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By definition the renaissance was primarily a literary and scholarly movement derived from the literature of classical antiquity. Thus the historical, philosophical, pedagogical, and dramatic literatures of the renaissance cannot be accurately understood except in the light of...
In England the Italian interpretations of the literary criticism of Greece and Rome made slow headway against the established traditions of the middle ages. In particular the vo...
9. Chapter 9Spingarn has carefully traced the introduction of the theories of poetry formulated by the Italian critics into England at the end of the sixteenth century. It is the purpose of...
10. Chapter 10To say that poetry has a moral effect on the reader is not the same as to say that moral improvement is the purpose of poetry. The following section of this historical study wil...
3. Chapter 3A survey of what Aristotle includes in his _Poetics_, what he excludes, and what he ignores, will be a helpful initial step in an investigation of what he meant by poetic. Five...
6. Chapter 6The seven liberal arts of mediaeval education carried the blending almost to the absorption of poetic by rhetoric, and the debasement of rhetoric itself to a consideration of st...
7. Chapter 7But among serious people the painted and perfumed Dame Rethoryke of Lydgate and Hawes was in disrepute. She had turned over her business in life to the kings and devoted too muc...
4. Chapter 4The importance of rhetoric in ancient education and public life is reflected in the wealth of rhetorical treatises composed by classical orators and teachers of oratory. An unde...
11. Chapter 11With the breaking up of the Empire the stream of classical culture was restricted to a narrow channel--the Church. Opposed as it was to pagan morals and theology, the church cou...
5. Chapter 5The coincidence of rhetoric and poetic is in style. They differ typically in movement or composition; they have a common ground in diction. And in this common ground each influe...
12. Chapter 12In his study of the function of poetry in the literary criticism of the Italian renaissance, Spingarn has shown[339] that the characteristic opinions reflect the ideas of Horace...
8. Chapter 8In concluding his authoritative study, _A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance_, Spingarn asserts that before the sixteenth century, "Poetic theory had been nourishe...
1. Chapter 1By definition the renaissance was primarily a literary and scholarly movement derived from the literature of classical antiquity. Thus the historical, philosophical, pedagogical...
2. Chapter 2object of this division is not to make an abstract distinction between nature and purpose. Such a distinction cannot, of course, be made. It is to approach the subject first fro...