The Poetics of Phantasia: Imagination in Ancient Aesthetics

138 Pages·2014·0.86 MB·English

by  Anne Sheppard

Contents

Acknowledgements
Preface
A Note on Translations
Timeline
Introduction: Aristotle’s Phantasia and the Ancient Concept of Imagination
1 Visualization, Vividness (Enargeia) and Realism
2 Mathematical Projection, Copying and Analogy
3 Prophecy, Inspiration and Allegory
Conclusion: Ancient and Modern Imagination
Bibliography
General Index
Index of Passages Cited
Acknowledgements

Some parts of this book have previously been published in a different form. I am
grateful to Ashgate Publishing for permission to re-use material first published
in my article, ‘Phantasia and Inspiration in Neoplatonism’ in M. Joyal (ed.),
Studies in Plato and the Platonic Tradition. Essays Presented to John Whittaker
(Aldershot: Ashgate 1997) 201–10; to Prof. Peter Green, editor of Syllecta
Classica, for permission to re-use material first published in my article,
‘Phantasia and Mathematical Projection in Iamblichus’ in H. J. Blumenthal and
J. Finamore (eds), Iamblichus the Philosopher. Syllecta Classica 8 (1997) 113–
20; to Prof. Michael Erler and Prof. Clemens Zintzen, co-editors of the series
Beiträge zur Altertumskunde, for permission to re-use material first published in
my article, ‘Image and Analogy in Later Neoplatonism’ in T. Kobusch and M.
Erler (eds), Metaphysik und Religion. Zur Signatur des spätantiken Denkens
(Munich and Leipzig: K.G. Saur 2002) 639–47; and to Mohr Siebeck for
permission to re-use material published in my essay, ‘Phantasia in De
Insomniis’ in D. A. Russell and H-G. Nesselrath (eds), On Prophecy, Dreams
and Human Imagination: Synesius, De insomniis (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck
forthcoming).
Preface

This book has grown out of two long-running and converging strands in my
intellectual life. On the one hand, I have enjoyed works of the imagination ever
since I can remember and, since I first became interested in philosophy, have
been fascinated by the question why such works hold so much appeal for us. My
Oxford DPhil on the response of the Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus to Plato’s
criticisms of Homer (published as Sheppard 1980) raised in my mind a number
of further questions which it was not possible to answer at that time; one of these
was a question about Proclus’ use of the word phantasia. Subsequently, writing
an introductory book on aesthetics, entitled Aesthetics. An Introduction to the
Philosophy of Art (Sheppard 1987), led me to read some modern philosophical
work on imagination and to think more broadly about the topic. At the same time
my work on Proclus had aroused my interest in the use of allegory and
symbolism in art and literature. Two conversations with distinguished scholars
were particularly influential: E. R. Dodds lent me a copy of Louis MacNeice’s
book, Varieties of Parable, and when I talked to my undergraduate tutor,
Margaret Hubbard, about my doctoral research, she said to me, ‘At some stage
this has to be confronted with Chapter 9 [of Aristotle’s Poetics].’
Rather than attempting a study of the concept of imagination in general, I have
chosen to focus on the ancient concept of phantasia and its uses in aesthetic
contexts. My concentration on these particular uses of phantasia has allowed me
to address some of the issues about allegory, symbolism and the nature of poetic
truth which E. R. Dodds and Margaret Hubbard first stimulated me to consider. I
made a preliminary attempt to discuss some of the underlying questions in an
article on ‘The Role of Imagination in Aesthetic Experience’, published in the
Journal of Aesthetic Education in 1991 (Sheppard 1991b) and have also
published papers on various aspects of phantasia in Neoplatonism, some of
which I have drawn on when writing this book.
The book has been a long time in gestation and I have benefited from the
opportunity to present material relating to it on a number of occasions. I have
received helpful comments from audiences at: Royal Holloway, University of
London; the University of Leiden; the University of Manchester; the annual
conference of the British Society of Aesthetics; University College, Cork; the
London Roman Art seminar; a workshop on Arabic poetics at St John’s College,
Oxford; the University of Murcia; the Université catholique de Louvain; and the
London Aesthetics Forum. I have also learned a great deal over the years from
my colleagues both at Royal Holloway and in the wider scholarly community
and from my students. Some individuals are thanked in the chapter notes for
advice on particular points, or for particular references. In addition to these I
should like to thank a number of people who have suggested books and articles
to me, shared their own work with me, answered questions or made comments
on my project as it developed: Cosmin Andron, Franco Basso, Oleg Bychkov,
Victor Caston, Stavroula Kiritsi, Peter Lautner, Dominic O’Meara, Jim Porter,
Donald Russell, David Sedley, Ineke Sluiter, Carlos Steel, Suzanne Stern-Gillet,
Jeremy Tanner, Tony Woodman, my daughter Sarah, and the anonymous
referees who commented on my proposal for Bloomsbury Academic. I should
also like to thank my family for their continual support and encouragement.
Responsibility for omissions and errors rests of course with me.

Anne Sheppard September 2013
A Note on Translations

A list of the translations of Greek and Latin texts used is given in the
Bibliography. I have also given the name of the translator(s) in the text of the
book, the first time I quote from a translation. All unattributed translations are
my own.
Timeline

I list here the ancient writers and thinkers discussed in the book, in chronological
order. Many dates are approximate; in some cases we know an author’s date of
birth, or date of death, but not both, while in others we know only the period at
which they were active. I have used a question mark to indicate when dating is
uncertain, or disputed, and have referred to two works, the essay On the Life and
Poetry of Homer, wrongly attributed to Plutarch, and the Anonymous
Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy, by their titles alone since the names of
their authors are unknown. I have not included the scholia to Homer in this list
as they are a compilation of material from many different dates.

Homer ? Eighth century BC
Hesiod c.700 BC
Pindar c.518 BC – c.438 BC
Gorgias c.485 BC – c.380 BC
Democritus Fifth century BC (born c.460 BC)
Euripides Fifth century BC (died 407/6 BC)
Fifth to fourth century BC (died
Aristophanes
c.386 BC)
Andocides c.440 BC – c.390 BC
Fifth to fourth century BC (died
Lysias
c.380 BC)
Plato c.429 BC – 347 BC
Aeschines c.397 BC – c.322 BC
Demosthenes 384 BC – 322 BC
Aristotle 384 BC – 322 BC
Epicurus 341 BC – 270 BC
Chrysippus c.280 BC – 207 BC
Philodemus c.110 BC – c.40/35 BC
Lucretius c.94 BC – c.55/1 BC
Demetrius, On Style ?First century BC
Dionysius of Halicarnassus First century BC
Ovid 43 BC – AD 17
Philo of Alexandria c.20 BC – c.AD 40
‘Longinus’ ?First century AD
Quintilian c.AD 35 – c.AD 95
Josephus First century AD (born AD 37/8)
Aetius First century AD
Dio Chrysostom c.AD 40/50 – c.AD 110
Plutarch of Chaeronea c.AD 50 – c.AD 120
On the Life and Poetry of Homer ?Second century AD
Sextus Empiricus Second century AD
Aelian AD 165/70 – AD 230/5
Philostratus c.AD 172 – AD 244/9
Philostratus the Lemnian Third century AD
Diogenes Laertius Third century AD
Plotinus AD 205 – AD 269/70
Porphyry AD 234 – c.AD 305
Iamblichus c.AD 245 – c.AD 325
Plutarch of Athens c.AD 350 – c.AD 430
Synesius of Cyrene c.AD 370 – c.AD 413
Fourth to fifth century AD (died c.AD
Syrianus
437)
Proclus AD 412 – AD 485
Hermias c.AD 410 – c.AD 450
Damascius c.AD 458 – after AD 538
Philoponus c.AD 490 – c.AD 570
Simplicius c.AD 490 – c.AD 560
Olympiodorus AD 495/505 – after AD 565
Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic
Sixth century AD
Philosophy
Priscian of Lydia Fifth to sixth century AD
Introduction: Aristotle’s Phantasia and the Ancient
Concept of Imagination

‘Imagination’ is one of the standard translations of the Greek word phantasia.
Although the word does appear in this sense in Plato, it was Aristotle’s usage,
particularly in On the Soul (De Anima), that was of crucial importance for later
thought. While we might think that aesthetic contexts are central to any
discussion of imagination, many of the contexts in which ancient Greek thinkers
use the word phantasia are not aesthetic at all and, conversely, the word is not
used in some aesthetic contexts in which we might expect it. For that reason this
book is not a complete survey of phantasia in ancient thought and, although
many of the texts to be discussed do use the word phantasia, I shall also be
considering material which talks of ‘putting before the eyes’ and of ‘making you
feel as if you were there’ in Chapter 1, material which uses the words eikōn
(‘copy’) and paradeigma (‘model’) and the related concept of analogy in
Chapter 2, and material which refers to inspiration and to symbols in Chapter 3.
In order to set the detailed discussion in the main body of the book against a
wider background I propose in this Introduction to offer a brief sketch of the
concept of phantasia and some related concepts in ancient Greek thought from
Plato to the first century AD, highlighting those aspects which are of particular
importance for the rest of the book. The different uses of phantasia discussed in
the book may be related to different literary and artistic modes. This point will
be outlined at the end of the Introduction and will recur throughout the book.
A key issue, both in philosophical discussions of the imagination and in the
interpretation of Aristotle’s view of phantasia, is the extent to which imagination
involves the having of mental images. Much of the material to be discussed in
this book assumes that we do have mental images when we use our
imaginations. Before we turn to survey the wider concept of phantasia in ancient
Greek thought, it may be helpful at the outset to contrast the ancient way of
thinking about mental images in aesthetic contexts with what we find in the
Romantic poetics which has shaped many of our current assumptions about the
power of the imagination. Wordsworth in ‘Tintern Abbey’ writes:
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, With many recognitions