I mentioned that I intended to
read critics and biographers to keep me focused on poetry.
Unfortunately the more I learned about the various poets, the less I
liked them (or their poetry). So I just recently began seeking
focus in literary history. I decided to start with Curtius' European
Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. I barely got into the
Introduction to the 2013 edition by Colin Burrow, when I encountered
something I resisted: Burrow wrote of Curtius, "His principal
thesis is that the classical tradition spread and sustained itself
through the study of rhetoric, and that the chief way in which that
continuity was manifested was through the recurrence of 'topoi,' or
rhetorical commonplaces. These included notions that could be
digested into a single phrase, such as the puer senex . .
. "
Earlier Burrow quotes Curtius as believing that "A community of
great authors throughout the centuries must be maintained if a
kingdom of mind is to exist at all." Will Curtius argue that
writers ought to stick to the traditional topoi? Would
Harold Bloom agree that all of the writers in The Western Canon
stuck to traditional topoi?
Burrow writes toward the end of his introduction, "The Middle Ages
described here are not at all dark. they are effectively a long
series of renaissances and enlightenments that run on until the
eighteenth century, after which the real dark ages begin."
I wonder what Curtius has in mind. Have the topoi been expanded
into poetic themes, literary genres? And what does he mean when he
writes (assuming Burrow is accurate) that our civilization entered
the "real dark ages" after the eighteenth century? Mathew Arnold's
Philistines, Spengler's Decline of the West, Arnold
Toynbee's Civilizational suicide? All this is very provocative and
I may be straying further from poetry than I intend, but . . .
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
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