of the first person (the maker of the sign).  Signs given by God and contained in Scripture are of this type also (for by them God purposefully means to convey His mind to others).
     Among the signs by means of which we express our meaning to others, some pertain to sight, others to hearing, and very few to the other senses.  Some signify many things through the motions of their hands.  Banners and military standards visibly indicate the will of the captains.  More signs pertain to the ears, and most of these consists of words (NB: in the Middle Ages, and practically up to the nineteenth and early twentieth century, even books were read aloud in public, since few people could read).  But because vibrations in the air pass away and remain no longer than they sound, signs of words have been constructed by means of letters.  Thus words are shown to the eyes, not in themselves but through certain signs which stand for them. 
     Many and varied obscurities and ambiguities deceive those who read casually, understanding one thing instead of another.  This situation was provided by God to conquer pride by work and to combat disdain in our minds (for what is facile is deemed worthless).  St. Augustine expresses greater pleasure in deciphering metaphors (as in the Song of Songs) than in understanding plain language.  Things are perceived more readily through similitudes and that which is sought with difficulty is discovered with more pleasure.  Holy Scripture is at times difficult to entice to hunger (of understanding) and to deter a disdainful attitude (by the presentation of obscure passages which require additional effort to decipher).  This was done on purpose.
     There are two reasons why things written are not understood: they are obscured either by unknown or by ambiguous sings (for signs are either literal or figurative).  The sign bos (“ox”) is literal, for it refers to the animal of a herd.  Figurative signs occur when that thing which we designate by a literal sign is used to signify something else (when the sign “ox” refers not to the [literal] animal but to one of the four evangelists [St. Luke]).  [NB: St. Matthew <a man >, St. Mark <a lion>, St. John <an eagle>].

  A.  St. John (eagle)             B.  St. Matthew (man)

ANICUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS BOETHIUS (ca. 480-524 or 525):
     Boethius was a Roman statesman and philosopher, as well as the author of a treatise, De Trinitate.  He wrote the Consolation of Philosophy in prison under sentence of death on the grounds of treason (disloyalty against the Ostrogothic ruler) and sacrilege (for his practice of astrology).  He was a philosopher and Roman statesman under King Theoderic, an Ostrogoth and an Arian Christian, but fell out of favor and was savagely executed.  His book became very popular in the Middle Ages and was translated into English by Geoffrey Chaucer.  Boethius regarded poetry as dangerous because it fed the passions.  Moreover, the Muses were pagan and the arts catered to sensual and earthly interests.  From a Christian ascetic tradition, the arts would be considered trivial when compared to theological pursuits.  Boethius’ attack here is one of the best known after Plato.  He makes no mention in this book of Christianity.

THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY (ca. 523): Philosophy, in the form of a woman whose countenance is full of majesty, approaches a pondering and sickly Boethius.  Her attire contains the Greek letters ? <pi: P> and ? <theta: Th>, which stand for Practical and Theoretical philosophy.  She rebukes the Muses, who are consoling Boethius, calling them sirens and seductive mummers, and the poor gals leave sadly and ashamed.  The Muse of Poetry (Calliope) was giving Boethius words to his lamenting.  However, Philosophy rebukes her because Poetry can offer no remedy but only poisonous sweets.  Poetry stifles reason with passion.  Poetry seduces to perdition.  Poetry does not free man from disease but accustoms him thereto.  Besides, Boethius has been nurtured in the lore of the Eleatics (a Pre-Socratic school that maintained that pure being alone is real; the information of the senses is illusory) and Academics (Platonists).  He needs the Muses Philosophy has to offer to care for him and heal him.

NB: The nine muses, born of Zeus and Mnemosyne (goddess of memory and time) are inspiring goddesses (of the arts, poetry, and science) who live in Olympus: 1) Calliope (epic poetry), 2) Clio (history), 3) Euterpe (lyrical poetry), 4) Thalia (bucolic poetry and comedy), 5) Melpomene (tragedy), 6) Terpsichore (dance), 7) Erato (erotic poetry), 8) Polyhymnia (sacred song), and 9) Urania (astronomy).  See Hesiod's Theogony.

SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274):
     St. Thomas Aquinas, the “Angelic Doctor,” studied in Paris and is the greatest of the Scholastic Philosophers.  He is also one of the Doctors of the Church.  The system of his Summa Theologica was declared the official philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church in 1879, under Pope Leo XIII.  St. Thomas’s work was Aristotelian rather than Platonic.  He sought the marriage of reason and faith.  Scholasticism lasted between 1100 and 1500, with revivals in Spain and Austria (Neo-Scholasticism) as late as the early 1800s and early 1900s.  St Thomas, in the selection below, presents a theory of allegorical interpretation of Scripture that developed early in the Christian era.  Allegorical interpretation of Homer can be found as early as the sixth century BC and was still being practiced in the third century AD by Porphyry (a Phoenician [Lebanese] neo-Platonist, student of Plotinus).  Christian interpretation probably began with the methods of Philo Judaeus, an Egyptian philosopher (a Hellenized Jew) of the first century AD who tried to fuse Greek philosophy and Judaism by means of allegory, and by the churchmen Origen, Clement, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory [all but Clement Fathers of the Church].  The system that St. Tomas sets forth was probably first worked out in the fifth century.   It reflects the fundamental idea that world is itself a symbol subject to interpretation as the work of God.  According to Hermes Trismegistus, things below copy things above.  St. Thomas is interested only in Scripture.  St. Thomas argues that spiritual truths are properly and naturally taught by figures taken from corporeal things; these veiled truths are the cause of beneficial exercise of the mind (and, therefore, not harmful or dissimulative).  He has a twofold system of interpretation: 
1) The Literal (wherein the Parabolic is contained) under which he subsumes 
    a) The Historical, 
    b) The Etiological (causes), and 
    c) The Analogical (comparative) ; and 
2) The Spiritual, under which he subsumes 
    a) The Allegorical or Typological (prophetic)
    b) The Tropological or Moral, and 
    c) The Anagogical (foreshadowing, prefiguration).

SUMMA THEOLOGICA (1256-1272):
 “The Nature and Domain of Sacred Doctrine”: 
     NINTH ARTICLE: “Whether Holy Scripture Should Use Metaphors?: To proceed by the aid of various similitudes and figures is the proper domain of the poetic science (science being a true branch of learning that proceeds by rational principles).  To put forward anything by means of similitudes is to use metaphors.  Scripture uses metaphors.  It befits Holy Scripture to put forward divine and spiritual truths by means of comparisons with material things.  It is natural to man to attain to intellectual truths through sensible things because all our knowledge originates from sense.  Hence, in Holy Scripture, spiritual truths are fittingly taught under the likeness of material things.  Thereby, even the simple that are unable to grasp intellectual things may be able to understand.  Sacred doctrine makes use of metaphors as both necessary and useful.  The very hiding of truth in figures is useful for the exercise of thoughtful minds, and as a defense against the ridicule of the unbelievers.  Divine truths are (by metaphor) better hidden from the unworthy.
     TENTH ARTICLE: Whether in Holy Scripture a Word May Have Several Senses?: Objection 1: In Scripture, a word cannot have several senses: 1) Historical or Literal, 2) Allegorical, 3) Tropological or Moral, and 4) Anagogical.  Objection 2: St. Augustine says that the Old Testament has a fourfold division according to 1) History, 2) Etiology (cause), 3) Analogy (comparison), and 4) Allegory.  Objection 3: There is also the Parabolic (later seen as part of the Literal sense).  On the contrary, Gregory says that Scripture describes a fact and reveals a mystery simultaneously.  Hence, the Holy Scripture was authored by God to signify His meaning, not by words only but also by things themselves.  In other sciences, things are signified by words, but in Scripture, the things signified by the words have themselves also a signification.  The first signification, whereby words signify things, belongs to the first sense, I. The Historical or Literal.  That signification whereby things signified by words have themselves also a signification is called II. The Spiritual sense, which is based on the literal, and presupposes it.  This Spiritual sense has a threefold division: A. The Allegorical (Typological [prophetic]) sense (so far as things of the Old Law signify things of the New Law [and hence preserve the Bible’s historical nature]); B. The Moral sense (things done in Christ are signs of what we ought to do); and C: The Anagogical sense (things signify what relates to eternal glory [foreshadowing]).
     Reply Obj. 1: The multiplicity of these senses does not produce equivocation, for all the senses are founded on one, the Literal.  Reply Obj. 2: History (what is simply related), Etiology (when its cause is assigned), and Analogy (whenever the truth of one text of Scripture is shown not to contradict the truth of another [comparisons]) are grouped under the Literal sense.  Allegory alone stands for the three Spiritual senses.  Hugh of St. Victor (a mystic philosopher) includes the Anagogical (foreshadowing) under the Allegorical sense, hence, having only three senses: the Historical, the Allegorical, and the Tropological (Moral).  Reply Obj. 3: The Parabolic sense is contained in the Literal.

DANTE ALIGHIERI (1265-1321):
     Florentine Dante is the author of the Commedia (an otherworldly epic poem) and De monarchia (a treatise on the need for monarchical rule in secular affairs).  He was politically allied with the Guelfs, a pro-Pope group opposed to the Ghibellines, a pro-emperor group.  He developed a two- actually fourfold scheme of interpretation in his letter to the tyrant Can Francesco Grande della Scala, the Ghibelline Lord (imperial Vicar) of Verona, and in Il Convivio.  The world in the Middle Ages was seen as an allegory full of symbolic meaning.  For Dante, the work of art was like the world, an allegory.  He applied a hermeneutic system meant for Scripture to secular writings.

THE BANQUET (Il Convivio) [1304-1308]: Writings can be expounded chiefly in four senses: I.  The Literal (the [historical] sense that does not go beyond the limits of the letter); II. The Allegorical (by means of which a truth is hidden under a beautiful fiction); III. The Moral (by means of which teachers go through writings to watch for their own [moral] profit and that of their hearers); and IV. The Anagogic (what is above the senses, that is, the spiritual sense by which even in the literal sense the things signified give an intimation of higher [eternal] matters).

LETTER TO CAN GRANDE DELLA SCALA (1318): There are six things that must be inquired into at the beginning of any work of instruction: 1) The Subject (at the literal level, “the state of souls after death”; at the allegorical level, how human agents, by exercising free will, become liable to reward or punishment) 2) The Agent (e.g., Dante Alighieri), 3) The Form (I. Of the treatise: A) Parts: 1. Inferno, 2. Purgatorio, 3. Paradiso. B) Cantos, and C) poetic lines.  II. Of the Treatment: A. Poetic, fictive, descriptive, digressive, transumptive; B. Proceeding by definition, division, proof, refutation, and setting forth of examples), 4) The End (to remove those living in this life from the state of misery and lead them to the state of felicity). 5) The Title of the Work (e.g., the Commedia), and 6) The branch of Philosophy it concerns (5. Aesthetics? <art, life> [the other branches would be: 1.  Metaphysics <existence> [Theology would fit here], 2.  Epistemology <knowledge>, 3.  Ethics <action>, Politics <force> [Politics may be a subdivision of Ethics], Axiology <value judgments [subsumed under ethics and aesthetics]>, and 4. Logic <reasoning>]) [NB: The main branch of philosophy is Metaphysics.  Closely related to it would be Epistemology.  Ethics is dependent on Epistemology.  Politics is a subdivision of Ethics.  Aesthetics depends on Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Ethics].
     The sense of the Commedia is not simple but varied (of more senses than one), or polysemous, for it is 1) one sense (the Literal) that we get through the letter, and 2) another which we get through the thing the letter signifies (the Allegorical or Mystical sense).  Allegory derives from Greek alleon (Latin alienum or diversum).

LIFE OF DANTE (Vita di Dante) [1364, pub. 1477]:
     Ch. 9: “Digression Concerning Poetry”: The ancient poets, by a certain revelation of the Holy Spirit, “under a veil” or “beneath a mask” of certain fictions, revealed to future generations their highest secrets or truths. The two forms of writing (the literal and the allegorical) discipline the wise and strengthen the foolish.  Children and the wise may be nourished by the same waters.
     Ch. 10: “On the Difference Between Poetry and Theology”: Holy Scripture (theology), under the form of history, designs to reveal to us the high mystery of the Incarnation.  In like manner, poets in their works (poetry), under fictions of various gods, reveal to us the causes of things, the effects of virtues and vices, what we ought to flee and what follows, to attain by virtuous actions the end (deferred in their case until the coming of Christ), our salvation.  Hence, Saturn (Kronos in Greek) devouring his children is a cloak for the concept of the passing of time, etc.  Their Elysian Fields and City of Dis correspond to our concepts of Heaven and Hell.  Hence, theology and poetry agree in their method of treatment.  In their subject matter they differ, for the subject of theology is divine truth, while that of ancient poetry is the men and gods of the pagans.  Theology presupposes nothing unless it be true; while poetry puts forth certain things as true that are surely false, misleading, and contrary to the Christian religion. 
     Anything acquired by labor has more sweetness than that which comes without effort.  What is acquired by labor is retained better and pleases more than what is grasped quickly.  The ancient chose fables to draw with their beauty those not easily persuaded even by philosophical demonstrations.  The ancient poets were people of profound understanding. 
     Theology is the poetry of God, for God uses poetic fictions (allegories) to refer to Christ as a lion, a lamb, a serpent, a dragon, a rock.  Poetry here is theology, in the same way that theology is here poetry.  Aristotle affirmed that poets were the first theologians (Metaphysics 3.4). 

GENEALOGY OF THE GENTILE GODS (De Genealogiis) [1366]:
     Book 14.  Ch. 7.  “The Definition of Poetry, Its Origin, and Function.”  Poetry is a fervid and exquisite invention, with fervid expression, in speech or writing, of that which the mind has invented.  Its originator is God.  Few have received the gift of poetry.  Poetry is sublime in its effects.  It impels the soul to utterance.  It brings forth strange creations of the mind.  It arranges mediations in a fixed order.  It adorns compositions with unusual words and thoughts.  It veils truth in a fair and fitting garment of fiction.  It can arm kings to war.  It can serve to praise great men (a Platonic echo).  The poetic impulse, however, needs the guidance of grammar and rhetoric, as well as knowledge of the other liberal arts to possess a strong and abundant vocabulary.  One must memorize the history, monuments, and geography of other nations too. One must also have peace of mind and desire for worldly glory, and be of the ardent age (young).  Poetry is a practical art.  It is composed “as under a veil” and thus is exquisitely wrought.
     Ch. 9. “It Is Rather Useful than Damnable to Compose Stories.”  The word “fable” (fabula) derives from for, faris, “conversation” (confabulatio), “talking together” (collocutio).  If it is a sin to compose stories, then it is a sin to converse.  Nature has not granted us the power of speech unless for purposes of conversation and the exchange of ideas.  Fiction is a form of discourse, which under the guise of invention illustrates or proves an idea, and as its superficial aspect is removed, the meaning of the author is clear.  There are four kinds of fictions: I. The first superficially lacks all appearance of truth (as in Aesop’s fables, where brutes or inanimate things converse; but also Judges 9.8-15: the conference of the trees in order to choose a king).  II. The second kind at times superficially mingles fiction with truth, clothing in fiction divine and human matters alike (as in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and also most of the Old Testament, which is a pre-figuration of the New).  III. The third kind is more like history than fiction (as in Virgil’s Aeneid or Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey), and in their heroic verse there lies a hidden meaning (Ulysses is bound to the mast to escape the lure of the Sirens’ song [e.g., one must be “restrained” to avoid temptation]).  Even in the comedies of Plautus and Terence there is a portrayal of the sundry varieties of human nature and some sort of teaching as to what to avoid (e.g., cupidity).  Also, Christ used parables and exempla to teach.  IV. The fourth kind contains no truth, either superficially or hidden (old wives’ tales). 
     Fiction has been the means of quelling minds aroused to rage, and of subduing them to gentleness.  By fiction, men have been strengthened and given valor.  Fiction furnishes consolation.  “Through fiction, it is well known, the mind that is slipping into inactivity is recalled to a state of better and more vigorous fruition” [162].  Fiction pleases the unlearned by its external appearance, and exercises the minds of the learned with its hidden truth; and thus both are edified and delighted with one and the same perusal. 
     Ch. 13.  “Poets Are Not Liars.” Poetic fiction has nothing in common with any variety of falsehood, for it is not a poet’s purpose to deceive anybody with his inventions.  A poet, however he may sacrifice the literal truth in invention, is not a liar, since his function is not to deceive, but only by way of convention.  They use figures.
     Poets do say there are many gods instead of One, but they should not be charged with falsehood since they neither believe nor assert this as a fact, but only as a myth or fiction.  The multitude of other gods they look upon as members or functions of the Divinity on account of their veneration for the particular function.  Pagan poets had an imperfect sense of the true God. 
     There are two kinds of liars: 1) those who knowingly and willingly lie, and 2) those who have told a falsehood without knowing.  Such was the case with the pagan poets, who with all their knowledge of the liberal arts, poetry, and philosophy, could not know the truth of Christianity.  Only the Israelites were granted the true knowledge of God.  But they never shared this knowledge with anyone else or admitted the Gentiles at their doors.  Hence, the pagan poets could not write the entire truth concerning God; thusly, their ignorance is to be excused and they should not be called liars.
     Poets are not like historians, who start their account at some convenient beginning (ab ovo [the term comes from Horace’s Ars Poetica]) and describe events in the unbroken order of their occurrence to the end.  Poets, by a far nobler device, begin their proposed narrative in the midst of the events (in medias res [the term comes from Horace’s Ars Poetica]), or sometimes even near the end (in extremas res), and thus they find excuses to tell preceding events which seem to have been omitted.  Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid start near the end.  Virgil is not a liar in his rendition of the Dido story (which is anachronistic with respect to the Aeneid), for he wished to demonstrate the consequences of concupiscence (Dido’s), to extol Aeneas (founder of Latium), and to glorify the name of Rome (who would later fight the Carthaginians). 
     Ch. 17. “That Poets Are Merely Apes of the Philosophers.”  The destination of both poets and philosophers is the same.  Yet, they do not arrive there by the same road.  I.  The philosopher, by the process of syllogizing, disproves what he considers false. And in this fashion proves his theory, and does this as obviously as he can.  Also, he does not embellish language, which would be distracting.  He also uses prose.  He disputes in the lecture room (the forum, the academy, the university).  II. The poet conceives his thought by contemplation and without the help of syllogisms he veils it as subtly and skillfully as he can under the outward semblance of his invention.  The poet uses meter (poetry), writes with scrupulous care, and in a style of exquisite charm.  The poet sings in solitude.  Being so different one from the other, it would be inappropriate to call the poet the ape of the philosopher.
     Book 15.  Ch. 8.  “The Pagan Poets of Mythology Are Theologians.”  The pagan poets are theologians.  St. Augustine, quoting Varro [a learned Roman scholar] (City of God 6.5), holds that theology is threefold in its divisions: a) Mythical [“Fabulous”] Theology (from the Greek mythicon, a “myth.”  This form of literature is obscene [cf. the sequestration of Proserpina by Hades, a myth that explains Winter and the change of the seasons; or that of Ganymede by Zeus, to show the soul’s ascent to the Divine]), b) Physical [“Natural”] Theology (this is natural, moral, and useful, for the poets clothe many physical and moral truths in their inventions), and c) Civil or Political Theology (the theology of state worship [cf. the deification of emperors in imperial Rome]).   Boccaccio and Augustine lean towards the second kind of theology only.  The old theology can sometimes be employed in the service of the Catholic Church (an example of Physical or Natural Theology is the fable of the trees choosing a king, in Judges 9.8-15).

JULIUS CAESAR SCALIGER (Giulio Cesare Della Scala) [1484-1558]:
     Scaliger was an Italian philologist, physician, and natural scientist, and a very arrogant man.  In his Poetics (Poetices) [1561], written originally in Latin, he meant to make a defense of the Roman poets Virgil (epic) [whom he considered superior to Homer] and Seneca (drama) [whom he considered superior to the Greek dramatists].  His commentary on Aristotle had an impact on neo-classical authors.  He was influenced by Horace, Cicero and Quintilian.  Scaliger attempted to fuse poetics and rhetoric, with rhetoric being the dominant partner.  Hence, he maintains that poetry delights and teaches, but he stresses persuasion and moral purpose.  He also seems to equate poetry with verse.  He likes classifications, at times for their own end.

POETICS (Poetices) [1561]: 
      Everything pertaining to mankind is necessary, useful, or pleasure-given.  Man’s development depends on learning.  Early speech (speech acts) was necessary to give commands, get things done, make prohibitions.  Later speech added rules of language (grammar), embellishment and harmony, and a figurative sense.  Necessity demanded a certain kind of language for philosophers to search for truth, utility demanded the language of statesmanship, and pleasure demanded the language of the theater.  Hence, 1) Philosophical language [the language of necessity], aiming at truth, is exact, logical, rational, and concise.  2) The language of statesmen (oratory) [the language of utility], used in the forum or the camp, is less precise and governed by the subject, the place, the time, and the audience (the court of law, the assembly of the realm).  3) The third kind of language (speech) [the language of pleasure] employs narration and uses much embellishment: a) one kind records the fixed truth and employs a simpler (prose) style of composition (history); b) another kind (poetry) adds a fictitious element to the truth or imitates the truth by fiction, using greater elaboration (and verse, usually).  The basis of all Poetry (Making) is imitation.
     The end of poetry is to give instruction [notice the priority] in pleasurable form, for poetry teaches and does not simply amuse.  It seems that it amuses because originally poetry was sung.  Poetry imitates that it may teach.  The merit of the poet, according to Aristophanes’ Euripides (in Frogs), is to impress adroitly upon citizens the need of being better men.  Assuredly,1)  philosophy, 2) oratory, and 3) drama have one thing in common: persuasion [notice the emphasis placed on rhetoric].  Whenever language is used it expresses a fact or the opinion of the speaker.  The end of learning is knowledge.  Persuasion means that the hearer accepts the words of the speaker.  The soul of persuasion is truth.  Its end (of persuasion) is to convince (of the truth).  Hence, eloquent speech is not the end of oratory (it is a means); persuasion is.  If a man does not persuade, it is due to no fault of the art but of the issue (which might be beyond the power of the orator to control), the orator (who might be a defective speaker), or the cause he espouses (which may be unjust).
     There are two kinds of art: a) Practical arts that attain the ends in and of themselves (shoemaking, carpentry) and b) Conjectural arts (since they proceed by conjecture, not by fixed principles), like oratory, medicine, or navigation.  The orator speaks 1) in the forum so that good men are meted to good men, and punishment to evil men (forensic or legal oratory relying on the past actions of men), hence, his aim is justice; 2) in assemblies and councils to advice (in the future) on public affairs (deliberative or political oratory), hence his aim is utility; and 3) elsewhere (in the present) to praise or censure men (epideictic oratory), hence, its aim is honesty.  All speeches (judicial, civic, or encomiastic) are of a hortatory nature since they attempt to persuade an audience of the truth (of a legal case, of a deliberation, or of the honesty of someone’s praise or condemnation).
     The Poet is a Maker and almost a second deity.  Poets may be classified according to I) Poetical inspiration (A. Those inspired by the Muses, like Homer and Hesiod, or by B. Wine, like Horace, Aristophanes, and Aeschylus), II) Age (A. The coarse age of Apollo, B. The venerable period of religion and the mysteries [Orpheus, Musaeus], and C. The [Heroic?] age of Homer and Hesiod), or III) Subject matter (A. The religious poets [Orpheus], B. The philosophical poets: 1. Natural [Empedocles, Lucretius] and 2. Moral [Solon, Hesiod, Pythagoras]).
     Comedy and Tragedy are of the same genus and share in common the name drama (“action”).  Comedy is a dramatic poem filled with intrigue, full of action, happy in outcome, and written in a popular style (it also contains danger situations [although the outcome is tame] and violence).  Tragedy is the imitation of the adversity of a distinguished man: it employs the form of action, presents a disastrous dénoument, and is expressed in impressive metrical language (but not every subject produces purgation).
     The early orators had only one end in view, to persuade and move their hearers (hence, their language was necessarily rude).  The poets sought only to please by means of alluring songs.  Eventually the orator and the poet secured from each other what they lacked respectively (Isocrates).  Poetry (drama) moved from the country to the city and provided plots to furnish warning examples and sometimes to furnish precepts.
     Horace was right when he said that the useful and the pleasing are the two ends of poetry.  Poems must 1) be deeply conceived (by having insight and foresight, or prudentia), 2) have variety (varietas), 3) have vividness (efficacia: a certain potency and force in thought and language which compels one to be a vivid listener), and 4) have winsomeness (suavitas) [charm], to temper the harshness of vividness.  These are the supreme poetic qualities.
     For objects of every kind, there exists one perfect original.  In poetry, the standard is heroic poetry (the epic).  The precepts for a good heroic poem are as follows: 1) Start in medias res (not ab ovo) [to stimulate interest from the beginning]; 2) Do not repeat incidents, hence becoming tedious [NB: epics tend to repeat battles]; 3) Hold your hearer captive by means of suspense (the principal theme should not be placed at the beginning [although there should be wondrous interruptions]), and 4) Divide the book in chapters (as in Virgil’s Aeneid), each to its proper place, in imitation of nature, which subdivides into parts of parts, all so related that they constitute an organic body [is this an ontological or an epistemological observat