Essays on the Study and Use of Poetry by Plutarch and Basil the GreatFrederick Morgan Padelford |
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Achaians Achilles actions ADDRESS TO YOUNG admiration Aeschylus Agamemnon Ajax anger Aristotle artistic Athens base Basil beautiful Bergk better body called character charm Christian Chrysippus Cicero Cleanthes deeds Diogenes Diogenes Laertius Diomedes divine doctrines emotion Epaminondas essay on poetry Eurip Euripides excellence expression fear fiction Fortune give Gnosticism gods Gregory heart Hector Hesiod Homer Ibid ideas imitative art judgment king learning lest Meineke Menander ment mind moral nature Nauck Odys Odysseus one's pagan passage passion Peripatetic Phaeacians Philemon Holland philosophy Plato pleasure Plutarch Plutarch's theory poem poet poetic poetry praise Ps.-Plutarch Pythagoras reason relation of poetry reproach riches says Schlemm Scriptures self-control sentiments shame Sophocles soul Sthenelus Stoics study of poetry Study Poetry teach thee Thersites things thou thought tragedy translation Trojans truth utter verily verses viii virtue wealth Wherefore wisdom wise wont words writings youth Zeus καὶ τὸν
Popular passages
Page 54 - Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative ; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.
Page 34 - For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a quality. Now character determines men's qualities, but it is by their actions that they are happy or the reverse.
Page 2 - Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated.
Page 42 - I became, to my best memory, so much a proficient that if I found those authors anywhere speaking unworthy things of themselves, or unchaste of those names which before they had extolled, this effect it wrought with me; from that time forward their art I still applauded, but the men I deplored...
Page 35 - Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history, for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular. By the universal, I mean how a person of a certain type will on occasion speak or act, according to the law of probability or necessity; and it is this universality at which poetry aims in the names she attaches to the personages.
Page 10 - And when the boy has learned his letters, and is beginning to understand what is written, as before he understood only what was spoken, they put into his hands the works of great poets, which he reads...
Page 34 - The Plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy: Character holds the second place.
Page 35 - As therefore, in the other imitative arts, the imitation is one when the object imitated is one, so the plot, being an imitation of an action, must imitate one action and that a whole, the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed.
Page 3 - Again, since Tragedy is an imitation of persons who are above the common level, the example of good portrait-painters should be followed. They, while reproducing the distinctive form of the original, make a likeness which is true to life and yet more beautiful.
Page 55 - language embellished," I mean language into which rhythm, "harmony," and song enter. By "the several kinds in separate parts," I mean, that some parts are rendered through the medium of verse alone, others again with the aid of song.