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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 100
EAN num: 9780715631690
ISBN number: 0715631691
Label: Duckworth Publishing houses
Manufacturer: Duckworth Publishing houses
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 320
Printing Date: March 15, 2006
Publishing house: Duckworth Publishing houses
Sale Popularity Level: 1125874
Studio: Duckworth Publishing houses
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Product Description:
In 1839 the Tractatus Coislinianus, a summarized treatise on comedy, was published from a tenth-century manuscript. Its discoverer suggested that it derived from the lost second book of Aristotle’s Poetics, which inaugurated the systematic study of comedy, but it was soon condemned as an ignorant compilation verging on forgery, and thus matters stood until the very first publication of 'Aristotle on Comedy' in 1984. Richard Janko’s edition of the text is accompanied by a facing translation, interpretive essays, reconstruction and commentary. The book is now made available in paperback for the very first time, with a new Preface and additional bibliography.
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This is the story of an ancient manuscript of the X century, known as "Coislinianus 120" (now at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris) after the name of his last owner, a French collector of XVII century.
This manuscript, that once belonged to the monastery of Great Lavra on Mounth Athos, was sent to Seguier de Coislin from Cyprus by father Athanasios Rethor in 1643.
It was ignored for almost two centuries, until in 1839 J.A.Cramer, a classical scholar, analyzing its content, a rather haphazard collection of patristic and Aristotelian extracts, found what he believed to be "the words... of a commentator on Aristotle's (lost) treatise on the art of poetry".
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This is also the tale of a fascination with a book: Aristotle's almost mythical Second Book of Poetics, whose quest has been as enthusiastic as that of the mythical Holy Grail.
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Readers acquainted with Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose" will remember the plot of the novel, based on this fabled book.
And yet there is not even certainty that Aristotle did effectively write this second treatise, but for some allusions and scattered, highly debated citations (the philosopher wrote also a book "On Poets" also lost and often confused with the two Poetics).
In any case, unlike Poetics I, this book did not survive the Middle Age.
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Poetics I was respected but not widely appreciated in the classical times.
It was during the Renaissance that Aristotle's Poetics ended to be one of the emblems of the new culture, being printed, translated, commented, revered and debated for more than two centuries, until the famous "Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes" in late XVII century France.
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Being so important to the new sensibility, it was almost natural for some scholars to begin wondering what Poetics II could have said: in the XVI century some of them began attempts to reconstruct the lost second book.
It was from one of these attempts Umberto Eco got the inspiration for "The name of the Rose" (see N.A. Basbanes - Patience and Fortitude, pag.222-223).
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Richard Janko's "Aristotle on Comedy. Towards a Reconstruction of Poetics II" is a very specific book.
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It is very first of all the critical text of the manuscript, presented with in original Greek text with English translation and the usual linguistic comments.
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It is a scientific and highly interesting endeavor of restoration of the original unabridged content, through a collection of passages from other extant works of the Greek philosophers.
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It is lastly a curious specimen of the amazing tools of classical philology in deepening our knowledge of an ancient text, of its transmission and of the original shape it did have.
Not casually Janko introduce his work with three different citations: the very first rather predictably from Aristotle, of the other two one from Eco and one from Conan Doyle - as to remark the investigative dimension of his work.
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Janko's case is well presented and well defended.
He demonstrates the terms used in the treatise are in quantity (about 90%) and quality consistent with those used in other Aristotle's work.
This excludes the suspect of a later Byzantine forgery.
He demonstrates all the references to ancient comedy are consistent with the period in which Aristotle lived (noteworthy is the absence of Menander, the second most important Greek play-writer after Aristophanes, who began to stage his comedies a few years after the death of the philosopher).
This absence is restricting the time-span of composition of the original source of the Coisliniaus.
He ends up showing that the work is consistent with Aristotelian ideas (specially with regard to ethics and catharsis), as opposed to the theories of Theophrastus, an other likely author of this work.
Language, references, inner consistency: all points to Aristotle.
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Yet this attribution leaves many other questions open to debate.
Why wasn't this work so widely known as Poetics I ?
When and why was it definitively lost ?
How was made the original source of the Coislinianus?
This is the qualitative part of the analysis, made mostly of guesses and hypotheses.
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While the First book on Poetics dealt with Tragedy, a genre already established and codified, Poetics II was dealing with a genre that was still changing and far different from the "modern" comedy, the one we yesterday use to associate with the genre and created especially by the plays of Menander.
So while Poetics I was still valid in its interpretation, Poetics II was apparently obsolete soon after its composition.
This situation was crucial in the change from scrolls to parchment since Poetics II was not copied in the new form and soon it was lost for ever.
Janko is also able to deduce from textual errors that the original source ... Read More
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