ANCIENT LITERARY CRITICISM.
By Andrew Laird, editor. 491pp. Oxford University Press. £95 (US $295).
978 0 19 925865 9
HISTORISCHES WORTERBUCH DER RHETORIK. Volume Seven: Pos-Rhet.
By Gert Ueding, editor. 884pp. Tubingen: Niemeyer. E145.
978 3 484 68107 1
Fifty years ago, a classicist asked to define the Greeks' literary influence
on later cultures would have instanced Homeric epic, tragedy, comedy, the
historians, pastoral poetry, and perhaps romance. Only a very unusual
scholar would have thought to mention rhetoric. Yet this pragmatic art,
originally developed to improve face-to-face communication in law and
politics, became a tool of astonishing importance for organizing thought and
expression. Systematized in the Hellenistic period, and forming a basic
element in Graeco-Roman education, rhetoric provided a method for organizing
a literary composition through an ordered sequence (inventio, dispositio,
elocutio, memoria, and pronuntiatio or actio); it gave a helpful scheme for
planning a speech or written work (exordium, narratio, divisio, confirmatio,
confutatio, peroratio); and it classified several hundred linguistic
devices, to which specific functions were attributed. It was essentially a
prescriptive art, teaching how to persuade, but the categories it developed
also served descriptive purposes. E. H. Gombrich described classical
writings on rhetoric as providing "perhaps the most careful analysis of any
expressive medium ever undertaken", and other arts soon recognized its value
by plundering rhetoric. Painting, sculpture, architecture, music, all
adopted its terminology and its orientation, that of an individual craftsman
shaping a work designed to move the spectator's feelings and perceptions,
retaining their rhetorical inheritance until the eighteenth century.
Rhetoric and its sister discipline, poetics, provided many of the basic
concepts that dominated thinking about literature and the other arts for
centuries to come: mimesis (representing the visible world), imitatio
(imitating extant works as a stage to developing the artist's own voice),
unity, variety, decorum (adjusting expression to suit both the subject
matter and the intended audience), catharsis. Among the skilled exponents of
rhetoric in their own field we can count Alberti, Shakespeare, Kepler,
Galileo, J. S. Bach, Poussin and James Joyce.
Andrew Laird's collection of twenty previously published essays on classical
literary criticism covers a thousand years, from Homer and his commentators
to Servius and St Augustine. They range in time from the famous 1857 essay
by Jacob Bernays, "Aristotle on the Effect of Tragedy", here given in a
newly revised translation by Jennifer Barnes (with a trenchant introduction
by Jonathan Barnes), to recent work by Dennis Feeney and the late Don
Fowler. Several are modern classics, and it was a great pleasure to revisit
essays by A. M. Dale, on Aristotle's concept of dianoia (showing his debt to
rhetoric), and Donald Russell, the grand master in this field, whose lucid
outline of the links between "Rhetoric and Criticism" is a model of its
kind. Discussing the Ars Poetica, that most elusive text ("Problems posed,
solved or dissolved by four centuries of scholarship have resulted in a
neurotic confusion unexcelled even in classical studies"), Russell distils a
lifetime's wisdom to clarify the difficulties Horace faced in "turning
poetics into poetry", while his English versions confirm him as one of the
great translators of modern times. Two other scholars pursue the fruitful
recent interest in how classical authors control the process of reading.
Bruce Gibson attentively reconstructs Ovid's self-presentation and
self-exculpation, while T. J. Luce elucidates another ambivalent text,
Tacitus' Dialogue on Orators, finely observing the "needless confusion"
produced by the modern "assumption that in order for each interlocutor to be
consistently characterized, the arguments given to him must be consistent
also". The ancients accepted that speakers "aim to present the strongest
case they can for a particular point of view", not caring about consistency.
This collection, which includes extensive "Suggestions for Further Reading",
will be of use to both beginners and advanced students. But it has been
shaped by some rather unfortunate decisions. Laird has decided to focus on
major authors, and to include essays elucidating "particular primary texts"
rather than the "tenets and trends of ancient criticism and poetics".
Several of these essays show the importance of rhetoric in formulating
critical concepts and analytical techniques, and Laird concedes that "most
of our sources for ancient criticism in Latin are mainly or exclusively
concerned with oratory"; but the selected essays deal only with poetry. He
also observes that "the important role of oratory throughout antiquity is
not represented in most current curricula", and although he found it
"tempting" to "use this book to redirect or modify the inclinations of
teachers and students", the aim here, he says, is to "meet existing needs
and interests". This cautious, pragmatic decision means that major authors
who had a "massive influence" on literary creation and interpretation for
1,500 years - Cicero, the Senecas, Quintilian, Pliny the Younger - are
simply ignored. Laird has also tried to reach the philosophy market, with
essays on Plato (the Antichrist of poetry and rhetoric), the Stoics, and the
Epicureans, worthy studies but of marginal interest to literary scholars.
Despite this collection's many virtues, I cannot help seeing it as an
opportunity lost.
No such criticism could be addressed to the magisterial Historisches
Worterbuch der Rhetorik, which has yielded seven massive volumes at regular
intervals since 1992. The editor, Gert Ueding, like his collaborators, comes
from the University of Tubingen's Rhetoric Seminar, founded by Walter Jens
in 1967. Rhetoric had been taught there since 1481, when the founder granted
"ainem der in Oratorien lysset, dryssig guldin" - half the salary of the
doctors and lawyers (Joachim Knape, 500 Jahre Tubinger Rhetorik, 1997).
Later appointments included leading German humanists, such as Jakob Locher
(who resigned because a colleague had coined a neologism, a privilege that
Locher reserved to poets and orators), Heinrich Bebel, Philipp Melanchthon
(nicknamed "praeceptor Germaniae"), Joachim Camerarius and Martin Crusius.
The distinguished scholarly publisher Max Niemeyer, also from Tubingen, has
produced an eminently legible double-column page.
More than 400 scholars, mostly from German-speaking countries, have taken part
in this project, good editing ensuring a high degree of consistency. The
longer articles are divided into chronological periods (classical, medieval,
Renaissance, modern), each with its own bibliography.
Volume Seven (Pos-Rhet) contains several large articles, collaborations
between specialists in each period. That on "Rhetorik" (the work of two
dozen scholars) extends across 317 columns; those on "Redner, Rednerideal"
and "Rede" cover 200 and 192 columns respectively (where the austere page
design becomes rather tiring). Unusually, at least for those who deny the
German sense of humour, there is a spoof article on "Rhetograph" (that is,
"a speech-writing instrument") illustrated with a fifth-century vase
painting (a red-figure cup by Douris) of a school scene showing a seated
youth with what looks for all the world like a laptop.
The serious business of this lexicon is concerned with the history of concepts
("Begriffsgeschichte"), of institutions, processes, and even objects (a
rostra as shown on a Roman denarius by Palicanus, c48 bc), not with authors
and their works. There is no entry for Ramus, but a wide-ranging entry on
Ramism. Articles on long-extinct topics, such as the "Progymnasmata" or
graded writing exercises in Hellenistic and Renaissance schools (well
treated by Manfred Kraus), rub shoulders with entries on "Postmoderne",
"Radiorhetorik", "Quodlibet" (a musical form) and "Revolutionsrhetorik".
In addition to the central articles on rhetoric (Prolepsis, Pronuntiatio - an
excellent article by Frank Rebmann) there are substantial essays on
theological topics (Psalm, Prophetenrede, Predigt), on communication
(Presse, Propaganda, Public relations), and many other issues involving a
speaker and an audience. This lexicon adopts an appropriately eclectic
approach, following rhetorical doctrine as it has been reshaped and renewed
over the centuries. Its coverage ranges from Byzantium to America, from
Central Europe to Scandinavia and Russia. Local manifestations are registered,
such as the Protestatio de Iustitia from fifteenth- century Florence, a
speech in praise of justice and the civic order required of Signoria members
on taking office. There are descriptions of rhetorical institutions, such as
the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Dutch "Rederijkers", who produced a
hybrid form of drama, the "sinnespiel", and the "Predigergesellschaften" or
preachers' societies (comparable to the secular academies of the
Renaissance) which flourished in Germany and Switzerland in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries.
After several months' selective use, the overall level of the articles seems
very high. Some articles suffer from dense pseudo- sociological jargon,
others are admirably clear (such as H. Stauffer on "Psychagogie"). Some
address specifically German concepts, such as "Publizistik" (only partly
translatable by "journalism"), or "Produktionsesthetik". English users will
note a few omissions. The article on "Purismus" does not know of the Society
for Pure English, and while there is a brief discussion of English Oratory,
apparently there have been no English Orators. Translations of terminology
are sound, but "battle" is not the right word for "Querelle" (as in the
Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns). Trivial errors apart, this is a
wonderful digest of knowledge, with something notable on every page. It
deserves to be prominently displayed on the reference shelves of all good
libraries. Sadly, a check on COPAC, the union catalogue of the leading
twenty-seven institutional libraries in the United Kingdom and Ireland,
shows that only eight have subscribed, not including the British Library.
With two volumes outstanding, there is still time to acquire the best-ever
reference book on this ancient yet living art.
