MMMiii!

Manlius Severinus Boethius
- Poetry is dangerous because it feeds the passions (According to Plato)
- The Muses were Pagans
- Arts catered to sensuous (worldliness) and earthly interests.
– Arts were considered trivial by comparison to theological pursuits.
– Arts were the lowest of the sciences (Highest is Theology)
- Theoretical interest expressed itself in allegorical interpretation of Scripture.

THE CONSOLATION OF POETRY
- It is only Philosophy that can give you the rest you need in a weary world.
– Must be good Philosophy (Nietzsche, et al, are out)
- PHILOSOPHY = “In her right hand she carried books, in her left she brandished a scepter.”
- Passions/Mummers - They do not free the minds of the men from disease but accustom them thereto.
- Mummers = Actors.
- Boethius suggests that the Muses represent false copying and the making of dangerous delusions.
- Philosophical Counseling

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St Thomas Aquinas - Christianized Aristotle / Aristotelianized Christianity
- wrote a grand synthesis of faith and reason
- Hermeneutics - Theory and Practice of Interpretation.
– Opened many levels or corridors for interpretation
— Literal
— Allegorical
— Moral
— AnagogicalEverything is provided by God according to the capacity of its nature.
All our knowledge originates from sense. Hence, in Holy Scripture truths are fittingly taught under the LIKENESS of material things.
1. The Holy Scripture can use metaphors (representations, the language of poetry), because it is natural for Man to be pleased with representations. It is both necessary and useful.
2. Finding out the truths is an exercise for the mind.
3. It is better for man to find out the truth
–a. men’s minds are therefore better freed from error
–b. this is more befitting the knowledge of Got that we have in this life. it is not clear as to who he is, therefore, similitudes drawn farthest away from God give us a truer estimate that God is above whatsoever we may say or think of Him.
–c. Divine truths are the better hidden from the unworthy. Those who understand the Scriptures even with the metaphors are worthy of its meaning. Certain things are intended to be hidden from the unworthy. “Give not that which is holy to the dogs.” The truth is always there, and if you don’t understand, you probably have not yet reached the capacity to understand.Scripture may have several senses.
While it describes a fact, it reveals a mystery.
1. It can have many layers of meaning or senses. The other senses would only be founded on one — the literal.
2. History, Etiology, Analogy are grouped under the literal sense.
–a. History - whenever anything is simply related
–b. Etiology - when its cause is assigned
–c. Analogy - whenever the truth of one text of Scripture is shown not to contradict the truth of another.
Allegory - Stands for the three spiritual senses
3. The parabolical sense is contained in the literal.

Scholasticism is Aristotelian in a more engaging way.

Albertus Magnus - Teacher of Aquinas.

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Dante Alighieri - Lay/Secularized Aquinas.
- Applied Aquinas’s principles onto secular works.
- Polysemous - of more senses than one.
- 4 senses.
–a. literal - must not go beyond the strict limits of the letter
–b. allegorical - disguised under the cloak of such stories, and is a truth hidden under a beautiful fiction
–c. moral - teachers ought to go through writings intently to watch for their own profit and that of their hearers.
–d. anagogical - above the senses; spiritually expounded which even in the literal sense by the things signified likewiseThings that should be inquired into at the beginning of of any work of instruction.
1. Subject
2. Agent
3. Form
4. End
5. Title of the work
6. branch of philosophy it concernsallegory < - alleon (other’s property) <- alienum/diversum (different)
Subject of his work must be Literally Understood
Its subject Allegorically Intended

The form of method of treatment is poetic, fictive, descriptive, digressive, transumptive.Comedy <- comus (a village) + oda (song) -> rustic song
Tragedy < - tragus (goat) + oda -> goat-song >__>;;Comic -> miserable start, happy end.
Tragic -> happy start, miserable end.

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Giovanni Boccaccio – Tuscan — First Modern Man
- became a poet because of separation with Maria de Conti d’Aquino
- Met Petrarch, started writing in Latin and Italian.
- Poetry makes fictions, whereas theology always tells the truth. < - disagreed
- Meaning acquired by toil should ultimately be more pleasurable and better retained (Aquinas)
- A hidden moral meaning redeemed poetry’s “lies” —> “Thus [poetry] is like a river, wherein the little lamb may wade, and the great elephant freely swim.” –> Take whatever meaning you can glean from it.
- The subject of sacred theology is divine truth, while that of ancient poetry is the men and gods of pagans.
- Theology and poetry can be considered as almost one and the same thing when their subject is the same. だから Theology is simply the poetry of God. Not only is poetry theology, but also that theology is poetry.- Poetry is a sort of fervid and exquisite invention, with fervid expression, in speech or writing, of that which the mind has invented. だから poetry must be sublime. — can only be called a laudable poet if the functions are perfectly fulfilled
— craft tools = grammar + rhetoric- It is rather useful than damnable to compose stories
— fabula - conversation- Poets are not liars
– Kinds of liars
—1. Willful deceivers
—2. tell falsehoods without knowing it.– In defense of Virgil, Virgil’s purpose.
—1. to follow the practice of earlier poets.
——— Poets are not historians, who begin their account at some convenient beginning and describe events in the unbroken order of their occurrence to the end.
—2. was to show what passions
—3. extol (praise enthusiastically)
—4. exalt the glory and name of Rome.
だから Virgil is not a Liar.- Poets are merely apes of the Philosophers.
– The philosopher as a rule employs an unadorned prose style, with something of scorn for literary embellishment.
——–Apes of Christ.- The pagan poets of Mythology are theologians (Aquinas)

- Practice restraint from overreading.

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Lodovico Castelvetro
-commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics.
- Curious literal minded utilitarianism (simplistic)
- Hardened Aristotle’s principles into rigid precepts.
- verisimilitude or closeness to reality.History and poetry
- poetry is a likeness of or resemblance to history. (Take not… NOT history)
- history does not have a subject matter provided by the talent of the historian. the subject matter of poetry is discovered and imagined by the talent of the poet
- Historians must not be called poets
- pleasure, the purgation and expulsion of fear and pity from the human soul by means of the operation of the same passions– hedone (Pleasure or delight), utility (Happiness), for it is the health of mind gotten through bitter medicine.oblique pleasure - derived from pity and fear. it occurs when feeling pain from misery which comes unjustly to another, we recognize that we are good, since injustice displeases us.

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Sir Philip Sidney
An Apology for Poetry - Answers Puritan Stephen Gosson’s School of Abuse
– called poets pipers and clownsHis views on the divine origin of poetry and utility of poetry.
Praises poetry:
1. for being the cradle of civilization
— Plato was a poetry
— Poetry makes the mind receptive to learning. it prepares the mind to learning.
2. for being a channel of divine power.
— The power and craft of poetry are of the same essence as the Divine.
— The poet is a maker.
— The mimesis of the poet is a higher kind of imitation.
— What the poet imitates is not nature herself but a more perfect idea in the mind to which the poet gives shape
3. for teaching and delighting
— inspires the soul to scorn vices and admire virtues
4. for combining and surpassing the virtues of history and philosophy
— unites the universal truths (abstractions) of philosophy with the concrete examples of history

Criticized past and present attacks on poetry

He was a good synthesizer. His “Apology” is more synthetic than original.
Christian critic - his defense of the moral nature of poetry answers both Platonic philosophy and Biblical theology.

four arguments against poetry
1. poetry is unprofitable
— it inspires, encourages
2. poetry is the mother of lies
— poets never claim their poems to be the truth
— poetry offers an illusion. only fools confuse illusion with reality.
3. poetry entices and leads to sinful behavior
— abuse of poetry leads to sin
— Bible
4. Plato banished the poets from his Republic
— Anxiety on influence

Curse on all poet-haters. “May they never win love for want of a sonnet; may they be forgotten for want of an epitaph.”

vates = poets = diviner, foreseer, prophet

sortes Virgilianae - The words of Virgil are Sacred.

poiein - to make

Examples he used:
Cyrus in Xenophon > Cyrus in Justin
Aeneas in Virgil > Aeneas in Dares Phrygius
~~~> Sublimity

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Jacobo Mazzoni
- credible impossible vs incredible possible
Poetry admits of 3 definitions
1. Poetry is imitation
2. To delight
3. Pragmatic - Civil faculty, delight usefully.

Credible impossible - fantastic imitation - Aristotelian
incredible possible - - Believe it or not

** icastic imitation - imitation of things that exist
fantastic imitation - things that don’t exist. Freedom of the writer

verisimilitude - integrity

Idol and Imitation
- The poet imitates, and he makes an idol.
- idol is particular, credible, verisimilar, but not necessarily true.
——What’s important is the illusion that has been created.
——Feigned by poets according to their own will.

*Peripatetics - Aristotle’s disciples, walking while discussing/conversing.

Idea - Object of ruling/governing arts
Work - object of fabricating arts
Idol - object of the imitative arts

The false is not always the subject of poetry
The subject of poetry is sometimes true and sometimes false, it is therefore necessary to establish a poetic subject that in itself can be sometimes true and sometimes false.

Choose the credible over the true. (Recall: verisimilitude)

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