Prof. Richard F. Johnson
Lit 231: The History of Literary Criticism from Plato to Sydney

When Homer invoked the muse in the opening lines of the Odyssey, he was in effect declaring a "theory" about his poem (namely, that it is composed with the help of divine inspiration). This particular "theory" of divine inspiration played a significant role in the subsequent history of poetics. Beginning with the ideas of Plato (who excluded poets from his ideal Republic largely because he disagreed with this "theory," which suggested that poetry involved no rational technique), this course will explore the continuities and discontinuities of the history of literary argument to the Renaissance.

Primary Texts may include:

• Plato, Ion
• Aristotle, Poetics
• Horace, Art of Poetry
• Longinus, On the Sublime
• Augustine, On Christian Doctrine
• Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
• Fulgentius, The Exposition of the Content of Vergil According to Moral Philosophy
• Geoffrey of Vinsauf, from Poetria Nova
• Dante, "Letter to Can Grande," excerpts from Convivio and Divine Comedy
• Boccaccio, from Genealogy of the Gods and Decameron
• Petrarch, from Rerum familiarum libri
• Marsilio Ficino, from Commentarium
• Ludovico Ariosto, from Orlando Furioso
• Torquato Tasso, exceprts from Discourses on the Heoric Poem
• Sydney, "The Defense of Poesie"

Secondary Texts may include:

• O.B. Hardison, et. al., Classical Literary Criticism
• O.B. Hardison, et. al., Medieval Literary Criticism
• Robert Haller, The Literary Criticism of Dante Alighieri
• Ernst Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages
• Alistair Minnis and A.B. Scott, eds., Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism

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