Enargeia in Classical Antiquity and the Early Modern Age: The Aesthetics of Evidence

253 Pages·2012·6.11 MB·English

by  Heinrich F. Plett

Enargeia in Classical Antiquity
and the Early Modern Age
International Studies in the
History of Rhetoric
Editors
Laurent Pernot, Executive Editor, Strasbourg, France
Craig Kallendorf, College Station, U.S.A.
Advisory Board
Bé Breij, Nijmegen, Netherlands
Rudong Chen, Beijing, China
Manfred Kraus, Tübingen, Germany
Gabriella Moretti, Trento, Italy
Luisa Angelica Puig Llano, Mexico City, Mexico
Christine Sutherland, Calgary, Canada
VoLUME 4
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/rhet
Enargeia in Classical Antiquity
and the Early Modern Age
The Aesthetics of Evidence
By
Heinrich F. Plett
LEIDEN • BoSToN
2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Plett, Heinrich F.
 Enargeia in classical antiquity and the early modern age : the aesthetics of evidence /
by Heinrich F. Plett.
  pages. cm. — (International studies in the history of rhetoric, ISSN 1875-1148 ; volume 4) Includes
bibliographical references and index.
 ISBN 978-90-04-22702-6 (hardback : alk. paper) —
 ISBN 978-90-04-23118-4 (e-book) 1. Art and literature. 2. Ut pictura poesis (Aesthetics) 3. Greek
literature—Influence. 4. Latin literature—Influence. 5. Rhetoric, Ancient. I. Title. II. Series:
International studies in the history of rhetoric ; v. 4.
PN53.P537 2012
700.1—dc23
2012016830
This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters
covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the
humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.nl/brill-typeface.
ISSN 1875-1148
ISBN 978 90 04 22702 6 (hardback)
ISBN 978 90 04 23118 4 (e-book)
Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing,
IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.
Brill has made all reasonable efforts to trace all rights holders to any copyrighted
material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful the
publisher welcomes communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate
acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permission
matters.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV
provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center,
222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA.
Fees are subject to change.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
CoNTENTS
Foreword  ........................................................................................................... vii
Acknowledgements  ........................................................................................ ix
List of Illustrations  .......................................................................................... xi
Introduction  ..................................................................................................... 1
Prologue  ............................................................................................................. 5
I Classical Sources and Their Humanist Reception  .................... 7
II Enargeia in Humanist Writings and Its Theoretical
Foundation  ............................................................................................ 23
III Shakespeare and Enargeia (A)  ........................................................ 29
IV Ekphraseis of Places and Pictures  .................................................. 37
V Enargetic Representations of Persons  .......................................... 51
VI The Poetics of Ekphrasis and Enargeia  ........................................ 57
VII Enargeia in Teichoscopy and Messenger’s Report  .................... 61
VIII Shakespeare and Enargeia (B)  ........................................................ 65
IX Enargeia in operatic Libretti  ........................................................... 69
X Enargeia in Mnemonics and Meditation  ..................................... 79
XI Enargeia and the Visual Arts  ........................................................... 85
XII Ut Pictura Poesis  ................................................................................. 89
vi contents
XIII Enargeia and Perspective  ................................................................. 119
XIV Shakespeare and Enargeia (C)  ........................................................ 125
XV Enargeia in Theory and Practice of the Visual
and Verbal Arts  ................................................................................... 135
XVI The Enargeia of Music in Theory and Practice  ......................... 183
Epilogue  ............................................................................................................. 195
Bibliography: ‘Enargeia’ and Related Terms  ........................................... 199
Indices  ................................................................................................................ 217
Index of Names  ........................................................................................... 219
Index of Subjects  ........................................................................................ 227
FoREWoRD
The present study had its origin in an invitation from Beate Hintzen, presi-
dent of German Neo-Latin Society (Deutsche Neulateinische Gesellschaft
[DNG]), to deliver the keynote address at their annual conference on
February 5, 2009 at the University of Bonn. That lecture, titled “Evidentia:
Zur Rhetorik der Präsenz in den Artes der Frühen Neuzeit” (Evidentia:
on the Rhetoric of Presence in the Artes of the Early Modern Age) later
grew into a larger work, which took into account many more theoretical
sources, and not only of Neo-Latin provenance. Since the original sources
date back to Classical Antiquity, primarily to Greek and Roman rhetoric,
it was an obvious step to discuss these theoretical roots as well, and to
provide illustrations from ancient classics.
The result is a more extensive treatment of the topic, but not an exhaus-
tive one; the intention is rather to stimulate and invite further studies
to fill the lacunae that are undoubtedly present. Most likely these can-
not be completely eliminated, for the historical sciences, to which rheto-
ric belongs, depend on the inventiones of future generations of erudite
researchers—and to this contingency they owe their permanent dynam-
ics. No attempt will be made here to identify such desiderata in the spatio-
temporal continuum of present-day scholarship. That is the heuristic and
hemeneutic task of individual sensitive readers, regardless of their coun-
try of origin, their language, and the age into which they are born. The
study at hand is thus conceived as a goad to the conversation which the
German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer considered a basic principle
of hermeneutics:
Es gibt keinen Redner und keine Redekunst, wenn nicht Verständigung und
Einverständnis die menschlichen Beziehungen trüge—es gäbe keine herme-
neutische Aufgabe, wenn das Einverständnis derer, die “ein Gespräch sind”,
nicht gestört wäre und die Verständigung nicht gesucht werden müsste.
There would be no orators and no rhetoric, if mutual understanding and
agreement did not form the basis of human relations—there would be no
hermeneutic task if the agreement of those who “are conversing” were not
disrupted and understanding would have to be sought.
viii foreword
This remark from Gadamer’s “Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Ideological
Criticism” (1971) articulates, in a nutshell, the essence of humanities
research. We add here only the following: The impetus for this method
derives from rhetoric, with its tradition that reaches back more than three
thousand years.
ACKNoWLEDGEMENTS
This book would not have come about without the help of many people.
I am especially grateful to Myra Scholz (Amstelveen) and Beate Hintzen
(Bonn) for their translating skills, to Shadi Bartsch (Chicago), Sophie Conte
(Reims), and Thomas Schirren (Salzburg) for providing relevant sources or
research literature, and above all to Renate Plett for her repeated critical
reviewing of the entire text—its final shape owes a great deal to her many
useful suggestions. Finally I am indebted to German and foreign libraries
for generously making texts and illustrations available that proved indis-
pensable for the present treatise. In the twenty-first century these are—as
a matter of course—supplemented by such information as is accessible by
way of the Internet.
H.F.P.