The reception of Homer in early modern France (16th-17th centuries) reveals how classical authorities were not simply accepted but actively debated and reinterpreted through competing literary frameworks. The Homer Quarrel between figures like Dar de Lamot and Anne Dacier exemplifies this dynamic, where ancient texts served as vehicles for modern literary theories rather than absolute authorities. The controversy centered on fundamental questions about epic poetry's purpose—whether it should celebrate grand heroic action or convey moral allegorical lessons—demonstrating that literary criticism in this period was characterized by competing interpretations of classical sources rather than clear-cut divisions between ancients and moderns.
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A Querela sobre Homero na história da crítica: Thiago Santana (Stanford Univ.)Ajouté :
Good evening, everyone. It's a joy to be with you all here today, live on YouTube. We are continuing the course "Studying the Ancient Greeks in the Contemporary World." Today we have a special guest, Thiago Nunes Santana, who is a long- time friend. We have work in the field of literature, literary studies, there's perhaps something common to the decade, right, Thaago? I think it's something like that. Next to it is also a picture of a beloved professor and colleague, Nabio Araújo.
Well, I welcome Thiago. I'll present it shortly, but I'll explain right away to those who are following us that the idea of having Thiago with us here today was precisely so that we could have a different perspective from the one we've been following in the course. The course is based on Homer's Gospel, offering a different perspective on the history of classical studies. And whenever possible, I include the main references that this book relies on. We've been discussing this material, but today, in this transition we're making from the ancient period, specifically Homer in the Hellenistic period, to modernity, I thought it would be interesting to start with a different perspective, and that's why Thiago is here. So, Thiago, I'll pass the word to you to welcome the audience. Make yourself at home.
Good evening, everyone. Hey Rafael, uh, everyone listening, uh, thank you so much for the invitation.
I'm very happy for many reasons, right?
Well, firstly because, as you said, we've had this partnership for many years. Rafael and I are more or less contemporaries in the graduate program at UFMG.
Well, while he was doing his doctorate, I was doing my master's, and so, coincidentally, our interests were very similar at that time. And we started this work together which, as Rafael said, is now approaching 10 years, right? Oh, I'm also very happy to be able to revisit my master's thesis, because the class I'm going to teach today is more or less based on my thesis, which was defended in 2020 at UFMG. Well, I loved revisiting this text because it had been quite a while, and I think there are things here that, even unconsciously, because we hadn't talked about it, resonate with the ideas that came to your book, which was recently published.
So that's it. I think we're going to have a really great conversation here today.
Great, Thago. So, uh, welcoming the audience that's already been following us, we're getting close to 20 people. Well, this recording will be available on YouTube, so for those who are watching synchronously, all you have to do is fill out the attendance list and prove that you followed the conversation, right?
Well, without further ado, I present Thiago Nunes Santana, who holds a bachelor's degree in Letters from UFMG and a master's degree in literary studies from the same institution. You just heard that the dissertation he defended at UFMG is about the topic he's going to address today. Furthermore, he holds a master's degree in Lusophone Literatures and Cultures from the University of Minnesota in the United States, where he is currently a doctoral student—I mean, in the United States, because he is a doctoral student at Stanford University—in the field of comparative literature. So, uh, welcome, Thago. The floor is all yours. I'm going to put your presentation online here. Make yourself comfortable enough for a presentation of about an hour.
It's OK? Thank you, Rafael. Well, uh, I think I could start by outlining what I want to talk about, that is, trying to contextualize in a general way the reception of Homer between the 10th and 15th centuries, but especially the 16th century. That was the main subject of my dissertation, right? Homer in 16th-century France, in the first half of the 16th century, at a very strange time, right? What about that date I put in the title, between 1714 and 1715? It's precisely because that's when you already see a kind of decline from, let's say, the high French classicism, right? Corné, Molier, Racinos, they've all either died or are almost dead. King Louis XV himself died during that period. Ah, and even this moment doesn't quite reach that heroic enlightenment of Rousseau's Volta, which they would only write about a few decades later.
Actually, Volta's earliest writings date back to around 1715 or 1716. He returned in a few decades. The sun will only begin to write in the middle of the 16th century. So this place is very uncomfortable, right? Therefore, I would say that it is understudied. Do you have any classic books about that period in France? Perhaps the best known is Paul Azar's book, called Crisis of the European Conscience, a classic that is quite old, but still important.
But for some reason, perhaps for that reason, that period, that specific aspect has always interested me. And I wanted to understand what changes occur during that period while writing the dissertation. And so, as much as possible, I'm going to engage in dialogue with the chapter in Rafael's book that focuses on this subject, on the reception of Oero during this period, so that we can try to piece together something, you know?
Well, I think the first thing we have to pay attention to when we think about what Homer represented in that period, in French classicism, or in the neoclassical period, is that Homer went through long centuries of silence throughout the history of Europe, or at least Western Europe, right? After the end of antiquity, Homer lost the central role he had in the education of Europe, giving way to other authors, perhaps most notably Virgil. Well, we find very little material about Homer in what we call the Middle Ages or even the Renaissance. Even in what we call the Renaissance, it's difficult to find anything about Homer at least before, let's say, the second half of the 10th century. Before that, that is, in the 10th century, the first half of the 16th century, we encounter a strange silence, because we're used to the figure of Homer as this, exactly this central figure, right, who organizes and is considered the point of origin of what we can call Western literature, right? So, this long silence is something that feels very strange.
Well, it's silent, but it's not absolute silence. We can say that, for example, from the 11th century onwards, you will have some material about Homer, coming mainly from Byzantine thinkers who emigrated to Italy, to Western Europe, particularly to Italy, right? There are several figures that could fit into what I'm trying to describe, so some material will be produced about Homer there. One obvious obstacle to accessing Homer's texts was the language barrier. None of the texts were translated, so the translation of Homer's two poems, the Aeliad and the Odyssey, would become, from that period onwards, more or less, but especially from the 11th century onwards, a central problem for European intellectuals, wouldn't you agree?
I'll talk about the translations in a moment. Ah, Homer's first impression, it's late, more or less late. It dates back to almost the 10th century, to the very end of the 15th century. H, although some centrality of Greek had already been prioritized by figures prior to that moment, right?
We have, for example, news that, and this is even in Rafael's book, Petrarch took Greek lessons, even though he wasn't, uh, he wasn't able to read Homer in Greek. There's a short passage from it that I'll read in a little while. The same can be said about the boccatium as early as the 11th century. Oh, sorry. Well, as I was saying, the first impression of Homer was from 148, but before that you already had, evidently, knowledge of Homer's centrality in antiquity, whether through Latin references, indirect references, uh, the master of Virgil, [clearing throat] right, and so on, or through the arrival of these Byzantine teachers who were going to teach, uh, especially in Florence.
Ah, because of these professors, in the 15th century, the little that is discussed about Homer is very much limited to allegorical readings of Homer, right? There's a very long tradition, right? Since antiquity, you've had this tendency to think of Homer allegorically, but in that specific context we can think of him, but trying to reconcile, right, Homer's poetry with Christianity in a general way, right? right? Ah, the first known translation of Homer into Latin is that of Leocius Pilate, uh, from the transition between the 10th and 15th centuries. It's a translation into Latin and in prose, and it's an adverbial translation, as they say, right? It's almost word for word, with very specific intentions of making that text accessible to a wider audience of European humanists of that time.
Although, during this transition from the 11th to the 15th century, through the influence of these Byzantine authors, of which there are many, interest in the figure of Homer and in Homer's texts grows exponentially, right? So, for example, Coluto, salutate, a very important humanist of that period, is responsible for inviting a Byzantine—if I'm not mistaken, yes, a Byzantine—named Manuel Chrysoloras, to teach Greek at the University of Florence, which he did for four years and was fundamental in transmitting the most elementary ideas about the allegorical interpretation of Homer, which would be decisive in the 10th century, especially after the—I would n't say hegemony, but the great importance of Neoplatonism in Italy, right? If we consider Marcílio Fitino, Cristófero Landino, Cristóphero Landino, incidentally, responsible for the hegemonic reading in terms of allegory of Virgil's Aenide. So, in this very fertile ground for this type of interpretation of Homer, first comes the printing press, then these first translations into Latin, and then, from the second half of the 15th century onwards, various attempts at verse-to-prose translation became more or less common, right? You have the translation of a detre, some names are epigonal, totally forgotten. I'll just go over the names quickly here, but I wouldn't say they're that important, except perhaps for, well, people who specifically study these translations.
Ah, Deembrio, Lourenço Vala, he's really important, isn't he? A humanist who revolutionized dialectical thought and the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy in the 15th and 16th centuries. Politano, also fundamental, perhaps the greatest authority on poetry in the 15th century, in the second half of the 15th century.
And so on. However, as I said, another way to access the name of Homer, to understand the importance of Homer, was through references to Virgil, some of Horace, Macrobius, Boethius, already in late antiquity, and also Aristotle, Aristotle's poetics. But here we have to make a very important footnote, because it is coincidentally Aristotle's poetics that gains notoriety and popularity among Italian humanists. Around the same time that Homer was rediscovered by Europe, right? So, the first translation, for example, of Aristotle's Poetics, that you know of, is from the 1550s, in the 10th century. So, there was a tendency to think of Homer without Aristotle, right? Which is very interesting because in the French Homer's quarrel, Aristotle is going to be the central figure, right?
Ah, so that's it. As I was saying about translations, even before the first translations into Latin, you had a more or less in-depth reflection on the relationship between Greek and Latin.
In his interactions with Dante, he already mentions this. I'm reading the translation here, okay?
Therefore, let everyone know that nothing that has been harmonized through musical connection can be transferred from one language to another without breaking all its sweetness and harmony. And that is why it was not translated from Greek into Latin, like the other writings we received from them. Here you can already see the lack of familiarity that humanists, specifically Italian ones, had with Greek. This will change throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, but in that first period with Dante, after Petrarch and Boccatti, those first generations, ah, the Greek text is still practically inaccessible, right? And besides, because of the influx of information about Homer through the Latin route, there was a very strong tendency to compare the Homeric text, the Homeric poems, with Virgil's work, which already had centuries, millennia of commentaries and translations, and which is exactly the opposite of Homer, right? In other words, you had an absolutely consolidated tradition of Virgilian criticism. On one side and on the other, a Homer who, finally, was beginning to be rediscovered.
It's interesting, I just remembered that, here I mentioned companionship, but in the Divine Comedy, in a very famous passage in limbo, right, where Dante meets four ancient poets, if I'm not mistaken, uh, Ovid, Lucan, Horace, and Homer.
He's described as a sovereign poet, right, the supreme poet, but he doesn't speak a single word throughout the poem in that passage, or anywhere else. Whereas Virgil, who is his guide, when he is found by Merol, obviously Virgil recites the entire poem, but when he is found he says that Dante speaks, right, that his voice was somewhat hoarse or weak due to the many centuries of silence, but even so, Virgil's voice can be heard in the comedy, right, whereas Homer's cannot, right?
So on one side you have at least one poet who is present in some way, which is Virgil, and his relationship with the Aeneid throughout those centuries. On the other hand, you have a Homer who is practically inaccessible, right, for many reasons, but above all because of the language. By the way, Homer's texts were accessible, okay? Uh, I wrote down some information somewhere that I found very interesting, but I can't find it now. I believe that in 1475, in a survey of the works and documents present in the Vatican library, there were approximately 10 manuscripts of the Iliad and four of the Odyssey. This was in 1475.
Therefore, from a material point of view, the text was accessible. It just wasn't from a linguistic point of view, you know, from the reading perspective.
So, still on this issue of the relationship between Homer and Virgil, I wanted to quote a passage about the constant comparisons that tended to belittle Homer in favor of Virgil, right? Well, precisely because of a very long tradition of critical commentary that established the art of poetry, starting largely with Virgil, right?
I wanted to read a passage, exactly from the Salutat that I referred to earlier in a letter to a certain Antônio L.
Look how telling this is. He's going to talk, he had plans. Antonio L had plans to translate Homer into Latin verse, mind you, not Latin prose. So he wanted to do a poetic translation, which changes everything, because here he enters the same, let's say, hermeneutical field as Virgil, right? So listen to what he's going to say. I rejoice, my dearest son, because after you have in your possession a translation of the Iliad, albeit a barbaric and unrefined one in Latin prose, you deemed it appropriate to polish it and wish to translate this divine work into heroic Latin verse. Now, in our time, a young poet is emerging who will wrest from Homer not just a small verse, but several more, which constituted Virgil's glory, even amidst the barking of his rivals, but will claim for himself the entire Iliad, its charm most splendid, and will transform it from a poem dressed in a Greek robe into one adorned in a Roman toga, or rather, from a traditional, bloodless, and unadorned translation into a most refined and ornate poem, right? In other words, he wants to take the Greek cloak off Homer and put a Roman toga on him, he wants to give him that Vigilian attire. This is very interesting about the initial reception of Homer in Europe.
Then we have a list starting from the 10th century, as I've already referred to, regarding translations of Politians; most of them are translations of translations of fragments, or of a canto, or of one or two cantos, or of half of it. The truly systematic translations of Homer's poems only really happened in the 10th century, right? In France, Yugalel's work will be published in 1545, the first half of the Iliad, which will only be completed in 157 with the other poems, with, excuse me, with the rest of the second half of the Iliad, right? The Odyssey would be translated in the following decades. Just so you have an idea, the first translation of the Iliad into English dates from 1611.
So, until the 17th century, Homer's poetry had not entered England, at least not in the form of a translation. The first German woman is from 1610 and so on.
So, this is for you to see how this process of canonizing an author within the context of classicism happens very gradually and based on criteria that are also gradual, that are also being built up; the criteria are not given, right, for the centrality of what America will acquire over the next few years. Okay, okay, I've set aside a discussion that I don't think we'll have time to do, so I'll skip ahead to how authorities in general, you know, authorities in the plural, were understood in that period, the whole imitative paradigm, everything that represented imitation, and how some quarrels, some controversies, public debates in various European countries throughout the centuries of the Renaissance, debated what this meant, what authorities meant, what their importance was for the poetic and rhetorical practice of that time. I had set aside a very interesting debate about the centrality of Cicero, right? It is also known as the Ciceronian controversy. There are several very important figures involved, right, among them in the early years of the 10th century Pietro Bembo, a central figure of that period in the study of poetry in Italy. Jean Francesco Pico de la Mirandula, not to be confused with Pico de la Mirandola, the famous one; this one is his uncle, but also an important humanist. I [snoring] won't go through those quotes because otherwise I won't have time to talk about everything later, but I, ah, and obviously Erasmus, right, who wrote his Ciceronian dialogue in 1526, uh, which aims to combat, this text was translated into Portuguese a few years ago, [snoring] uh, which aims to combat, uh, what they call, the Erasmonians, simple Ciceronians, right?
I mean, those who imitate Cicero's words and not those who imitate that res, you know, that poetic thing that goes beyond that verbal expression, right? This is the core of it all here, imitation not as what Erasmus would call serial imitation, but rather as that which goes beyond the given text and manages to glimpse, through a gesture or an eclectic posture, that can identify in various authors what is worth imitating or not.
[snoring] Uh, well, that's the distance between those two postures, right? On one side, the Ciceronians, the simple Ciceronians; on the other side, those, let's say, eclectic ones. The image that Erasmus uses to refer to what he understands by imitation is very interesting, retrieved from CNECA, right, which is the image of a bee, right, that collects pollen from various different flowers, right, and from that produces, right, its honey, which is, well, this image is from CNECA, but it is used to think about imitation that goes beyond the imitation of words, right, or the verb.
Erasmus will say that the main point of his argument is that Cicero is a pagan, right? So you can't imitate all of Cicon's references, because depending on what you imitate there, you might be doing something very wrong. Furthermore, there are some hilarious passages in this text, because it goes on to say that Cicero makes mistakes in Latin, and sometimes people imitate those Latin mistakes. You can imagine, right? It's Erasmo saying that it's an interesting thing about this text; it's translated into Portuguese, in case you're interested.
Well, all of this involving the discussion about authorities in the 10th century can be encapsulated in a text by Scaliger, right? Julius Caesar, Scaliguer is his Latin name, its Portuguese version, in his commentaries on Aristotle's poetics, in which he exalts Virgil in opposition to Homer. For him, Homer represented everything unsophisticated you could imagine, everything barbaric, you know, that you could think of in terms of poetry, and then Virgil takes that and polishes it, you know, and turns it into this marvelous poetry. I will read only a few passages concerning the commentary on the poetic art of the scaligenist. For example, Homer poured, Virgil gathered. Homer scattered, Virgil organized.
Virgil no. Homer has talent, but his art is rudimentary.
Virgil doesn't seem to have imitated Homer, but he does seem to have taught him how he should have said things, right? And here's a passage I wanted to read from that same book, right? Oops. Ah, this is where I jumped.
Homer proposes things that are bare, plebeian, available to any ingenuity or talent, right? Engenium. Simple, just begun and not perfect, weak, very tenuous, extremely light. inept, dry, or the word he uses is yeuna, right?
Translated here as dry, awful, foolish, false, childish, languid, artless, affectionless, old women's trifles, dry little words, extremely harsh thoughts, etc. In contrast to that, obviously, there was the highly formalized and codified sophistication, according to the critical canon, of what was understood as poetry up to that point in Ineida's work. Okay? Well, this here is, obviously, I wouldn't say [clearing throat] that it's a direct consequence of the controversies regarding authority that will happen a few decades earlier, but it's at least another symptom of the spirit of the times, right? You have at least different ways of thinking about authority that are debated there according to Cicero, according to Pietro Bembo, or according to Dian Francesco Pico della Mirandula. All good? [snoring] Perhaps Scaligerus at this moment is the great anti-Homeric figure and somehow provides material that can be understood as a spiritual predecessor to Homer's Quarrel, right?
Well, all of this is in accordance with the rules. I'm not going to read it; I have here a whole reflection regarding the transformations, the epistemological premises that underpin what we can somewhat anachronistically call literary criticism at this moment. I'm not going to go into too much detail because otherwise it'll be a never-ending topic, right?
But what I wanted to emphasize is that, in addition to this variation or variety of ways for us to understand the classical authorities, you can also consider the typological and epistemological changes that are happening at this moment with regard to treatises on poetics. And I would say that the reception of Aristotle's poetics will be central here, more or less in the 10th century, between, let's say, 1500 and 1640, which is when what I call French heroic classicism begins, that great classicism of the great authors of French classicism.
[snoring] Ah, eh, eh, I'm using an article here by a professor from the University of Strasbourg named Henrique Sanin, an article from 2012, which argues that the reception of Homer's poetics in the 10th century underwent a transformation that went from a type of commentary with that name, commentary in Latin, commentaries, right, which resembles medieval glosses, for example, it resembles, we can even think of it spatially, right, a text in the center and an attempt to elucidate the text in the margins, this will gradually transform into treatises on poetry, which is different, they are different. They cease to be comments and become expositions, they become, uh, I have here exactly the terms she uses, explanations. Francesco Robortelo, an important humanist of the 10th century, would write explanations of Homer's poetics. Castelvetro will write the exposition of Amero's poetics. And so it goes. Gradually you start to realize that throughout the 10th century, the classical text gives way to a naturalization of that classical text, as if it were expressing a truth that lies beyond itself, right? In other words, the classic text merely reveals a truth.
Aristotle, these are Zanine's words. Aristotle is one wise man among many others. He saw certain specific elements. There's nothing inherent in Aristotle's text that says, you know, or that overrides a usage—here we begin to see more of a rational evaluation of literature—that this word is used. I would say that it begins a kind of rise of literary reason that will consolidate in the 10th century and then, excuse me, in the 16th century, and that it will collapse, you know, with Romanticism, the transitional century from the 11th to the 10th. [snoring] Uh, I think that's very clear, is n't it? And, well, this escalates, right, in France, starting in the 19th century, with the enormous influence of Cartesian philosophy, this process becomes more radical, right? In other words, the clarity of ideas in the discourse on method will be transposed into poetic ideas, right? So, it's very interesting because the classic criteria for evaluating poetry are very... scattered across various different texts, from various different eras.
They can often be contradictory.
You have a combination of rhetoric and poetic art that produces other problems, right? What this typological transformation that I'm trying to outline does is attempt to organize these bodies, or these corpora, because there are various bodies, various different corpora, and organize them into poetic arts. So, this is poetic art, this is poetic art. But the consequence of this type of transformation is precisely the possibility that you've dealt with your competitors, right? dealing with competitors regarding the same classic corpus. That's what's interesting, isn't it?
You have there several interpretations that claim, one against the other, the truth of literary reason, right? which would be the true criterion of taste.
Often, of course, the authorities will continue to play a central role, but always as, let's say, vehicles of reason, right? So I think that's pretty clear.
In 1692, with the publication of a French translation of Aristotle's Poetics, translated and commented on by a very important figure—a very important figure I will return to later—André Dacier, he says the following, it's in the preface, okay? According to Aristotle's rules, he speaks of rules and what pleases; these are never two opposing things, and one can only arrive at what pleases through rules. The person who created these rules was one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived. He has a very vast and extensive body of work, and the beautiful things he discovered in all the sciences, and especially in the knowledge of the human heart, are guarantees that he possessed all the necessary insight to discover the rules of the art of poetry, which is based solely on our passions. And that's the most revealing part. When I examine the way Aristotle presents the rules, I find them so obvious and so in accordance with nature that I cannot help but feel their truth. Aristotle does not establish his rules as legislators give their laws, without presenting any reason other than will. He proposes nothing that is not accompanied by the reason he draws from the common sentiment of all men, so that all men become the rule and measure of what he writes. It is not the name that should make the work, but the work that should make the name. And that is why I am forced to submit to all your decisions, the truth of which I find within myself and in which I discover certainty through experience and reason that have never deceived anyone. And that. Basically, right? You have the importance of Aristotle as a vehicle, right, or as a figure who conveys ideas, and not just in that first moment, as this Italian professor argues, as [snoring] how the first reception of Aristotle's poetics will take place, right? So, having said all that, and since I mentioned André da Cier, I wanted to delve into the topic of Homer, because it's precisely this irreducibility of classical authorities that ends up becoming different versions of the same body of work that frequently clash, right?
Well, and this dispute over interpretations, you know, in a frankly triangular relationship, [snoring] uh, I would say that this is the core of the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns, I would say first of all, which will happen a few decades earlier, but above all the quarrel about Homer.
Well, the argument about Homer, the Homer debate, it happens, well, it's a public debate, right, between mainly two figures, Dar de Lamot and Anne Dacier, known as Madame Dacier, who were, both were relatively important figures in the French literary scene, both linked to that intersection, right, between literature and the court, right? And the courtly, refined world of France during that period.
Andr Andas was infinitely better prepared than the diador.
To begin with, she knew Greek. Lamot did not know.
Lamorte, otherwise, I would say that if it weren't for this controversy, he wouldn't be remembered. Anne Dacié, perhaps, because she wrote two important translations.
She translated the Iliad and the Odyssey, right?
It's for the French. There were already other translations, but she translated the Iliad in response to Dard Lamot's translation. Why? How does this have controversy? Damot published a translation of the Iliad in 1714. Well, he uh, let's say he compresses the cantos of the Iliad into 12. He halves the number of cantos in the Iliad.
Ah, he translates from Latin to French, not from Greek to French. And he even writes a sort of preface to this very long translation called a discourse on Homer, right? Where will he try to justify the translation decisions?
[snoring] H, this caused outrage in the French literary scene at that time, especially in the figure of Anci, who in the same year, I would say months after the publication of this translation of the Iliad, would write a text with the suggestive title of On the Causes of the Corruption of Taste, also from 1714, in which she would try to respond almost line by line to that outrageous anti- American text, so to speak, right?
or anti-Homer.
Ah, this controversy reignites another, bigger controversy, isn't it, the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, famous for those who study this period in France, right? It begins when Charlie Perrot, who was a poet, but was more famous for his fables, right? He recited a poem titled... You can easily find this poem, but I do n't think it's been translated into Portuguese.
Lecle by Luis Leghan, right, the century of Louis the Great, is a long poem in which he attempts to list, more or less poetically, why the century of Louis XIV is superior to the century of Augustus, right? So if you think that Virgil, Horace, etc. Or a video, right?
They wrote about Augustus, and he responded with Boalô, Molier, Racine, Corné, etc. Well, this idea of... and the public reading of this poem was also taken as something outrageous. This started the dispute. Later, Charlie Perrot wrote another, even more important book called Parallels Between the Ancients and the Moderns. And finally, several important figures will participate in this, including the speaker at this public debate, right? So, Homer's quarrel will be like a sub-chapter, because it takes place a few decades after that first chapter, but it will, you know, shake up that somewhat stagnant scene again, as I said, and those titans of French classicism had all died. The most interesting thing that happened in French literature at that time, before the first writings of the Enlightenment, was precisely that, or more or less that, right? Fontei is also involved here; he 's an important figure, etc. Well, just to give you a taste of how this dispute unfolded. We have another 20 minutes, right? I'm going to try to quickly discuss two issues that have been debated regarding the Iliad: Lamot's translation of the Iliad and his translation decisions. One concerns the action of Elis, the other concerns the morality of the main character, the hero of Elis.
Achilles on Elida's action. Here 's the thing, it's not exactly the action itself. Lamot uses this in his discourse on Homer to justify his translation; he employs a term that is not common in discussions of neoclassicism, or classicism in general, to consider the structure of a literary work, particularly an epic. He's talking about the dedication, right, which would be the design or purpose or object of the song, which is what will be sung. And what Lamot says is that Homer's poem is imperfect, because this disarray, this design, this purpose, uh, is imperfect, right? He's going to say, I think I have this quote here, he reads first the first verses of Ilyida, right, in his own translation. And I'm translating his translation here. Muse, sing of my wrath of Achilles, which was so fatal to the Greeks and cost the lives of so many heroes.
He will read it and say, "There are the poet's words and his intention."
But it should be noted that, according to scholars, the Greek word, which we simply translate as anger, means noble anger, heroic resentment.
And it is this heroic resentment that Homer wanted to celebrate. Everything that happens in Ilia is a source of admiration for that side.
Yes. Well, then at that moment, in the year following the publication of that book, another important figure emerges, Jan Terraçon, also a supporter of the moderns, right, against Homer, who will also publish this important text, a critical dissertation on Homer's Eliad, in the following year, 1715. And he will delve deeper, he will give a verticality to this problem of the design of the Iliad.
He's going to say the following: "A subject is grand in the first sense of the word only when it strikes us by its importance and nobility. The incident of Achilles' wrath, which at the beginning is just an idle retreat and in the end doesn't end the war, right?
Homer's poem doesn't end with the end of the Trojan War, it can't have the importance and nobility that were found in the memorable event of the capture of Troy that Homer had in his hand and to which he should cling.
That is, he's accusing Homer of not having narrated the end of the war, right? The capture of Troy. When he places the wrath of Achilles as the purpose, as the object of his song, he's reducing the scope of the epic poem, which should precisely be grand. That's the word they use, right? Grand indeed. [snoring] Ah, he's responding to ANCER, but he 's responding particularly to an author who acts as the main source of ANDER, who will write all his arguments in favor of Homer." Based on a treatise on poetics published in 1675, a few decades earlier, right? Uh, uh, the title is "Treatise on Epic Poetry." That's the name of the treatise. Its author is René Lebosu. That's his name.
What this author is going to say, uh, is the following.
Let me find the exact quote here. I have to skip ahead a bit.
Aristotle. Well, what Lebosu is going to do is, he's going to say, in summary, and Ana C. will instrumentalize this argument, that the wrath of Achilles is not the main subject of the Iliad, but rather the wrath of Achilles and the harm it caused to the Greeks, which is the continuation of this verse, right?
Ah, and if you don't consider the two things together, you'll lose sight of what's most important in this poem. He's going to say that Aristotle says that the story is the most important thing in the poem and that it is like its soul. I'm going to draw attention to this period because I'm going to this phrase. Because I'm going back to it.
We must, therefore, seek the nature of the epic in the nature of the fable and consider it as its first foundation, as the first foundation of the poem and the movement for all its members. In fact, we begin the definition of epic as the definition of the fable. Epic as the definition of the fable. Fable, right, is the French term he uses. And he's referring to myths, right, in Aristotle's text.
Because the fable is a discourse invented to form customs and instructions disguised as the allegory of an action. So what he's basically saying, and here this will be repeated by Anne Dacié, right? The foundation and the soul of the epic poem. Here Dacié is talking about how the soul of the dramatic is the fable. And then she'll say: "This doctrine was brought to light by Lebostum in his treatise on epic poem, blah blah blah blah." What they are basically saying is that the dean's design, the object of the American Canto, is not the wrath of Achilles, but rather a kind of allegorical moral fable that attempts to demonstrate, that it communicates, right, that it expresses the idea that internal political division is pernicious to a nation, for example, because the defeats of the Greeks would originate, right, would result from these internal divisions caused by Achilles' refusal, right, by Achilles' anger, which is sung in the first one. This allegorical term is used repeatedly by both authors, both Lebuil and Anci, okay? What do I want to draw attention to here? These two positions— the object of the song as the wrath of those people, the object of the song as a moral, moralizing, allegorical fable—if we do the work of finding and examining the panorama of Renaissance and French Classical literature, you will find this position in various scattered figures, okay? So, for example, the position, the here, that is, what I mean is the following, and this position, it can be what are the two positions, so, in summary, right? Should epic action be grandiose in itself, or should it be an allegorical fable? Yes, that's what's at stake.
Exactly. In the first case, what is criticized is terraces and lamotes in Iliad.
The song of Achilles' wrath would be small, not grand enough. Or in the second case, in Dacié, in Lebosu, it is action number one, the action doesn't need to be grandiose, and in number two, that's not the object of the song. It doesn't need to be grandiose; it's precisely this excerpt that I drew your attention to here.
The foundation and soul of the epic poem, like that of the dramatic poem, is the fable.
This comma in the dramatic poem is very important because it—this here is almost a direct quote from Aristotle's Poetics, if I'm not mistaken, chapter six, which discusses tragedy.
What Andasier and Lebus do is transpose what is characteristic of tragedy in the Aristotelian tradition into an epic context, you understand?
This is a gesture that speaks precisely to the irreducibility of many aspects of classical antiquity that I want to mention. They take antiquity and form a different and competing poetic system. He's competing with another one here. If the core of an epic text is to be a moralizing fable, it doesn't have to be grandiose, it just has to be moralizing and feature characters who are indeed great, right? of princes generals, etc. Well, if that's the case, then Homer didn't sin, right? He didn't go against the Aristotelian principle, did he? Later on, I won't have time to talk about the other poem we discussed, the one about heroic morality, right? In other words, it might be permissible for someone to be immoral, but they'll still do it anyway. What Lebosu and then Ander are going to do is withdraw. They will use that principle that the tragic hero is neither entirely good nor entirely evil and that he commits the tragic error, the martyrdom, and transpose that to the epic context. In other words, that's why Achilles can be flawed. Aristotle is there supporting it, right? It's giving legitimacy to Homer's poetic decision, but he does it through a gesture, right? He openly extrapolates from Aristotle's text, uh, recontextualizing a premise that would be typical of tragic poetry, right, of tragic works.
On the other hand, you can also find support for this position of the modernists of Terrações and Udá Lamote, both in figures of French classicism, and if you go back even further in time, you will find it in figures of the Italian Renaissance. For example, Tor 4 To, he will say that the illustriousness in tragedy consists in the unexpected and sudden change of fortune, in the grandeur of events that bring with them horror and mercy, whereas the illustriousness of the heroic is founded on the enterprises of an excellent warlike virtue, on acts of courtesy, generosity, piety and religion, which actions proper to the epic are in no way suitable for tragedy.
He's vetoing the transposition of this from tragic action to epic action, and the same goes for the characters, right? I'll try to find the next quote from him here. This is about the morality of Achilles, okay? So, in short, in this second debate, since I won't have time to talk about everything, what will happen is this: would it be permissible for a hero of an epic poem to behave immorally or not, as is the case with Achilles, right?
Ruthless, for example, irascible, etc. [snoring] Obviously, Terração and Lamot will say no, that the epic hero must be essentially good. Good in an epic sense, right? He must be virtuous, right? What LBOS, and An a few years later, will do is try to demonstrate that yes, he can, as long as it is subject to a certain allegorical fable once again. In other words, there has to be something behind the text, behind this supposed immorality of Achilles. What is this element? It's precisely the defeats of the Greeks caused by this internal division within Achilles, right? So, both positions find resonance, right, in the tradition of commentaries on poetics prior to Homer's Quarrel. Here's what Tasso says, for example, regarding this subject. Many years earlier, in 1587, in his Discourses on the Art of Poetry, but it's a text specifically about epic poetry, right? It so happens that the people who appear in one poem or another, even if in one or the other they are of a state of royal and supreme dignity, are not, however, of the same nature.
Tragedy requires people who are neither good nor bad, but of an intermediate condition. Thus are the West, Electra and Jocasta. The epic, on the other hand, requires in people the sum of virtues, which are heroic because of heroic virtue; the excellence of piety and military fortitude is found in Achilles. Here Tasso is lenient with Achilles, but the idea that an epic hero should be him, as he says, the epitome of virtues, is present here. This is exactly what will be instrumentalized more than 100 years later by modern thinkers. On the other hand, in 1675, already in Lebusu's treatise, through two, at least two figures of whom I am aware of the French classicism of the 17th century, Suderiry, Jorge de Skuerry and Chapelan, Jean de Chapelan, if I'm not mistaken, both will defend Lebil's position before him, that is, that everything in the end is an allegorical fable, that is, this epidemic principle, right, or epidexis, that is, the epideictic genre of rhetoric in which characters or things or situations should be praised or vilified and represented as such.
[clearing throat] Uh, in this case, it will be subordinated to an allegorical fable, that is, to a moral lesson that goes beyond what is represented.
The idea of fable, and it is present here, of course, fable here does not mean the fable of La Fonten or Aesop, but there is a point of contact here in this quote from Renel, he will clearly say, oh, morality teaches vices to flee, as we have just said about the Iliad and Achilles after Horace and virtues to imitate. And finally the fable, which is the soul of the poem, again here, the definition of tragedy, and which is of no other nature in Homer than in Aesop, receives no less regularly, as the first, the only unique characters, men and animals, more cowardly and more criminal than the most generous and most worthy of praise.
It can receive any type of character, as long as it is subordinate to a communication of teachings, etc. This connection between Homer and Greek fables is very interesting, isn't it? Here.
So, what I meant by all this regarding these two problems in the dispute is the following. What I tried to demonstrate was that the positions of ancients and moderns are equally anchored in the tradition of commentary on classical poetics, particularly Aristotle, but also other figures. I haven't talked much about Horace here, but he is clearly a prominent figure, as in the 10th century we will observe a rhetoricalization of poetics, uh, the treatises of the Orator, right, of the orator, etc., uh, or the rhetoric of Irenaeus as well. All of these are names, recurring titles that will appear more or less frequently and that will set the tone for this type of debate throughout the desires of the ancients and moderns, particularly here in the reception of Homer. However, this reception is mediated by modern poetic arts. What I want to draw attention to is the centrality of modern authorities in the reception of literature, of classical poetry in classicism. There is no continuity, no obvious line of continuity between antiquity and this early modern period, right, the 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. There is a tortuous line. There are poetic treatises, uh, versions about what taste is, about what a good poem is, about what a bad poem is, and so on.
Contradictory, frankly contradictory, even though they claim, you know, the same classical sources, right, the same classical sources, Aristotle, Horace, and so on.
Each of these different versions of the same fonts will emphasize certain elements and not emphasize other elements, right? I 'll give you an example. All this discussion about the morality of Achilles, there will be a moment when Jean Terraçon will say, "Lebil, you're taking a passage where Aristotle discusses tragedy and applying it to epic poetry." He says so, he states so clearly.
Well, you only do that because Aristotle didn't study the epic hero in the same way he studied the tragic hero. In other words, you have a gap [clearing throat] there, and it's the modern authorities who are going to fill those gaps. And often, through this filling in of the blanks, they offer contradictory views. If you take the Spanish Baroque, or so- called Spanish Baroque, with all the ideas of conceptism, the convoluted syntax, the difficult poem, and so on, you have the same claim to classical poetics that is observed here in Atticism, in French Atticism; it's as if you were reenacting the old controversies between Asianism and Atticism. However, in this case, what you have is a more or less homogeneous body of references that will be disputed. To use an expression from our friend Nabil that Rafael already mentioned, these are possible interpretations, but in this case they are also compatible. They are possible at the same time because there are gaps in classical thought. Each one is trying to fill those gaps in some way, you know? The controversy between the action or purpose of Homeric poetry on the one hand, and the morality of the epic hero, of Achilles on the other, both fit into this context. This is how I see the desires of the ancients and the moderns.
Needless to say, we modern thinkers could perhaps have won all this controversy. The triumph of that clear, Cartesian reason, etc. He is very visible throughout the 17th century. Clear criteria, right? Geometric ones, really. The Geometric Spirit, right? That's the title of one of Pascal's books, from around the time of the first controversy. Well, it's going to be a French obsession. Moreover, modern thinkers will heavily rely on Cartesianism to establish the legitimacy of what they are saying, right? Well, I had set aside time to talk about this, but I won't have time because we're already wrapping up the discussion about the importance of Decar in the Homer dispute. He is consistently cited by figures in the first place before Homer's Quarrel, by a modern man named Fonteneia, who was a thorough Cartesian. And Terraçon himself, Terraçon himself will insistently defend the application of Cartesian thought to poetry. Very interesting, isn't it? For him, there needs to be a distinction between ideas, a clarity of Cartesian ideas with regard to poetry. And this happens through the systematization of poetics that make use of choices, right? In other words, OK, Aristotle wasn't clear here, so you have to make a decision regarding this gap that you find in classical poetics. On the other hand, what Lebosuil and Anda are going to do is try to anchor, you know, to ground what they say about Homeric poetry, about the defense of Homer, in other criteria, yes, in the criterion of authority, but they are not exempt from this attempt at modern systematization of literary thought, right? The best example of this is that you can find the position of the two horizontally in more or less contemporary figures. In other words, they were poetic systems known to both sides and in open competition. Before Arela exploded, they were already competing, right? Well, everyone legitimizes their own discourse. Well, on one hand they are detractors, on the other they defend it, but in general they all more or less belong to what we can call the neoclassical episteme, at the twilight of French classicism, but at the dawn of the French Enlightenment, right? So I think that "entugar" (delivery) says a lot. I think I 'll stop here. Oh, thank you.
Excellent. Thank you, Thago. The presentation is super demanding, covering several different topics. I was noting down some public comments and topics that caught my attention, but I'll start by thanking you for the beautiful overview that begins in the Renaissance, eventually revisiting issues of transmission from antiquity, late antiquity, and arriving at French modernity, but which undoubtedly has possible repercussions in other contexts, as you rightly pointed out. So, in the Iberian context, we could also mention England, which had its own version of a battle between ancients and moderns, right? The Qual of the Books, uh, compositions that are sometimes a little funny, right? People who, at first glance, are scholars of antiquity, now occupying precisely the pole of modernism. But I wanted to start by highlighting what seems to me to be the strong point of your dissertation, which is that, in a way, you countered the idea that ancients and moderns within the debate worked with radically different criteria, right? I think that was a misinterpretation by those who came later, perhaps from Romanticism, imagining that there would be a kind of prefiguration of the valid criteria for modern literature, when in fact it seems to me that they are within the scope of the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns, working with very similar criteria, and all these criteria collapsed in the transition from the 18th century to the 19th century, right? So, however much we might try to identify winners and losers in these discussions, it seems to me that from the perspective of the 19th, everyone is a loser, right? They seem a bit outdated because the reading methods they advocate are practically inaccessible, at least among the most influential authors of the 19th century, and even less so in the 20th century, right?
So, I wanted to start by listening a little more about this, uh, while people are getting excited.
No, great, great, great question, Rafa.
Well, there are two things here that I wanted to draw attention to. The first point is this: when I talk about victory, you're absolutely right to point out the anachronism of trying to see, especially in modern times, the expression of criteria like originality, sentimentalism, or anything of that sort. There are many studies, including recent ones, that do this, anachronistically projecting romantic criteria, right?
In this controversy, when I speak of victory, what I mean is not a victory of criteria, but rather the victory of a kind of acceleration of historical time and an obsession with the present that will be very characteristic of 16th-century France, right? This whole thing about the acceleration of historical time, that's very clear, right?
I'm thinking here specifically about theories of history, uh, about the figure of a Kzelek, for example, who will think about the world in what another author will call a regime of historicity, but that is, the way different societies perceive history or the passage of time, before the romantic rupture or the French Revolution to establish a political landmark, you have the idea that history is the teacher of life, right? In other words, you see, Aristotle's criteria are aligned with ours; there isn't that much of a historical difference, whereas time accelerates from the 16th century onwards. I mean, you have this obsession with the present and the future, right? The image he uses, the metaphor, is that time in history will become the two faces of Janus, one pointing to the past and the other to the present. This is very clear in the 16th century; I would say that the victory was a victory in that sense, because it truly allows for a historical awareness of a present that is not the time of Homer, right? You don't have a relationship of continuity, you don't have a break in the criteria, a break, a rupture that will only happen in the 16th century, but you clearly have here a kind of historical consciousness, at least in the Quaselic sense, in the sense that Kaselic gives about the self-perception of historical times, you understand? Accelerating times. Hmm, so I'd say that's exactly it.
What I'm trying to demonstrate is that yes, they all belong to the same classical paradigm. They are all mobilizing the same bodies, the same set of ideas, and they are all about—I can say this with certainty regarding the AND and the CEP, but perhaps also in the figure of Terraçon—but they were aware of the opposing positions. All of that was part of the world they lived in. It's like us here today, everyone, when we write about literature in a university setting, we write from our perspective, but we are aware of what is being written there. We know that it has tendency X, Y, or Z. It's all the same.
That was something that was part of the classical paradigm they lived in, the paradigm they operated within, right? I mean, on one side you have the classic source, the unavoidable authority, but on the other you obviously have the twists and turns, the disputes within that same classic paradigm, right? Yeah, I can give you several examples because this has interested me for a long time.
Still within the realm of epic poetry, when Ariosto's Orlando Furioso was published in the early years of the 10th century, it also provoked a huge debate about what constitutes a non-Virgilian epic, right? I don't know if anyone has had the opportunity to read this book, but it is a non-Virgilian epic, isn't it?
It's very big, isn't it? That's why it's difficult to read, but uh uh in Portuguese we say they're romances, right? In other words, he owes a great deal to the tradition of, let's say, medieval epics, right? From gesture songs, etc. And the desire in the early years of the 10th century was precisely circumscribed by this debate regarding... and is it an epic poem, is it Virgilian? Is it valid? Is it not valid?
Tincius was one of the Italian humanists who wrote about this. Pinha was the other one; one was a teacher, the other was a student. The two are defending the legitimacy of the transformations proposed by Orlando Furioso. On the other hand, you obviously had detractors, many detractors of those poems, right? There's a very important book for me and for anyone who studies this period, it's called [snoring] uh, literary criticism in Renaissance Italy or something like that. No, it hasn't been translated into Portuguese. It's a very [clearing throat] old book, from the 60s, it's two very long volumes, but the second volume, Bernard and Weinberg, is the name of the American author.
Well, the second volume is called Practical Criticism, and it's exactly like the various controversies that occurred throughout the Renaissance, trying to find one solution or another for the problems that the authors of antiquity didn't offer, right? Because that's exactly what it's about.
Aristotle didn't have an answer for the novel, which was a genre that emerged many years later. So, what you get from these authors is an attempt to create a well-thought-out framework based on what Aristotle wrote, in order to try and solve those problems. Yes, exactly. Yes, that's exactly what we observe here in the quarry. On one hand, you have the idea that this is a way out of the problem, right? The transposition of criteria from tragedy to epic. That's one way out. Perfect.
The other option is for you to say, "I didn't say that because there wasn't time."
When Janter Rasson is discussing the morality of Achilles, he says: "An epic hero must be essentially good, virtuous, because he serves as a mirror for his readers, and especially for the readers, or, uh, in a stratified society like the French one of that period, for the highest segments of society, right?
Kings, princes, etc." Then he'll give an example, Lamot gives that example.
Alexander the Great, you know, who was a great reader of Homer, in the places he arrived to conquer, he wanted to do as Achilles did with Aector, you know, drag him away alive, and so on. That was a terrible influence on him, right? And so, his example, his argument, is that the epic poem should moralize, right? That is to say, he should not only teach morality, but he should also serve as a mirror for these figures. Mirror is also a word that was frequently used during that period. It's a reflection of virtues, isn't it? You have that kind of mirror prince genre, etc. So this is another way out of the problem. On one hand, you have the overcoming of the tragedy. Here you have the purpose of the poem, how to do X, Y, or Z. These are different answers for the same corpus, right? Or to address that same gap in the corpus. I don't know if that makes sense. It made perfect sense. Hey Thago, well, that last passage of yours actually reminded me of the title of that famous book by Mate Abrams, right? The Mirror and the Lamp.
Mirror the lamp.
That. But I'm going to open it up to the public now because we already have questions.
Well, I'll start with Bruno's question. Yes, actually, contributing a little to it, I made a comment a bit above, drawing attention to how curious it is to see the germ of some nationalisms already in this movement of reception of classics considered either universal or European, but which are basically Greco-Roman books from the 10th and 11th centuries, at that moment of translation into modern languages, right?
So this is very clear in France as a project, but we can also infer it from translations into German and English.
And Bruno's question is this: what was the impact of the French Revolution on the reception of Homer and his gospel? I think he's alluding to a certain classicism there, and it seems important to note the difference between the Roman legacy and the Greek legacy. Here, things aren't entirely without consequences, are they? And then he says, "an example of victorious vigor, an image of the old regime," which is from a later era, right? He's already thinking about the French Revolution and... Yes, yes, yes, yes.
consequences.
Okay, okay, there are a few issues here. First, regarding what you said about nationalism in translation, the issue of languages, and even the specific reception of each literary culture with respect to the classics, right? As I said, I cited the example of Spain. The classics will be received in a very specific way. In Spain, there is a greater emphasis on one type of text over another. If you pick up Gracian's treatise, Baltazar Gracian's study on the rhetoric of wit, in the introduction you'll find a list of authors he considers sharp in the classic period, ranging from Virgil to Camões. Now, this isn't the Virgil or Camões of those whom the French understand, right? Let's remember that Volta wrote about the enlightened ones with some admiration, talks about the Adamastor episode, points out problems as well, etc. So, this is something I've been trying to think about for a long time.
On one hand, there is a great fear that you might think about the issue of nationality in an anachronistic way. During this period, there's a whole discussion about the Republic of Letters, which is a transnational republic, right? In other words, you're able to think about Erasmus, right? Erasmus, unless I'm mistaken, was Dutch, and many other figures, including those from Latin, right? As a lingua franca. That's exactly what I was going to say. Erasmo was either the Damião de Gois of Portugal. I'm talking about figures from the margins of the periphery of Europe. Portugal, the Netherlands were able to participate in this republic, right? The book, perhaps the most fundamental on this subject, is by Mark Far Rolly, uh, uh, Republic of Letters is the title of the book, right? H, so it's very dangerous for you, there's a very great danger of you falling into the anachronism of saying that before the French Revolution, I'll get to that later, you had anything close to nationalism.
However, this is the position I always wanted to emphasize. However, that doesn't mean it's all the same either. Yes, yes, yes, it's possible to say that you have specific receptions according to specific literary cultures.
There's a kind of nationalism here, I'm using this concept that I'll be working with in the future, of a kind of imitative culture, you know?
specific contexts of authors who understand other authors in a specific way without this entailing a modern idea of nation, for example, which is romantic, right, or which is post-French Revolution, etc. I think this nuance is very important.
Why? Because I always remember the introduction to the history of modern criticism by Velek, a book by Renê Velek, right, an important one. The first volume of this book, in the introduction, begins in the second half of the 16th century, right? The history of modern criticism begins in the second half of the 16th century. What will he say?
I'm not going to touch on the subject of classical poetics because it's all pretty much the same thing there between the 10th and 11th centuries, he says that.
First, I might be wrong, but he says something like, first an emphasis on reason, then on whatever, then on reason, then on taste, but the criteria are all more or less the same, you understand? Well, and I've even written and published an article commenting on this passage, explaining exactly how it's possible to establish an intermediate position. At the same time, you don't need to lump everything together in the same basket, but you also don't need to be anachronistic, you understand? It is necessary to nuance the reception of these texts, these criteria, etc. That's exactly what I tried to do here, because it 's only possible to perceive these nuances when you pay attention to modern authorities. I think that modern authority is a very neglected figure in the study of classicism worldwide, because it is this authority that will nuance and qualify classical authority. In general, figures like Velek at this moment are thinking, "Look, he's reading Aristotle and doing this," or " He's reading Horace and doing that." And no, he wasn't reading the commentators on Horace, he was reading the commentators on Aristotle. Yes, that's what I wanted to draw attention to. Basically, that's what my job is, ever since I started my master's degree, right?
Well, in that sense, it would be very presumptuous of me to say that this constitutes some kind of nationalism, but it's clear that you have a mediation of literate cultures that differ.
In Spain, you have authors as diverse as Gracian himself, Lope, and Calderón in this contemporary period. Contemporaries. Oh, Racine, Corné, Molier, and they hated each other, or rather, they hated each other's work, you know. There's a phrase I read in a book by Costa Lima, by Sant Evaimon, one of those very important figures of French classicism, who wrote about opera at that time and has a very important work on theater. He's going to say, in that quote, he's talking about the terrible bad taste of the Spanish, you understand? So here you already have an identification of a certain classical taste with the Spanish, in opposition to the polished, harmonious taste, you know, etc., of the French at that same time. Now, what the classical tradition will become after the Romantic break or after the French Revolution is very different. The authors will draw different elements from these same authors. So let's find a mirror to retrieve the title of the Abrams book you mentioned. No, let's go get the mirror, let's go get the lamp, right, from Homer. They will look for strong, powerful diction, etc. Take Shakespeare, for example, who is another very important figure in the realm of Romanticism. Yeah, they'll look for other elements, etc. [snoring] H, I wouldn't know if Homer will take on political overtones after the French Revolution. Probably yes. If you look closely, you 'll probably find elements there that politicize it, or authors who politicize Homer in one direction or another, for whatever reason. But the fact is that the function of classical authority will radically transform afterward because it ceases to be authority, right?
It ceases to be an authority and becomes just another Greek classic among the others, because at that moment what will be advocated is the idea of originality, the idea of the lamp, right?
The mirror, the imitation of the ancients, and the lamp—that expression that comes from one thing only, right? I think Mate's title is very fitting.
Great, Thaago. And I even think that the question asked here by Isaiah brings an interesting element, because Vico, with his new science, prefigures many of these issues, once again running the risk of anachronism, but with a certain national genius, in his reading of Homer, at least, which later seems almost to foreshadow what we will find in discussions from the end of the 18th century and which will later enter as an argument for Friedrich August Wolf in the more historicized reading that he tries to propose of Homer. But Isaiah's question is this: "It reminded me of Vico in the history of nations, where he understands Homer's poems as a philological expression of the human state in the Age of Heroes? However, is this approach to querela relevant? I think he was referring to the French querela, right?
Uh-huh. No, perfect. Very cool. Well, I'm not the biggest expert on Vico, but I know more or less his most important contributions. And the association of Homer with the Age of Heroes is very interesting because, as you said, Rafa, as far as I know, Vico anticipates some issues of the 16th century.
Well, he himself is a 16th-century author, in fact, I may be wrong, but I think he is a contemporary of Homer's querela, right? I don't know if he knew about it, if he was aware of it. Less than that. I think it 's 1730, 1715, around there. Uh, but as far as I know, there is a Vicoan problem, right, that It's about periodization, right? When I talked about the victory of presentism, periodization is a period, it's a very important element at that moment, right? There's a French Enlightenment philosopher—I know his name escapes me, but I forgot it— whose work is basically about thinking in terms of moments of the human spirit, in periods, right? The crowning achievement of periodization in literature, but not only that, in history as well, right? It's Hegel's philosophy, right, Hegelian philosophy. Then, even before Hegel, Schiller already speaks in Germany of naive and sentimental poetry, already suggesting a difference, a negativity, right? When you think about different historical periods, they don't enter into dialogue, they are essentially different. That's what Schiller will say, and that's what Hegel will periodize. All of this, this periodization is already there in germ, right, as you said, it's already suggested in a very particular way, right? Because Vico is very... Specifically, there's nothing quite like Vico, neither contemporary nor later, and his relationship with rhetoric and language is very unique. Yes, that's already suggested there. That's exactly it. When he associates Homer with the age of heroes, as my colleague said, what I understand is exactly that: this type of periodization, although mature in Vico, is not mature or completely mature within the scope of French classicism, where the concept of authority still plays a central role, even though this authority, in the case of modern thinkers, is subject to a poetic thought that derives from authorities, but which makes authorities, as I've said a few times here, vehicles of a poetic thought that can be right, can be wrong. You can systematize that poetic thought in different ways, but it's never the same as itself, so to speak.
Good question.
Perfect, Thaago. Perfect. I can't think of the names of the 17th-century English scholars right now, who published studies that sometimes literally went to... Greece, and trying to theorize from the contact they have there about what this naiveté of Homer that appears in the poems would be, but which they generally try to explain in this key that it is a simpler culture and it is necessary to read it in another context, in another key. This comes in very strongly in Wolf's work. That's why I said that Vico, in a way, prefigures this historicism that we can already read in what Wolf proposes, right, in the prolegomena to Homer. Yes, although, curiously, even today people don't know for sure if Vico was read and if he influenced these things or not, because people don't find Vico in the libraries of these people, the circulation is very restricted there, uh, right, he is one of those authors who is, no, but even there an author who was marginalized for a long time, right? Yes, because, well, he had ideas that began to dialogue, that began to make more sense, let's say, in the following century, right?
Perfect. Perfect. Cristiano returns to Something you'd already mentioned before, right?
And he asks: "Orlando Furioso was also the target of criticism and controversy similar to that suffered by Jerusalem Delivered, since they were written by Italian authors in the same century." So he wants to consider the reception of the two works?
No. Excellent question. I would say no. Jerusalem Delivered, right? The poem published, unless I'm mistaken, in 1581 or 2002, was something like that. I know that Les Lusitanians were published in 1572, so I think Jerusalem Delivered was in 81, 9 years after the publication of Les Lusitanians, right? Ah, it became an instant classic and perhaps the swan song of epic poetry in Europe, because after that you don't have any other great epics, right? But all the discussion about epic poetry in the 17th century, classical epic poetry, right?
All these treatises that I mentioned here, they were written after the publication of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. All of these... Everything that has been said about epic poetry was heavily influenced by Tasso.
Interesting.
I'm going to touch on a subject here. I hope I don't go on too long, just to wrap things up.
Tasso wrote discourses on heroic poetry. I don't know if this is exactly a text, but it's a kind of treatise on epic poetry, right? And there he tries to, uh, gloss over Ariosto's work, so to speak, right? He tries to justify, and it would be possible to do what I did with Quarella, with Tasso. That is, he tries, through searching in Aristotle, searching in so-and-so, in so-and-so, he seeks support, right, that which gives legitimacy to Ariosto's formal choices, linked to the romance, which are: Anyone who has read Ariosto knows Orlando Furioso, which is a... it's a... so many different characters, so many different episodes, it's an episode within another, it's a parenthesis, then the episode returns after 20 cantos. It's difficult to read in that sense, isn't it? So, the main criticism Ariosto faced was that it was based on Aristotle's unity of action, right? Aristotle talks about the three unities, right? Unity of time, unity of space, unity of action. Aristotle defines the unity of action, if I'm not mistaken, as in an epic poem; everything has to be arranged in such a way that if you remove or change its place, it ceases to make sense. And Ariosto is exactly the opposite of that, right? Because you can remove, change places, you can throw away a part, because that's what it is, it's a poem that plays with this profusion of characters and episodes all the time.
Just to give you an idea, if I'm not mistaken, Ariosto—excuse me, Orlando, who gives the poem its title— appears in canto 15 of the first book. Before that, you have Rogério, Rudiero, Rinaldo, all these heroes of the... European tradition of the G song or the Arthurian cycle, right, etc. What Tarso does, therefore, in this treatise is precisely to try to justify the existence of variety within unity.
Now, when you read Jerusalem Delivered, he tries to do that too, doesn't he? He does n't, obviously Jerusalem Delivered is a Virgilian poem, right? A poem that, if I'm not mistaken, has 12 cantos or 12 books. It's a poem that is structured quite, let's say, Aristotelianly. The hero is very well defined, the heroes, right, the scenes are imitated from Virgil, etc. All the formal conventions.
[sighing] However, you have your moments of romance there, you know?
Because Ariosto was an unavoidable figure within Italian epic poetry and, at the same time, very uncomfortable, right? Because how can he break so many rules? It's difficult to defend Ariosto from Aristotle's perspective, from the problem of unity of action is a problem that, if you take it from that perspective... Aristotelianism is something that doesn't exist in Ariosto, but even so, it was extremely well received.
I remembered that now in the introduction to this Brazilian edition, in the preface to this Brazilian translation of Orlando Furioso, which came out recently, the second volume, you have the study by the USP professor, I forgot his name, who translated the text, and he says something very interesting that he finds in a book by Machiavelli, in his travels through the Italian countryside, he encountered peasants who were not literate reciting or singing Orlando Furioso, excerpts from Orlando Furioso, which was part of, you know, the hard core of Italian literate culture. Eh, perhaps that's why, because of these marks of orality that may occur in the text, which all come from this medieval tradition of epic poetry, that which Tasso tries to safeguard, I mean, tries, he tries to defend from this type of accusation, you know, whether he succeeds or not, well, I think everyone can have their own judgment, because this treatise by Tasso, Discourses on Heroic Poetry, has been translated so many times. For Portuguese.
I think there's more than one translation, actually.
Great, Thiago. Uh, we're moving towards the end. I'm going to read one last question and I'll even get ahead of you. Uh, and then you can add to or modify what you think is fair.
Francisco says there, so I can understand that this debate about the discrediting of Homer and the exaltation of Virgil in the 10th and 11th centuries reinforces a nationalist political intention. And then I'll piggyback on what Thiago himself had already said, and this would greatly avoid the use of that "ism," right? So, I certainly don't think it's nationalism. Uh, and relating this to the place of Virgil and Homer is probably not the same either. And why do I say this? Because this dispute has much more to do with a gradual entry into the recognition of Homer in Western European culture, which was greatly hampered by access to the language and by poor translations, according to the poetic criteria in force at the time, than with any specific political interest. We can relate a The political event that was the fall of Constantinople, right, caused several Byzantine scholars to go to Western Europe and spread knowledge of Greek, right, spread admiration for Homer. But we can understand these disputes, and in fact not only from the 14th and 15th centuries. This extends at least until the 17th and 18th centuries.
And as disputes, in fact, to try to understand why the ancients, among them the Romans, had so much admiration for Homer, considering that The Odyssey and the Lao Gao are frankly barbaric poems, right?
Thiago showed several passages where the fury of Achilles is known, uh, is interpreted as a base object for epic poetry. Uh, Achilles' attitudes could easily be interpreted as the attitude of a spoiled child, right?
Like, the guy has his concubine taken, he leaves the war. Think about what that is as a model of behavior for, say, a warrior of the 17th century. In the 16th century, a commander... If commanders started acting like that, well, a war would go much further. So, I think it's precisely, let's say, this battle of historicism, of trying to read this poem in the light of its historical context, much more than actually defending a nation, right, or the interests of one nation or another.
But Thaago, feel free to continue.
I fully agree with what you said. That's it. I would say that between Homer and Virgil, I haven't found, nor would I be surprised if I found, a reference to a political context or anything like that. You very well mentioned the migration of Byzantine authors to Western Europe. I don't know of any reference in that sense. Now, in Homer's quarrel, this element appears without "isms," right? But it appears. I said at some point that in the... the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns, it has as a symbolic beginning the reading of this poem by Charles Perrot, which will affirm that the century of Louis XIV is greater than the century of Augustus, the "Who was the greatest emperor, the first, right, and greatest Roman emperor, right? At that time, some of the greatest poets wrote, who to this day are considered the greatest poets in human history, in the history of Western literature, at least, right, to begin with Virgil. So, there was a celebration.
Imagine, if I'm not mistaken, this poem was written in 1674, it was read in 1674, it could be 75 as well, I don't know. 1674 is also the year of the publication of the Ars Poetica. It 's also the year that comes a few years after many political victories of Louis XIV, who is known as the Sun King.
Not surprisingly. He was absolute, absolutely. And it was a moment of great glory for his administration. And this was reflected, right, in the greatness, or at least how they perceived themselves, right, of the authors and artists. It wasn't just in literature, no. It's in music, there are figures, painters, etc. [snoring] So, there is..." This political component seems very clear to me. I prefer not to call it nationalism because, depending on who's listening, it might be uncomfortable. But this element exists. Now, between Homer and Virgil, I wouldn't doubt it, not that I know of, but I also wouldn't doubt it. I'd say it has much more to do with what you said, with the attempt to establish an author. You talked a lot about the death of Homer in your book, right, with a dead author, on the verge of being resurrected, right? So it has to do with that.
It's perfect. And then we could even think about this Germanic revival of the late 16th and early 10th centuries as a response—going back to Bruno's question, right—to the French Revolution. I think there's more to it than just the French Revolution, right, to French classicism. So, Germans like Schlegel, I don't know, we can think of other neoclassical thinkers who are trying to find alternatives to the French neoclassical model, and that's precisely... This model, which was frequently criticized, was Homer. Well, Thiago showed that things weren't so simple, but at least part of him, you know, didn't quite understand Homer, and it seems to me that the Germanic predilection stems a bit from that, a kind of opposition to the French, and the choice of Homer perhaps has that element. Great.
Yes. Cool.
But wonderful, Thiago. It's a great joy to hear you, isn't it? To see you again, this hectic life of post-graduate studies and then work means we see each other less than we'd like. But it's good that today's meeting allowed me to hear you, to learn more from you. I'm always amazed at how you master these authors so distinct from each other, from this context of the 11th to 10th centuries, from various different regions, sometimes expressing themselves in different languages. So it's wonderful to witness the development of your erudition, and I thank you for your contribution. I thank the audience who joined us. The format is quite consistent; so far there are 29 people present, we reached 45 people.
So I'll pass the final word to you for your final considerations.
Thiago, uh, thank you, Rafael. It was very important for me to revisit this text. As I said, from my dissertation, it's good to know that it still, well, uh, that these subjects can still generate some curiosity and interest in people. Uh, I hope everything has been clear. I am aware that some of these subjects are somewhat dry or very strange. The secret to studying literature prior to the 16th century is to inhabit that world, right? To have access to that entire paradigm in the most diverse way possible, right? So, uh, that's it. I'm glad people enjoyed it. Uh, thank you again for your invitation, the people from US. And that's it, I'm available for more.
Agreed, Thiago. Thanks a lot. I say goodnight to everyone who joined us and thank you again. A hug and see you next time. Thanks, Thaago. Bye.
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