Longinus
Autor de On the Sublime
Sobre El Autor
"Longinus" is the name given to the author of "On the Sublime" (c. 1st century a.d.), a treatise that defines the characteristics of the lofty style in literature, using Homer, Plato and Demosthenes as the chief examples. Translated by Nicolas Boileau in 1674, it greatly influenced literary theory mostrar más until the early nineteenth century and is of lasting importance as a brilliant critique of classical literature. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos
Obras de Longinus
Obras relacionadas
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Otros nombres
- Pseudo-Longinus
Dionysius Longinus - Fecha de nacimiento
- 0050 c.
- Fecha de fallecimiento
- 1st-3rd c. CE
- Género
- male
- Nacionalidad
- Roman Empire
Miembros
Reseñas
Listas
También Puede Gustarte
Autores relacionados
Estadísticas
- Obras
- 10
- También por
- 4
- Miembros
- 695
- Popularidad
- #36,412
- Valoración
- 3.9
- Reseñas
- 3
- ISBNs
- 53
- Idiomas
- 10
- Favorito
- 1
Originally published c. 1st-century AD.
Context
The writer, Longinus, studied a work on great writing (by Caecilius) with his friend, Terentianus. Now Longinus is expanding upon Caecilius’ subject to Terentianus.
Regarding the literary critic or reader
• “…literary judgment is the last outgrowth of long experience” (9).
• “…these eminent personages are present in our minds and raise us to a higher level of imaginative power” (23).
• “…man can easily understand what is useful or necessary, but he admires what passes his understanding” (48).
Attributes of great writing
1. “…great passages have a high distinction of thought and expression to which great writers owe their supremacy and their lasting renown” (4).
2. “Great writing does not persuade; it takes the reader out of himself” (4).
3. “The startling and amazing is more powerful than charming and persuasive, if it is indeed true that to be convinced is usually within our control whereas amazement is the result of an irresistible force beyond the control of any audience” (4).
4. “…greatness appears suddenly; like a thunderbolt it carries all before it and reveals the writer’s full power in a flash” (4).
5. “The truly great can be pondered again and again; it is difficult, indeed impossible to withstand, for the memory of it is strong and hard to efface” (10).
6. “…truly great and beautiful writing [is] that which satisfies all men at all times…” (10).
7. “…nothing contributes to greatness as much as noble passion in the right place…” (11).
8. “To select the most vital [features of a situation] and to relate them to one another to form a unified whole is an essential case of great writing” (17).
9. “…if a man is actually afraid to utter anything that looks beyond his own life and time, then his mind’s conceptions are destined to be imperfect and blind…” (23).
Loginus’ framework for sublime writing
1. Vigor of mental conception.
2. Strong and inspired emotion.
3. Adequate fashioning of figures.
a. Figures--literary devices like apostrophe, anastrophe, asyndeton, anaphora, diatypsis, periphrasis, etc.--should be well-placed. Essentially this means using the figure that best matches the intended effect.
4. Nobility of diction.
5. Dignified and distinguished word-arrangement.
Other notes
1. Longinus points to the concept of the agon (i.e. contest; court hearing) between great writers as a pathway to successive great writing.
2. “…inferior and average talent remains for the most part safe and faultless because it avoids risk and does not aim at the heights, while great qualities are always precarious because of their very greatness”(45).
Why aren’t there more great writers?
For Longinus, there are two reasons why genius is rare: money and pleasure. These two things deaden our motives and sensibilities.
The big question
“[W]hich is to be preferred in poetry or in prose, great writing with occasional flaws or moderate talent which is entirely sound and faultless? (44)”… (más)