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This book elucidates the poetics of Philodemus of Gadara, a first century BCE Epicurean philosopher and poet, whose
On Poems survives in extensive fragments among the Herculaneum papyri. It relies on new editions of the primary sources to reconstruct a poetics focused on form and content.
List of contents
- Table of Contents
- Introduction: Philodemus and his prolepsis of the good poem
- 1. Epicurean poetics before Philodemus
- 2. Philodemus' terminology and opponents
- 3. Poetry as techne and the use of poetry
- 4. Form and content
- 5. The judgment of poems and their psychological effect
- 6. Conclusions
- 7. Appendix: An Epicurean critical miscellany
About the author
Michael McOsker is an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellow at the Universität zu Köln and, with David Armstrong, editor and translator of Philodemus' On Anger.
Summary
This book elucidates the poetics of Philodemus of Gadara, a first century BCE Epicurean philosopher and poet, whose On Poems survives in extensive fragments among the Herculaneum papyri. Although his treatise was primarily polemical and lacks positive exposition, his views are often recoverable from a careful reading of the debates, occasional direct evidence, and attention to his basic Epicurean commitments.
His main critical principle is that form and content are inseparable and mutually-reinforcing: a change in one means a change in the other. The poet uses this marriage of form and content to create the psychological effect of the poem in the audience. This effect is hard to pin down exactly. Poems produce "additional thoughts" in the audience, and these entertain them. It seems clear that Philodemus expected good poets to arrange form and content suggestively, so that the poems could exert a lasting pull on the minds of the audience.
Additionally, this book summarizes the views of Philodemus' opponents, the technical terminology of literary criticism in the Hellenistic period, and the history of Epicureanism's engagement with poetics. Epicurus did not write an On Poems but Metrodorus did, and this is probably Philodemus' touchstone for his own views. Zeno of Sidon, Demetrius Laco, Siro, and other Epicureans are examined as well. The book concludes with an appendix of topics examined by Philodemus, such as genre, mimesis, "appropriateness," utility, and various technical terms.
Additional text
McOsker's book offers a splendid survey and critical account of Epicurean poetics, from the master himself down to our most important source for its entire tradition, Philodemus of Gadara, whose own poems are not only taken into account in McOsker's study of the theories, but are also treated as poems in their own right. Anybody interested in Hellenistic (and hence Latin) literary theory will want to read this book.
