Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry
    The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry
    The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry
    Ebook70 pages47 minutes

    The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry

    By Samuel Holt Monk and André Dacier

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 26, 2013
    The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry

    Related to The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Classical Corner

      Mar 24, 2022

      Classical Corner
      7 min read

    • Article

      Ten Ways to Lose Your Literature

      Jan 25, 2021

      Just as all literature is haunted by the potential of oblivion, so all lost books are animated by the redemptive hope of their rediscovery. The post Ten Ways to Lose Your Literature appeared first on The Millions.

      28 min read

    • Article

      Poem Of The Week: Poetry For Supper By RS Thomas

      Oct 31, 2022

      ‘Listen, now, verse should be as naturalAs the small tuber that feeds on muck And grows slowly from obtuse soil To the white flower of immortal beauty.’ ‘Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer Said once about the long toil That goes like blood to the poe

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Humanity Of Horace

      Nov 30, 2023

      IF I TOLD YOU THAT A COLLECTION OF POEMS written 2,000 years ago was sent by his wife to a man serving in the trenches of the First World War, and he replied to her that he was devoting five minutes a day amid the fighting to reading them, you might

      6 min read

    • Article

      His Life Spoke Volumes

      Mar 4, 2019

      His Life Spoke Volumes
      4 min read

    • Article

      Enduring Myths

      Oct 29, 2020

      Jeremy Pound delves into the world of classical poetry to explore how Ovid’s Metamorphoses has inspired a wealth of composers over the centuries In 8 AD, the poet Ovid found himself in a bad place. Quite literally. Exiled by Emperor Augustus, he was

      5 min read

    • Article

      From The Trojan War To Conflict In Ukraine

      Nov 30, 2023

      THE YEAR 2023 HAS BEENrich in works composed in tempore belli. The most impressive is Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine (William Collins, £26) by General David Petraeus and the historian Andrew Roberts. This is an ambitious and

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Big Idea: Could The Greatest Works Of Literature Be Undiscovered?

      May 30, 2022

      When the great library at Alexandria went up in flames, it is said that the books took six months to burn. We can’t know if this is true. Exactly how the library met its end, and whether it even existed, have been subjects of speculation for more tha

      4 min read

    • Article

      All The World’s A Stage

      Apr 6, 2023

      All The World’s A Stage
      5 min read

    • Article

      Shakespeare Through The Ages

      Apr 15, 2021

      In 1623, the playwright and poet Ben Jonson wrote that his friend Shakespeare “was not of an age, but for all time”. But Jonson could scarcely have imagined the impact and influence Shakespeare would have on four centuries of thinkers, writers, compo

      4 min read

    • Article

      From Parchment To Performance

      Apr 15, 2021

      In Shakespeare’s time, playwriting was a matter of both perspiration and inspiration. First he had to think up a story, which he would shape into a plot. Usually this meant he had to do a lot of fresh reading, because most of Shakespeare’s plays are

      4 min read

    • Article

      Riffing On The Poetic Tradition

      Apr 29, 2021

      POOR OVID. In 8 AD, he was one of Rome’s leading poets when the emperor Augustus sent him to Tomis, the Roman Empire’s equivalent of Woop Woop. His seduction handbook written in verse, the Ars Amatoria, was banned from Rome’s public libraries. In Tom

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Storm Is Blowing

      Apr 1, 2019

      A Storm Is Blowing
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Foul-mouthed Miller And The Prim Prioress

      Jan 3, 2024

      HAT Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘drasty rhyming is nat worth a toord’ (his ‘dirty rhyming isn’t worth a turd’), the Host’s pungent dismissal in Chaucer’s best-known, but incomplete poem The Canterbury Tales, is a verdict that, with good reason, posterity has

      4 min read

    • Article

      What Makes a Poet Difficult?

      May 28, 2019

      What Makes a Poet Difficult?
      6 min read

    • Article

      Huon Mallalieu

      May 4, 2022

      Huon Mallalieu
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Waste Land turns 100

      Oct 19, 2022

      The Waste Land turns 100
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Good, The Bad And The Frankly Awful

      Oct 25, 2023

      Timothy Mowl and Julian Orbach (Stephen Morris, £20) IN his epistolary novel The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), Tobias Smollett, has the comically hypochondriac and irascible—but gradually mellowing—figure of Matthew Bramble, a country squire

      6 min read

    • Article

      How The Sonnet Turns

      May 1, 2020

      This essay is adapted from a lecture delivered at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, on January 10, 2010, at the winter residency. My thanks to The American Poetry Review for their graceful and gracious assistance in the adaptation

      30 min read

    • Article

      Talk Of The Devil

      Sep 30, 2021

      In Mills & Boon’s The Playboy of Rome, Dante is the dangerous Lothario (‘Dante might be hotter than the Italian sun, but he’s as cool as ice towards Lizzi’); in the Devil May Cry video games, he is a devil pursuing his brother Vergil, while his alter

      5 min read

    • Article

      Reason AND Imagination

      Nov 1, 2023

      Reason AND Imagination
      6 min read

    • Article

      Alliteration’s Apt and Artful Aim

      Jan 31, 2019

      Every language has a certain aural spirit to it, an auditory fingerprint related to those sounds which constitute the melody and rhythm of any tongue. The post Alliteration’s Apt and Artful Aim appeared first on The Millions.

      14 min read

    Reviews for The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry - Samuel Holt Monk

      Project Gutenberg's The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry, by Andre Dacier

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry

      Author: Andre Dacier

      Editor: Samuel Holt Monk

      Release Date: July 30, 2009 [EBook #29547]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PREFACE--ARISTOTLE'S POETRY ***

      Produced by Chris Curnow, Stephanie Eason, Joseph Cooper

      and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

      http://www.pgdp.net

      The Augustan Reprint Society

      A. DACIER

      THE PREFACE TO ARISTOTLE'S

      ART OF POETRY

      (1705)

      Publication Number 76

      William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

      University of California

      Los Angeles

      1959

      INTRODUCTION

      André Dacier's Poëtique d'Aristote Traduite en François avec des Remarques was published in Paris in 1692. His translation of Horace with critical remarks (1681-1689) had helped to establish his reputation in both France and England. Dryden, for example, borrowed from it extensively in his Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (1693). No doubt this earlier work assured a ready reception and a quick response to the commentary on Aristotle: how ready and how quick is indicated by the fact that within a year of its publication in France Congreve could count on an audience's recognizing a reference to it. In the Double Dealer (II, ii) Brisk says to Lady Froth: "I presume your ladyship has read Bossu?" The reply comes with the readiness of a cliché: "O yes, and Rapine and Dacier upon Aristotle and Horace." A quarter of a century later Dacier's reputation was still great enough to allow Charles Gildon to eke out the second part of his Complete Art of Poetry (1718) by translating long excerpts from the Preface to the admirable Dacier's Aristotle.[1] Addison ridiculed the pedantry of Sir Timothy Tittle (a strict Aristotelian critic) who rebuked his mistress for laughing at a play: But Madam, says he, "you ought not to have laughed; and I defie any one to show me a single rule that you could laugh by.... There are such people in the world as Rapin, Dacier, and several others, that ought to have spoiled your mirth.[2] But the scorn is directed at the pupil, not the master, whom Addison considered a true critic."[3] A work so much esteemed was certain to be translated, and so in 1705 an English version by an anonymous translator was published.

      It cannot be claimed that Dacier's Aristotle introduced any new critical theories into England. Actually it provides material for little more than an extended footnote on the history of criticism in the Augustan period. Dacier survived as an influence only so long as did a respect for the rules; and he is remembered today merely as one of the historically important interpreters—or misinterpreters—of the Poetics.[4] He was, however, the last Aristotelian formalist to affect English critical theory, for the course of such speculation in the next century was largely determined by other influences. None the less, his preface and his commentary are worth knowing because they express certain typically neo-classical ideas about poetry, especially dramatic poetry, which were acceptable to many men in

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1