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New approaches to ancient poetry—Theory and practice

Irene J. F. de Jong & J.P. Sullivan (eds.),Modern Critical Theory and Classical Lierature, Mnemosyne Supplementum 130 (Leiden, New York & Köln: E.K. Brill, 1994). vii + 292 pp.

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References

  1. References in parentheses are to pages of the book under review; for cross-references inside this review article “below” and “above” are added.

  2. In K. Galinsky (ed.),The Interpretation of Roman Poetry: Empiricism or Hermeneutics? (studien zur klassischen Philologie 67), Frankfurt am Main, Bern. New York, Paris 1992, Ovid is also the latest author to whom a separate study is devoted.

  3. Glenn W. Most (this volume, p. 148) broaches the problem of the scope of the literary canon in different theoretical schools.

  4. Add to the bibliography, section II.b., the Groningen Colloquia on the Novel, Vols. 1–6 (Groningen, 1988–95).

  5. But historiography (as a narrative that connects historical facts in order to build up a meaningful whole)is fiction or similar to fiction. Compare, in general, the discussion about the narrative character of historiography and, for the German-speaking world, the programmatic use of the term “Geschichtsmythos” to designate the result of historical reconstruction. For a modern theory of the fictionality of historiography cf. Hayden White,Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Baltimore 1973, Idem, Hayden White,Tropics of Discourse, Baltimore 1978, and Idem, Hayden White,The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, Baltimore 1987. The title of the German edition of White (1978),Auch Klio dichtet oder Die Fiktion des Faktischen, Stuttgart 1986 and 1991, underscores the thrust of White's argument. Cf. also, in the present volume, the pertinent remark of Most, p. 149.

  6. Galinsky (1992). Galinsky, in his Introduction, p. 3. attempts an answer to the question why “American scholarship on Roman prose authors” has, with few exceptions, “declined to less than a subsistence level.” We learn from Th. N. Habinek (ibid., Galinsky, in his Introduction, p. 239) that the working title of Galinsky's conference had been “Roman Literature: Current Trends and Future Prospects”; the reduction and restriction is due, as he suspects, to “the longstanding Romantic tendency to limit, marginalize, and aestheticize Roman studies.” Cf. E. Fantham, p. 195 in the same volume.

  7. Here I should like to thank my son Benjamin: in literary theory I owe much to his critical help and encouragement.

  8. Add to that bibliography, under the subtitle “classical application”, Susana reisz de Rivarola,Poetische Äquivalenzen. Grundverfahren dichterischer Gestaltung bei Catull (Beihefte zu Poetica. Heft 13), Amsterdam 1977, a structuralist study of Catullus, based on a combination and transformation of elements of the theories of Jakobson, Riffaterre, and Jurij Lotman.

  9. I shall discuss that problem below p. 436.

  10. This use of “modern”, catachrestic in this context, might justify itself by referring to the orginal meaning ofModernus in the late 5th century A.D. Cf. H.R. Jauss, “Literarische Tradition und genewärtiges Bewußtsein der Modernität,” in: Jauss,Literaturgeschichte als Provokation (Edition Suhrkamp 418), Frankfurt am Main 1970, p. 16.

  11. Quoting Jauss (1970). p. 15 with note 8, who quotes P. Robert,Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française, Paris 1951-64, s.v. “Modernité”, who quotes from André Gide,Les Faux-Monnayeurs (1925).

  12. However, in order to make available to the busy reader the rich information, of the introduction, I will insert references to it wherever helpful, especially in my concluding list of theories (below, p. 447 ff.).

  13. Glenn W. Most's essay “Rhetorik und Hermeneutik: Zur Konstitution der Neuzeitlichkeit,”Antike und Abendland 30 (1984), pp. 62–79 is fundamental here. Cf. also H.G. Gadamer and G. Boehm (eds.),Seminar: Philosophische Hermeneutik, Frankfurt am Main 1976; H. Flashar, K. Gründer, A. Horstmann (eds.),Philologie und Hermeneutik im 19. Jahrhundert. Zur Geschichte und Methodologie der Geisteswissenschaften, Göttingen 1979.

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  14. Cf. Jauss, l.c., “Literarische Tradition und gegenwärtiges Bewußtsein der Modernität”, in: Jauss,Literaturgeschichte als Provokation (Edition Suhrkamp 418), Frankfurt am Main 1970, p. 113, criticizing the “Philologische Metaphysik der Tradition” in E.R. Curtius,Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter, Bern 1948, Chapter 18, § 5: “Nachahmung und Schöpfung” (=Curtius,European Literature and the Middle Ages, trans. W.R. Trask, New York 1953 [reprint with new epilogue by P. Godman, Princeton 1990], Chapter 18, § 5: “Imitation and Creation”); H. Blumenberg et al. (eds.),Nachahmung und Illusion, Poetik und Hermeneutik I, Munich, first ed. 1964, second ed. 1969 (cf. program p. 7: “Prozess des Übergangs von klassischer zu moderner Kunst” both in aesthetic theory and poetical practice in connection with the “Begriffe Nachahmung und Schöpfung” from the 18th to the 19th century). For μíμνδσ cf. also Sullivan, pp. 12 and 18 sp.

  15. Cf. D. Harth, “Über die Geburt der Antike aus dem Geist der Moderne,” in this journal (IJCT) 1.1 (Summer 1994), pp. 89–106, an article the perspective of which is not directed at modern literary theory.

  16. Cf. H. Flashar (ed.),Altertumswissenschaft in den 20er Jahren. Neue Fragen und Impulse, Stuttgart 1995 (on which cf. also the forthcoming review article by H. Lloyd-Jones, this journal [IJCT] 4.4 [Spring 1998] and titles given in E.A. Schmidt, “Lateinische Philologie als hermeneutische Textwissenschaft”, in: E.-R. Schwinge (ed.),Die Wissenschaften vom Altertum am Ende des 2. Jahrtausends n. Chr., Stuttgart and Leipzig 1995, pp. 91–117;here: p. 115, n. 26.

  17. Cf. K. von Fritz, “Die neue Interpretationsmethode in der klassischen Philologie,”Neue Jahrbücher für Wissenschaft und Jugendbildung 8 (1932), pp. 339–54.

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  18. Cf. G. Schiwy,Der französische Strukturalismus. Mode, Methode, Ideologie (Rohwohlts deutsche Enzyklopädie), Reinbek bei Hamburg 1969, 2nd ed. 1984, p. 149.

  19. German translations: 1969 (extracts from both books, with second edition in 1985:Literatur und Karneval. Zur Romantheorie und Lachkultur, Munich), 1971 (Probleme der Poetik Dostoevskijs, Munich), and 1987 (Rabelais und seine Welt. Volkskultur als Gegenkultur, Frankurt am Main).

  20. Bakhtin and the Bakhtin reception should or might have been represented in our volume. There is only one entry in the General Bibliography (p. 288).; but cf. pp. 15 sq. and 23. However, discussion of his theories has been and still is lively. Cf., e.g., P. Stallybrass and A. White,The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, London 1986; D. Lodge,After Bakhtin: Essays on Fiction and Criticism, London 1990; cf. Lodge p. 4: “If [...] the 1960s was the decade of structuralism, and the 1970s the decade of deconstruction and other varieties of post-structuralism, then the 1980s have arguably been dominated by the discovery and dissemination of Mikhail Bakhtin's work.” Bakhtin's ideas are important for ancient comedy, the phenomenon of laughter, folk culture, novelistic discourse, Roman culture in general, the notions of hetero-and polyglossia. Cf. on the convergence between Erich Segal,Roman Laughter (1st ed. Cambridge, MA 1968, 2nd ed. Oxford and New York 1987) and Bakhtin's theory of laughter before his western reception, E.A. Schmidt, “Römisches Lachen,” in: G. Alföldy et al. (eds.),Römische Lebenskunst. Interdisziplinäres Kolloquium zum 85. Geburtstag von Viktor Pöschl: Heidelberg, 2.–4 Februar 1995, Heidelberg 1995, pp. 79–99; here: pp. 83–90.

  21. A young scholar, Benjamin Marius Schmidt (above n. 7) Here I should like to thank my son Benjamin: in literary theory I owe much to his critical help and encouragement. who teaches literary theory at the University of Zurich, formulated in a conversation with me: “Theorie ist kein Werkzeugkasten, aus dem Instrumente gewählt und auf Objekte angewendet werden.”

  22. Although I am talking here of literary thoery and classical scholarship I must not forget that as a rule the best instance of literary criticism we have ever come across were not written by scholars.

  23. Cf. Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth (eds.),The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, Baltimore and London 1994, s.v. “Practical Criticism” by Heather Murray, pp. 589–92.

  24. De Jong's bookNarrators and Focalizers. The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad, Amsterdam 1987, employs the full-fledged narratological theory of Bal which follows that of Genette.

  25. Cf. U. Hölscher,Die Odysee. Epos zwischen Märchen und Roman, Munich 1988; 2nd revised ed. 1989.

  26. However, I am told by a person on the verge between follower and apostate that a decon-structionist would take delight even in such an error as in a meaningful novel reading.

  27. Jacques Derrida, “Différance” (first published in 1968), in: Derrida,Marges de la philosophie, Paris 1972, pp. 1–29; English translation in: Derrida,Margins of Philosophy, trans. A. Bass, Brighton 1982, pp. 1–28; here; p. 4.

  28. N.B.: The preceding parody is not intended as a mockery of deconstructionsm per se, but is rather aimed at certain efflorescences of some fashionable deconstructionist writings: facile and silly calembours without method or truth.

  29. I do not understand why McDonald does not name Karl Kerényi's essay “Geburt und Wiedergeburt der Tragödie. Vom Ursprung der italienischen Oper zum Ursprung der griechischen Tragödie” (in: Kerényi,Streifzüge eines Hellenisten. Von Homer zu Kazantzakis [Zurich 1960], pp. 29–60) in her introduction nor why in her bibliography she has omitted Hellmut Flashar,Inszenierung der Antike. Das griechische Drama auf der Bühne der Neuzeit, Munich 1991.

  30. Before Kristeva's new term (1969) could be known, the author of this review article in his bookPoetische Reflexion. Vergils Bukolik (Munich 1972; submitted as Habilitationsschrift at the University of Heidelberg in 1969) had described the relation between Vergil and Theocritus in terms of the Russian Formalists in order to get rid of “influence” and “imitation” and to give allusions, quotations and structural coincidences their positive function.

  31. Cf. Ernst A. Schmidt, “Rudolf Borchardts Vergilfeier 1930,”Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie (1994, Heft 1), pp. 96–122; here: pp. 106 sq.

  32. The term “speech-act” was not coined by J.L. Austin (1980), as Cohen writes (p. 172), but is the English translation of the German coinage “Sprechact” by Friedrich Schleiermacher (in the first draft, of between 1810 and 1819, for his lecture course on “hermeneutics”: Fr. D. Schleiermacher,Hermeneutik, Nach den Handschriften herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Heinz Kimmerle [Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philos.-histor. Klasse, 1959, 2], Heidelberg 1959 [2nd ed., 1974], p. 58–9: “Daß der Inhalt der Anschauung beschränkt wird für eine bestimmte durch den Zusammenhang schon gegebene Sphäre. Hierher gehört a) was von dem Sprechacte unter die Formel continuo pro contentofällt...”; on the genesis of those lectures see Ada Neschke-Hentschke, “Matériaux pour une approche philologique de l'herméneutique de Schleiermacher,” in: A. Laks and A. Neschke [eds.],La naissance du paradigme herméneutique. Schleiermacher, Humboldt, Boeckh, Droysen [Cahiers de Philologie 10], Lille 1990, pp. 29–67; cf. Eadem, “Le texte de Platon entre Freidrich August Wolf (1759–1824) et Friedrich Schleiermacher (1767–1834),” ib. pp. 245–276, esp. 262 ff.) and its terminological use in the theory of language of Karl Bühler (Die Krise der Psychologie, Jena 1927, p. xvii [3rd ed., Stuttgart 1965]). Most exasperating here and in other instances is the practice in the volume to refer to a work by the year of the edition (or of an English translation) which the authors happen to have used. Note, however, that Austin developed his theory of speech-act (not in 1980, but) inHow to do things with words, Oxford 1962. Cf. article “Sprechakt” inHistorisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 9 (Basel 1995), cols. 1536–41 (W. Strube). Or, to give two other examples: Karl Marx becomes here an author of the seventies of our century (p. 72); Julia Kristeva drops a term in 1974 which she introduced in 1980 (p. 153).

  33. Speech-act theory such as expounded by Goldhill (pp. 56–60) would enable the critic also to account for the specific comical circumstances of words spoken in Plautine scenes.

  34. Samuel Johnson, “Life of Milton,” in:Milton's “Lycidas”: The Tradition and the Poem, ed. by C.A. Patrides, rev. ed., Columbia, MO, 1983, p. 60: “In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new.” Or, to refer to a recent voice, cf. P. Alpers,What is Pastoral?, Chicago and London 1996, pp. 12 sq.: “Literaryvalue consists precisely in breaking old molds, doing some kind of violence to received conventions and forms of expression.” (On Alpers' book see the present reviewer's forthcoming review article, this journal [IJCT] 5.2 [Fall 1998].)

  35. Cf. H. Weinrich (ed.),Positionen der Negativität (Poetik und Hermeneutik VI), Munich 1975 and the more recent titles given in E. A. Schmidt (1995; cf. above n. 16), “Lateinische Philologie als hermeneutische Textwissenschaft,” in: E.-R. Schwinge (ed.),Die Wissenschaften vom Altertum am Ende des 2. Jahrtausends n.Chr., Stuttgart and Leipzig 1995, pp. 104–7.

  36. Getting out of the ruts of the traditional approaches and drawing on a lyrical procedure of Horace to produce complex unities E. A. Schmidt, “∑χῆμα Horatianum,”Wiener Studien 103 (1990), pp. 57–98; here: p. 98 offers a new suggestion for solving the old problem of the unity of the Soracte ode.

  37. “Romantic”/”Romanticism” seems to be a catchword in present-day academic discourse of the U.S. Its meaning appears to be floating, not being anchored in serious historical analysis. In Galinsky (1992) the first and last papers, by J.G. Zetzel and Th. N. Habinek, use it in an utterly homonymic way; for the latter, Winckelmann and Schiller are Romantics. Cf. above note 6. Professor Haase warns me not to rebuke too severely the use of an extended and as it were universal meaning of “Romantic,” referring me to Friedrich Schlegel's developing concept of “Romantic” (cf. Alex Preminger and T.V.F. Brogan [eds.],The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poets, Princeton 1993, s.v. “Romantic and Postromantic Poetics” by Claudia Brodsky Lacour, pp. 1078 sq., 1083 sp.) as well as to Madame de Staël's notion which included Schiller and Goethe (cf. Dietrich von Engelhardt, “Romanticism in Germany,” in: Roy Porter and Mikulá Teich [eds.],Romanticism in National Context, Cambridge 1988, p. 109) and to recent serious studies on Romanticism and Goethe by, e.g., Owen Barfield or David E. Wellberry (respectivelyRomanticism Comes of Age, Middletown, CT 1986, andThe Secular Moment. Goethe's Early Lyric and the Beginnings of Romanticism, Stanford 1996); cf. also, e.g., Maurice Cranston,The Romantic Movement, Oxford & Cambridge, MA 1994, p. 24: “...Sturm und Drang, the first period of German romanticism”.

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    Ernst A. Schmidt

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Schmidt, E.A. New approaches to ancient poetry—Theory and practice. Int class trad 4, 433–449 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02686430

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