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  • Print publication year: 1999
  • Online publication date: March 2008

7 - Humanist classifications of poetry among the arts and sciences

from I - Humanist classifications
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Summary
Humanist theory classified poetry among the arts and sciences in various and sometimes conflicting ways. A given classification affirms not only the priority of some genres, styles, modes, and topics over others, but also the values of a social class or order that poetry might address. Humanist theory classified poetry chiefly in relation to rhetoric, political philosophy, and the discourse of history. Medieval grammarians ranked poetry among the natural and moral sciences, as did the Chartrian academician John of Salisbury in his Metalogicon. According to Juan Huarte de San Juan, every power of the mind mirrors a different combination of humours, and each governs a particular art or science. The humanists' classifications of poetry influenced the thinking of nonprofessional scholars and creative writers in several forms. Castiglione's interlocutors in The book of the courtier famously proclaim that, like music and painting, poetry is an art appropriate for exercise by the cultivated nobility and urban bourgeoisie.

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The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism
  • Online ISBN: 9781139053631
  • Book DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521300087
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