De poetica

Aristotelis de poetica liber, latine conversus, et analytica methodo illustratus (1623) is one of the two Aristotelian works translated by Theodore Goulston, a fine humanist and wealthy physician active in London between the reigns of James I and Charles I. It is precisely to Prince Charles that Goulston dedicated both his translations from the Aristotelian corpus. The other translation was that of Aristotle’s Rhetoric text (cf. Aristot.0005) and had appeared in 1619, when Goulston had already been a fellow of the College of Physician for eight years (since 1611). 

            As announced in the title (“analytica methodo illustratus”), Goulston’s translation of the Poetics is accompanied by a rich apparatus of glosses and a series of tables (cf. Description of the Witness). The glosses are of two types: explanatory integrations and intertextual references; sometimes both are types are combined in the same note. The relationship between notes and text can be exemplified with the famous definition of tragedy (Arist.Poet.1449b23-38):

Est igitur tragoedia imitatio actionis studiosae et persectae, magnitudinem idoneam habentis, cum sermone per formas quasdam condito; ita ut singulae illae, in partibus poeseos singulis, separatim, agendo imitentur; et non per enarrationem rei sed per misericordiam, metumque factis expressum, eiusmodi uehementes animorum perturbationes undiquaque purgans expiansque. (Ch. 3)

(Stephen Halliwell’s translation of the Greek original: “Tragedy, then, is mimesis of an action which is elevated, complete, and of magnitude; in language embellished by distinct forms in its sections; employing the mode of enactment, not narrative; and through pity and fear accomplishing the catharsis of such emotions”; Aristotle 1995, 47-8).[1]

Most of the relevant words are glossed in the margin: for instance, tragedy is glossed as “genus, imitatio rei-studiosae” (“genre, imitation of a serious event”) and the last phrase (from “eiusmodi” to “expians”) as “finis externus tragici: animorum lustratio” (“the external end of the tragic: the purgation of souls”).

The variety of Goulston’s interpretive interventions reveal the twofold nature of his approach to Aristotle’s text: on the one hand, it is essentially didactic, meant as an aid to the reader; on the other, it is extremely scholarly. The latter approach is equally evident in the inclusion of a series of emendations (“emendationes"), which testify to Goulston’s refined technique as a humanist. The introductions preceding the list of the emendations offers details about the Greek edition of the original he used for his Latin translation, i.e., the one contained Friedrich Sylburg’s 1584 edition of some Aristotelian works (i.e., the third book of the Rhetoric; the Rhetoric for Alexander, now established as spurious; Frede 2006). Also, the emendations themselves are particularly detailed in relation to the Goulston’s scholarly approach: they contain reference to previous commentators of Aristotle’s Poetics including Alessandro Pazzi de’ Medici, Vincenzo Maggi, Pietro Vettori, Giovanni Battista Camozzi, Isaac Casaubon, and Daniel Heinsius.

            As for the translational practice of Goulston, his version often amplifies the original. These amplificatory interventions can just be limited to a hendiadys such as “prudentes et graues” (p. 72) for ἐπιεικεῖς (“decent”, Arist.Poet.1462a2). Another hendiadys can be found in the definition of tragedy quoted above: the word “catharsis” is rendered as “purgans expiansque”. However, Goulston’s amplifications are usually longer. In Arist.Poet.1450a10-12, Goulston makes explicit what Aristotle leaves as implicit:

Ad instrumenta enim quibus poetae imitantur, pertinent partes duae: melopoeia et dictio; ad modum, quo imitantur, una: apparatus; ad homines et res, quas imitantur, tres: fabula, mores, et sententia; et praeter has, inuenitur alia nulla. (Ch. 3)

(Stephen Halliwell’s translation of the Greek original: “The media of the mimesis are two components, its mode one, and its objects three; there are no others. (Aristotle 1995, 49).

Here Goulston illustrates the rather implicit references to “two”, “one”, “three” parts by inserting explanatory glosses within the text. Another kind of intervention is the insertion of examples in definitions: in Ch. 6, Goulston exemplifies the parts of a tragedy (prologue, episodes, choruses, etc.) by introducing the first words of these sections from Sophocles’ Oedipus tyrannus (pp. 25-6).

            Overall, Goulston’s approach is simultaneously didactic and scholarly. The didactic quality may have facilitated its reception among practitioners: Mary Gallagher has suggested that this “illustrative” translation potentially had an impact on seventeenth-century playwrights such as Corneille, Racine and Dryden (1965, 619). However, Goulston’s version remains a Latin translation, probably conceived for an academic and elite milieu.

References

Aristotle. 1995. Poetics. Translated by Stephen Halliwell. In Aristotle, Longinus, Demetrius, Poetics, On the Sublime, On Style, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 28-141.

— 1584. Aristotelis artis rhetoricae libri III, Rhetorices ad Alexanderum lib. I, De arte poetica liber I. Francofurti: Apud heredes Andreae Wecheli.

Frede, Dorothea. 2006. “Aristoteles, Son of Nicomachus, of Stagira, Philosopher and Natural Scientist, 4th cent. BC”. In Brill’s New Pauly. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e136530 (Accessed 31 March 2021).

Gallagher, Mary. 1965. “Goulston’s Poetics and Tragic ‘Admiratio’”. Revue de littérature comparée 39 (4): 614-19.

[1] The only variant reading in the Greek text used by Goulston, i.e., the 1584 Sylburg edition, is ἑκάστου (Aristotle 1584, 229) for ἑκάστῳ in the text edited by Halliwell (Aristotle 1995, 46).

Aristotle. 1998. Poetica. Translated by Guido Paduano. Bari: Laterza.

— 1995. Poetics. Translated by Stephen Halliwell. In Aristotle, Longinus, Demetrius, Poetics, On the Sublime, On Style, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 28-141.

— 1584. Aristotelis artis rhetoricae libri III, Rhetorices ad Alexanderum lib. I, De arte poetica liber I. Francofurti: Apud heredes Andreae Wecheli.

Frede, Dorothea. 2006. “Aristoteles, Son of Nicomachus, of Stagira, Philosopher and Natural Scientist, 4th cent. BC”. In Brill’s New Pauly. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e136530 (Accessed 31 March 2021).

Gallagher, Mary. 1965. “Goulston’s Poetics and Tragic ‘Admiratio’”. Revue de littérature comparée 39 (4): 614-19.

Goulston, Theodore. 1623. Aristotelis de poetica liber, latine conversus, et analytica methodo illustratus. Translated by Theodore Goulston. Londini: Typis Thomae Snodhami.

Lazarus, Micha. 2016. “Aristotelian Criticism in Sixteenth-Century England”. Oxford Handbooks Online. https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935338.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935338-e-148 (Accessed 31 March 2021).

— 2015. “Sidney’s Greek Poetics”. Studies in Philology 112 (3): 504-36.

McKerrow, Ronald B. 1913. Printers’ and Publishers’ Devices in England and Scotland 1485-1640. London: Printed for the Bibliographical Society.

Niefanger, Dirk. 2006. “Tragedy/Theory of Tragedy”. In Brill’s New Pauly. Edited by Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e15305030 (Accessed 31 March 2021).

Nutton, Vivian. 2008. “Goulston, Theodore (bap. 1575, d. 1632)”. In ODNB.

Theodore Goulston’s Aristotelis de poetica liber, latine conversus, et analytica methodo illustratus was published in one single quarto edition in 1623 in London and printed by Thomas Snodham (STC (2nd ed.), 759). The copy used for the diplomatic, semidiplomatic and modernised version is the one held and digitized by the British Library. The witness is overall well preserved and presents only few ink stains (e.g. p. 37, sig. L3v). In the title page, the title is enclosed within an elaborate frame reproducing a classical arch with Corinthian columns and a squared floor drawn in perspective. The title page also bears the printer’s device of a Janus face typical of Snodham (McKerrow 1913, 140) and a handwritten number, probably the result of librarians’ cataloguing. The title page is followed by a grand reproduction of Charles I’s coat of arms: a lion and a unicorn bearing the central shield divided into four quarters, each representing a part of the kingdom, i.e., England, Ireland, Scotland, and France. Below the device there appears the first line of Virgil’s Aeneid. There follow a dedicatory epistle to Prince Charles, with a decorative frame on top, and a table of contents (“synopsis libri Poeticae”).

A decorative frame introduces the text, divided into eighteen chapters, which are signalled throughout by means of running titles; at the beginning of each chapter, a brief summary help the reader orientate himself through its sections, ordered by number. Ornamental motifs also decorate the initial letters of each chapter, the page of the corrections, and the index of names. The text is divided into three columns throughout: the column of the text in the middle is framed by two smaller columns, one for long glosses, one for references to other works. The two systems of notes are distinguished by a different series of letters in superscript: although the difference is not always maintained, the former glosses are indicated by superscript letters in italics and in alphabetical order, while the other, shorter notes are signalled by Roman letters instead. The text is also enriched by eight tables: three are “tabula sequentium”, i.e., tables of contents that announce the themes of the following sections (p. 29) or chapters (pp. 45, 57); the remaining five are explanatory schemes to help the reader to decipher the relationships between some categories (pp. 32, 51, 52, 62).

This text is very peculiar in terms of typographical choices. Not only is there a constant alternation between Roman and italic type but capital letters and hyphens are lavishly used throughout with sometimes puzzling results. By means of hyphens, Goulston produces an astonishing variety of two-word compounds such as “Martius-ardor”, “rerum-constitio”, “scenae-ornamentum”, “sermonem-conditum”, and “animi-sententia”, or even multiple-word compounds “peregrinam-speciem-habentia” and “flammam-a-deo-conditam”. Also, the many Greek quotations that appear in the text often feature ligatures and an odd (and now incorrect) positioning of breathings. In two cases, a word is written partly in Latin, partly in Greek: the genitive case of “poesis”, i.e., “poeseos” (“Poëſeως”, pp. 12, 71).