Longinus (literature)

Pseudo - Longinus, the research indicates the yet unidentified author of the highly influential ancient treatise Peri Hypsous ( " On the Sublime "). There is one - after the Aristotelian poetics and the Ars poetica of Horace - the most important seal theoretical works of antiquity.

Writers and writing

The title of Peri Hypsous called " Dionysius Longinus " as an author. In the table of contents, however, the medieval manuscript to which all later textual witnesses go back (Codex Pari Sinus Gr 2036; . 10th century ), wrote a note to a text " Dionysius or Longinus " to. Since Dionysius Longinus is not attested in other texts, was adopted as a writer because of this note Kassios Longinus or Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Today, it is assumed that none of the author of the work is. Because of following clues in Peri Hypsous of writing time is now dated to the first half of the 1st century AD: one against the Atticism independent style; the claim that the rhetoric decay; the polemic against Caecilus - a Greek rhetorician and literary critic of the Augustan period - that suggests a low temporal proximity.

Content of peri Hypsous

Peri Hypsous (Latin: De sublimitate ) is a treatise on the sublime or the size. This is meant not only as a concept of style, characteristic of a text, but also as a reference to the skills, the strength of the author.

We distinguish between two modes of distinction, such as size / sublimity is produced: by conditioning (physis ) and -learn method ( 'technê' ). It describes " five sources of the sublime ":

The first two bring forth the plant (Greek physis ), the remaining three were to be reached by the learnable method (from the Greek techne ). Especially the three based on the techne sources gather fragments from the rhetorical tradition, especially in the field of ornatus ( speech jewelery).

Reception

The work developed in modern times - especially in the wake of a custom built by Nicolas Boileau in 1674 and published in translation - broad impact on theories of the sublime, and influenced, among others, Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant