The Soul of Poetry Redefined

What is the soul of poetry? Perhaps the most influential answer comes from Aristotle's Poetics, in which the writer regarded poetry as an instance of mimesis, a kind of representation or simulation. However, despite the significance he gave the term, Aristotle's use of the word mimesis was far from unequivocal, and over the centuries that have followed this inconsistency has stimulated a wealth of interpretations and debate. Tracking Poeticsfrom its birth in rhetorical studies to its reception across the centuries until romanticism, Mats Malm here examines the many different ways scholars-from Averroës to Schlegel-have understood mimesis, looking at how these various interpretations have led to very different definitions of the soul of poetry.

Mats Malm is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Gothenburg.

Abstract	p. 8
Acknowledgements	p. 9
Introduction	p. 11
The soul of poetry - The definition of mimesis	p. 11
Mimetic variations	p. 13
Overview	p. 17
Aristotle	p. 23
Two instances of mimesis	p. 23
The issue of lexis	p. 27
Poetics - Rhetoric	p. 31
Plato's Categories	p. 32
Probability - Verisimilitude	p. 33
Verisimilitude in mimesis-composition	p. 33
Verisimilitude in mimesis-representation	p. 35
Points of departure	p. 37
Adaptations
Averroës's adaptations (12th-13th century)	p. 43
The poetics of visuality	p. 46
The place of metaphor	p. 49
Averroës and the soul	p. 51
The soul of poetry: Muthos replaced by lexis	p. 54
Mathias Lincopensis: Representation and revelation (14th century)	p. 61
Master Mathias on Literary Presentation	p. 63
From mimesis to Representatio: Fiction boiled down to metaphor	p. 66
Revelation and Poetics	p. 69
The Italian Renaissance (16th-17th century)	p. 75
Robortello	p. 78
Castelvetro	p. 82
Towards a New Poetics of Diction	p. 85
Tesauro	p. 88
Metaphor and imitation	p. 89
The ambiguity of imitation - The ambiguity of verisimisitude	p. 98
Verisimilitude	p. 101
French Classicism and the necessity of probability (17th century)	p. 103
Corneille	p. 104
Racine	p. 107
The principle and polemics of the fine arts (18th century)	p. 111
Charles Batteux: The fine arts reduced to a single principle	p. 114
Fiction - Representation	p. 116
Poësie des choses and poësie du style	p. 118
Schlegel's critique	p. 121
The nachleben of imitation (early 19th century)	p. 131
Beyond Aristotelian concepts
The technique of the sublime (3rd-18th century)	p. 139
The explicit argument	p. 142
The implicit argument	p. 146
The figure of the sublime	p. 149
The terminology of the sublime	p. 151
Fantasy merges with fantasy	p. 154
The symbol and the categories of rhetoric	p. 157
Definitions of the symbol	p. 159
Outside the system of tropes	p. 162
The word symbol	p. 165
Poetry, painting, symbolism and visuality	p. 167
Emotions and the system of genres	p. 171
The instrumental emotions	p. 172
The emotions turned into objects of poetry	p. 176
Emotuibs and media	p. 178
Rhetoric applied onto painting	p. 180
From Instrument of object - to soul	p. 183
Conclusion	p. 187
Notes	p. 195
Bibliography	p. 225
Index	p. 235
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The Soul of Poetry Redefined

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