Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T01:02:27.412Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

46 - Cosmography and poetics

from STRUCTURES OF THOUGHT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Fernand Hallyn
Edited by
Glyn P. Norton
Glyn P. Norton
Affiliation:
Williams College, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

Cosmography or the description of the constitution of the world, comprising astronomy as well as geography, is related to poetics either by analogy (poems being taken as metaphors of the cosmos, the object of cosmography) or by exposition (in poetry aiming partially or totally at practising the writing of cosmography). Both relations will be considered here, as well as some effects of the scientific revolution on them. Since it is, of course, impossible to be exhaustive, only some of the most representative texts will be mentioned and broad characteristics will be highlighted, rather than specific differences.

The analogy between cosmos and logos, establishing unity and harmonious variety as the basic rules of classical rhetoric and poetics, is already present in Plato. Augustine develops this analogy in a variety of influential texts. Among the other ancient sources, Macrobius, who stressed the similarity between Virgil's poetry and God's Creation (Saturnales V.1.19–20), is one of the most important. In the early Renaissance, the theme reappears in many prescriptions for artistic variety, also inspired by the Byzantine tradition following Hermogenes and ‘imported’ into Italy by George of Trebizond. Angelo Poliziano, for example, developed in detail the Macrobian comparison between Virgil's work and God's Creation in his ‘Manto’ (1482, lines 351–67), where the vivid descriptions of the poet's text are said to mirror the most ‘variegated species’ [discors facies] of the beauty of the world. Many Renaissance authors claimed a similar beauty for their works. The theme of poetry as an analogue of the world because of Its ‘energetic’ descriptions and the Concordia discors of their variety is repeated by Vida (De arte poetica, III.64–75), Ronsard (‘Elégie à Des Masures’, 1–13), Vauquelin de La Fresnaye (Art poétique, III.659–75), Tasso (Discorsi del poema eroico), and others.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism , pp. 442 - 448
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

A. Buck Scaliger, , Poetices libri septem, ed. (1561; facs. reprint Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: F. Frommann, 1964)Google Scholar
Balavoine, C. and Laurens, P. (ed.), La statue et l'empreinte: la poétique de Scaliger, Paris: Vrin, 1986.Google Scholar
Baxandall, Michael, Giotto and the orators: humanist observers of painting in Italy and the discovery of pictorial composition, 1350–1450, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Brisson, L., ‘Le discours comme univers et l'univers comme discours. Platon et ses interprètes néo-platoniciens’, Le texte et ses représentations, (Paris, Presses de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure 1987).Google Scholar
Colletet, Guillaume, Traité de la poésie morale et sententieuse, in L'art poétique, Paris: A. de Sommaville and L. Chamhoudry, 1658 [Facs. reprint, Geneva: Slatkine, 1970].Google Scholar
ECe, B., Dichtung und Lehre: Untersuchungen zur Typologie des antiken Lehrgedichts (Munich: Beck, 1977)Google Scholar
Galand-Hallyn, P., ‘Discours-nature et naturel du style chez Politien et Ronsard’, in Les yeux de l'éloquence: poétiques humanistes de l' évidence, (Caen:Paradigme 1994).Google Scholar
Hallyn, F.Le sens des formes: études sur la Renaissance, Geneva: Droz, 1994 [See esp. section III, ‘Poésie scientifique’].Google Scholar
Hallyn, F., ‘Port-Royal et Tesauro: signe, figure, sujet’, Baroque 9–10 (1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heninger, S. K. Jr.Touches of sweet harmony: Pythagorean cosmology and Renaissance poetics, San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1974.Google Scholar
Keller, L.Palingène, Ronsard, Du Bartas: trois études sur la poésie cosmologique de la Renaissance, Berne: Francke, 1974.Google Scholar
Landino, Cristoforo [Christophorus Landinus], Comento sopra la Comedia di Dante (1481), in Scritti critici e teorici, ed. Cardini, R., vol. I, Rome: Bulzoni, 1974.Google Scholar
Panofsky, Erwin, Idea: a concept in art theory, trans. Peake, J., Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1968.Google Scholar
Piccolomini, Alessandro, Poetica d'Aristotele (Venice: G. Guariseo, 1575).Google Scholar
Roellenbleck, G.Das epische Lehrgedicht Italiens im fünfzehnten und sechzehnten Jarhundert: ein Beitrag zur Literaturgeschichte des Humanismus und der Renaisance, Munich: W. Fink, 1975.Google Scholar
Rostvig, M. S. ‘Ars aeterna: Renaissance poetics and theories of divine creation’, Mosaïc 3 (1969–70).Google Scholar
Salutati, Coluccio, De laboribus Herculis, ed. Ullman, B. L., Zurich: Thesaurus Mundi, 1951.Google Scholar
Scaliger, , Poetices libri septem, ed. Buck, A. (1561, facs. reprint Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: F. Frommann 1964).Google Scholar
Schmidt, Albert-Marie, La poésie scientifique en France au seizième siècle, Paris: A. Michel, 1938.Google Scholar
Tasso, Torquato, Discorsi dell'arte poetica et del poema eroico, ed. Poma, L., Bari: Laterza, 1964.Google Scholar
Tesauro, E.Il cannocchiale Aristotelico, Venice: Milocho, 1682 [1670; facs. reprint Bad Homburg: Gehlen, 1968, ed. Buck, A.].Google Scholar
Tigerstedt, E. N. ‘The poet as creator: origins of a metaphor’, Comparative literature studies 5, 4 (1968).Google Scholar
Tyard, Pontus, Le premier curieux, ed. Lapp, J. C., Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1950.Google Scholar
Vida, Girolamo, De arte poetica, ed. and trans. Williams, R. G., New York: Columbia University Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Weinberg, Bernard, A history of literary criticism in the Italian Renaissance, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961, 2 vols. [See esp. vol. I, pp. 71–249 on readings of Aristotle and Horace].Google Scholar
Wilson, D.French Renaissance scientific poetry, London: Athlone Press, 1974.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×