Muses of One Mind: The Literary Analysis of Experience and Its Continuity

by Wesley Trimpi

Overview

Describing how ancient discussions of literature borrowed their descriptive terms from mathematical, philosophical, and rhetorical disciplines, Wesley Trimpi shows that when any one of these three types of discourse was sacrificed to one or both of the other two, the resulting imbalance proved destructive to literary discourse. Preoccupation with exhortatory (rhetorical) intention reduced literary works to displays of eloquence or ideology; preoccupation with cognitive (philosophical) intention led to didacticism; and preoccupation with formal (mathematical) excellence resulted in "aesthetic" expression for its own sake. In tracing the relationship of the three disciplines to literary discourse through the Middle Ages, this work diagnosis the increase of such reductive preoccupations after the Neoplatoic reconstruction of classical literary theory. Since 1600 these imbalances have continued to exist, obscured by proliferating and competing "theories" and "methods" of literary interpretation. Taking theoria in the ancient sense of "inclusive observation," Professor Trimpi points to an alternative to contemporary critical orthodoxies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608991556
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	11/01/2009
Pages:	436
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Wesley Trimpi is Emeritus Professor of English at Stanford University

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xix

Part 1 Literary Discourse and the Ancient Hypothesis of Fiction

1 'Literary Discourse': Muses of One Mind 5

A Plato and Isocrates 11

B Plato and Aristotle 17

C Lucian: The Double Indictment 21

2 The Hypothesis of Literary Discourse 25

A The Rhetorical Hypothesis 28

B The Hypotheses of Geometry and Moral Dialectic 35

C The Dramatic Hypothesis: Aristotle's Poetics 50

D Mimetic Probability 59

3 The Literary Thesis 64

4 Summary and Conclusion of Part One 73

Part 2 Knowledge and Representation: The Philosophical Premises of Literary Decorum

5 The Cognitive Conditions of Literary Representation 87

6 The Ancient Dilemma of Knowledge and Representation 97

A The Horns of the Dilemma 97

B Plato's Sophist 106

C Aristotle: The Two Forms of Intelligibility 116

7 Cognition and Decorum 130

A Intelligibility and Psychagogia 130

B 'Longinus' on the Most Excellent Style 143

C Dio Chrysostom: 'On Man's First Conception of God' 155

8 The Neoplatonic Reconstruction of Literary Theory 164

A Plotinus 166

1 Similarity and Identity 166

2 Knowledge: Purity and Extension 175

3 Representation: Discourse and Vision 183

4 Decorum: Quality, Praxis, and Power 193

B Proclus 200

1 The Commentary on Euclid's Elements 203

2 The Commentary on Plato's Republic 210

C The Neoplatonic Transmission of the Ancient Dilemma 219

9 Summary and Conclusion of Part Two 229

Part 3 The Quality of Fiction: The Rhetorical Transmission of Literary Theory

10 The Concept of Quality 245

A Thesis and Qualitas 247

B Fiction and the Status Qualitatis 252

C Status and the Apprehension of 'Quality' 258

D Quality, Equity, and Poetry 266

E The Hypothesizing Image and the Problem of Interpretation 275

11 Rhetoric and the Structure of Fiction 285

A Fiction and the disputatio in utramque partem 287

B Argumentum: Analysis and Synthesis 296

12 Declamation and the Early Exercises 306

A Declamation 307

B The Early Exercises 321

13 Capellanus and Boccaccio: From Questions to Novella 328

14 Summary and Conclusion of Part Three: The commune vinculum of Quality 345

A The Death of Paolo and Francesca 349

B The Spirit and the Letter 352

Synopis 363

Appendices 371

Index 393

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"In this book Wesley Trimpi has succeeded in transforming our knowledge of the theory of narrative in the Classical world by presenting a tightly argued and extremely learned analysis of ancient poetic theory. It is a major contribution to our understanding of ancient narrative and its theory with important contributions to the history of the subject in the West. By indirection the book is a serious critique of contemporary literary approaches to narrative. It is a major achievement."
—Morton W. Bloomfield,
Harvard University

Editorial Reviews

"In this book Wesley Trimpi has succeeded in transforming our knowledge of the theory of narrative in the Classical world by presenting a tightly argued and extremely learned analysis of ancient poetic theory. It is a major contribution to our understanding of ancient narrative and its theory with important contributions to the history of the subject in the West. By indirection the book is a serious critique of contemporary literary approaches to narrative. It is a major achievement."
—Morton W. Bloomfield,
Harvard University

From the Publisher