Using new and cutting-edge perspectives, this book explores literary criticism and the reception of Aristotle's Poetics in early modern Italy. Written by leading international scholars, the chapters examine the current state of the field and set out new directions for future study.
The reception of classical texts of literary criticism, such as Horace's Ars Poetica, Longinus's On the Sublime, and most importantly, Aristotle's Poetics was a crucial part of the intellectual culture of Renaissance Italy. Revisiting the translations, commentaries, lectures, and polemic treatises produced, the contributors apply new interdisciplinary methods from book history, translation studies, history of the emotions and classical reception to them. Placing several early modern Italian poetic texts in dialogue with twentieth-century literary theory for the first time, The Reception of Aristotle's Poetics in the Italian Renaissance and Beyond models contemporary practice and maps out avenues for future study.
A timely and significant reengagement with Renaissance poetic theory in Italy, this volume offers a fresh and genuinely interdisciplinary take on a constituent element of early modern culture. The volume's three main sections offer readers a series of engaging case studies which put early modern critical materials and contemporary theories and methodologies into direct conversation with each other. The collection as a whole relaunches the critical conversation on Renaissance Italy's poetic theory, moving it beyond where Bernard Weinberg left it, with vision and ambition.
